40 years since a passion began for Reader!

Reader here!  Something I almost missed this week, is an interesting milestone that led to an abiding interest for me, that continues to this day.

This past Monday (Sept. 1) marked 40 years since a joint American-French expedition located the most famous shipwreck in history, the Titanic!

I was nine years old, when the search team, led by American Dr. Robert Ballard and French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel found the wreck on Sept. 1, 1985, in the North Atlantic, about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.  I remember seeing the news on TV and thinking it was a pretty cool discovery.  I can’t imagine what it must have felt like at that moment, when the massive boiler came into view…

I’ve gone back on YouTube and watched news reports from the time, but I have to say that what really caught my imagination, what the photos and stories from National Geographic magazines, specifically from Dec. 1985 and Dec. 1986.  I spent so much time in the library at Conquest School, going over those particular issues, with many of the photographs burned into my mind, especially the crows nest and the instantly recognizable bow section that we all know today.

I managed to find those particular issues at a used bookstore many years later, and I have them here now, as well as a copy of another book I read again and again from the library, Walter Lord’s 1955 classic, “A Night To Remember,” considered by many to be THE definitive account of the sinking of the world’s most famous ship, on Apr. 15, 1912!

And then, a couple of years after the discovery, National Geographic put this video out, and reeled me in even more…

For a kid who was already hooked on “Star Wars,” and had dreams of space, to realize that there was an entirely unknown world beneath the surface of the world’s oceans, was a total mind-blower.

Since then, more research has been done, more dive expeditions have been made, and James Cameron made one of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of all-time about Titanic.

And all these years later, the wreck remains two-and-a-half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic, slowly deteriorating, but no less legendary.

It’s long been a dream of mine to actually thumb a ride on a submarine and actually go to the wreck site, but I must admit, after the Oceangate Titan implosion a couple of years ago, maybe I’ll just settle for seeing what a can of the wreck from land!

I should note, that there are a couple of more local notes that relate to Titanic, as well.

First off, growing up in Conquest, I found out that a woman who lived in town long before I came along, actually survived the disaster.  Here’s the entry in the Conquest history book…

And I’m sure many Melville residents know that the city has a Titanic connection, as the community is named for Charles Melville Hays, the former president of the Grand Trunk Railway, who died in the disaster!

Another cool Saskatchewan connection?  Regina-based microbiologists Dr. Roy Cullimore and Lori Johnston have spent many years studying the “rusticles” – the organic growths that appear like long tears of rust, that have covered the Titanic wreck and cause corrosion.

It’s pretty neat how something that occurs thousands of miles away, and 65 years before you were born, can become something that remains a passion for a lifetime!

What’s that passion for you?