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Pointe-au-PereAug 7, 2008
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Pointe-au-Pere Lighthouse
Empress of Ireland Museum and Lighthouse
Mock-Up of Empress of Ireland
Photo of Empress of Ireland
Rimouski / Pointe-au-Pere is the sight of the second most deadly tragic shipwreck … second to the Titanic. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic in the North Atlantic, the Empress of Ireland, a Canadian Railroad Ocean Liner, while still in the St. Lawrence Estuary sailing from Quebec City to Ireland, was hit by another ship in the fog and sunk in 14 minutes, taking 1012 lives with her.
A memorial to this tragic event with full documentation is located at the Pointe-au-Pere Historical Lighthouse site in Rimouski. It was a poignant visit … albeit quite interesting and certainly informing. In fact, we don’t believe we’d ever heard of this event. It seems it happened just a few months before the beginning of WWI and was lost in history because of the magnitude of the war. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that this memorial was established and the sunken ship explored.
We also enjoyed a museum of the lighthouse located at Pointe-au-Pere. The St Lawrence Estuary is beautiful … we are enjoying the sights immensely.
