Salvation Army Archives

I’m excited to tell you that my new book—Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck is finished and will be on book shelves in April.

In August 2019, I was sitting on a Zodiac in the middle of the St. Lawrence River piloted by a French Canadian marine biologist. The trip was arranged by Hugh Verrier, and we were right above the wreck of the Empress of Ireland, a CPR-liner that sunk in 14 minutes after being rammed by a Norwegian coal ship in 1914. It’s now an underwater graveyard for more than 800 souls.

Hugh is based in New York and heads up one of the world’s largest law firms, but he is originally from Montreal, and has a summer property near Rimouski, close to where the Empress of Ireland sank. Hugh swims in the St. Lawrence River most summers and has always known about the tragedy, but in recent years he has developed a fascination for the story of survivor Gordon Charles Davidson.

Gordon Charles Davidson:

Davidson was a PhD candidate who lived in Vancouver when he wasn’t studying at UC Berkeley in San Francisco. He had reportedly survived the sinking of the Empress by swimming 6.5 kilometres (4 miles) to shore. When Hugh looked into this, experts told him this wasn’t possible—not at that time of year and not for that distance. But Hugh wanted to make sure. He wanted to verify the information that had been repeated in newspapers articles and regurgitated in books and even at Davidson’s own memorial service more than a hundred years ago. Whatever happened, Hugh wanted to set the record straight.

Hugh had hired me two years earlier to research the story of Gordon Davidson, one of the few survivors from Vancouver. In an email to me, he attached Davidson’s 1922 obituary, an article about his miraculous swim to shore, and a photo of him receiving medical treatment at the Château Frontenac following the shipwreck. “I have not found any record of him speaking or writing about swimming to shore,” Hugh wrote. “He did not have any children. So, this is not going to be easy to find out about.”

Staggering Loss of Canadian Life:

I was surprised that I’d never before heard of the Empress of Ireland, because the loss of Canadian life was truly staggering. More passengers died that night (836), then died on the Titanic (832) in 1912, or on the Lusitania (788) two years later.

I was eventually able to locate one of Davidson’s descendants and track down the real story of Gordon’s survival. He had written a letter to his parents immediately after his rescue.

Davidson did not swim to shore, the story came from the wild speculations of a Province newspaper reporter and later went around the world as fact.

Myth Busting:

I was curious how many other stories told about the Empress of Ireland were also myths, and it turns out there were quite a few. A large part of the book is righting those wrongs. Another focus of the book is telling the stories of the survivors as some went on to fight in the first world war, while others took up homesteading on the Prairies, and a few became successful entrepreneurs.

Thanks to a Canada Council grant, I was able to travel across the country to visit Rimouski, as well as various archives and museums and interview descendants of the survivors.

The Western Canada Connection:

While researching Gordon’s story, I was surprised by how many connections there were to Western Canada—65 people booked through the Vancouver office alone, and only a few came back. Arthur Delamont, a 22-year-old from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan was part of a 161-member Salvation Army delegation travelling to an International Congress in London where he was playing in the staff band. Arthur lost his brother in the tragedy and later moved to Vancouver where he founded the Kitsilano Boys Band and taught Jimmy Pattison, Bing Thom and Dal Richards, among hundreds of others. Delamont Park in Kitsilano is named for him.

The Empress of Ireland carried more than 117,000 people between England and Canada from 1906 to 1914. A million or so Canadians can trace their roots back to an ancestor who came to Canada on this ship.

Copies of Beneath Dark Waters are now available to preorder through my publisher Arsenal Pulp Press, from online retailers, and through independent bookstores across Canada

Garden family at 752 Thurlow Street, ca1890s. Photo courtesy Anders Falk

This story appears in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History.

Anders Falk is a Vancouver realtor with deep roots in the city. His great, great grandparents William and Mary Henderson Garden arrived in Vancouver from Helensburgh, Scotland, via Liverpool and a cross Canada train trip in April 1889. William opened up Garden and Sons Wholesale Tea and Coffee on East Hastings. By 1894, Murchies has broken their monopoly on the tea business, and William and Mary and their two sons William and John have moved into a new house at the corner of Thurlow and Alberni Street.

Garden and Sons Wholesale Teas, 222 East Hastings Street, ca.1890s. Photo courtesy Anders Falk

William died in 1897, and the following year, the business has disappeared from the directory. John became a lumber broker and William Junior played in a band and worked at the Bay for his day job. The Gardens remain at 752 Thurlow until 1903. Fortunately one of the Garden family was an avid photographer and was able to capture the family’s various activities—at the house, a boat at the rowing club, and biking in Stanley Park.

William and Mary Garden family in Stanley Park mid-1890s. Photo courtesy Anders Falk

Anders says Joe Fortes taught the Garden kids to swim at nearby English Bay.

William Lamont Tait, a wealthy retired lumber and real estate tycoon, is the next resident at 752 Thurlow. Tait must have spent much of the next few years planning and supervising the building of Glen Brae, his Shaughnessy mansion on Matthews. Completed in 1911, Glen Brae, named for Tait’s Scottish homeland, was dubbed “the Mae West” by locals because of its two outlandish turrets. Tait died in 1919, and in 1925, his former house became the headquarters of the KKK. More recently it has found a nicer use as Canuck Place.

The house on Thurlow Street and Alberni, like most large places in the West End, went through a number of uses—at one point it was a YWCA, a nursery, and during the First World War, it was occupied by the Canadian Medical Army Corps.

Rear of 754 Thurlow Street in 1956 CVA Bu P508-19

Between 1924 and 1940, 752 Thurlow showed up as the Vancouver Women’s Building in the directories, and in 1941 it was taken over by the Salvation Army. Surprisingly, it looks like it survived until at least 1956, and at some point went through a street change to #754.

In 1966, 752 Thurlow was a three-storey building next to the Manhattan Apartments and occupied by Oil Can Harry’s. The club stayed there for the next 11 years.

The Carlyle, a 21-storey tower replaced the Thurlow Street building in 1989. Its address is now on Alberni.

The Carlisle, 1060 Alberni Street — The Carlyle, 1060 Alberni Street

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