By Sébastien Hudon
In the summer of 2020, my colleague Louis Pelletier, an historian of early cinema, and I learned that some very old film reels were to be auctioned off in England and bids would be accepted online. The one that caught our attention related to the Empress of Ireland.
Louis and I grew up on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, close to where the CPR-owned liner sank on May 29, 1914, taking the lives of over a thousand people. While much of the world forgot, the Empress of Ireland resonates more deeply than the Titanic in our region.
We bought the film sight unseen and then waited anxiously for the package to reach Quebec, hoping the film wasn’t nitrate based, which is unstable and can be explosive. When it finally arrived, we were in the height of the pandemic and in full lockdown and had to wait several months before Louis could unspool its fragile contents. Fortunately, the reel was a stable Kodak 33 mm projection copy.
Robert Crellin: the hero from Silverton:
Greg Nesteroff wrote about Robert Crellin, the hero from Silverton, BC who saved his godchild, eight-year-old Florence “Florrie” Barbour from the wreck. According to his research, a newsreel was shown around the world in the months after the shipwreck and never resurfaced.
We had found the lost footage!
We learned that a ring that belonged to Florrie was on display at the Empress of Ireland Museum in Pointe-au-Père. Records about the ring’s provenance had been lost and there was only a mention in the exhibit stating that it was donated by Florence Barbour in 1964.
In February 2024, Eve Lazarus contacted me and asked if she could include our discovery of the newsreels in her book and talk to me about the information that I had uncovered about Crellin’s intended marriage to Sebena Barbour, Florrie’s widowed mother.
Eve and I talked about our mutual interest in forensics and I told her about the ring. The next morning, she wrote: “Now you really have me excited about this ring, I hadn’t heard of it before and would love to know its history! Too bad Florrie never had any children/grandchildren that we could have tracked down.”
Florrie’s Diary:
A week went by and another email from Eve popped into my inbox: “I just reread Florrie’s diary and found the mention of the ring. I completely missed it the first time around.”
“Uncle Bob just had his vest and trousers that he had swam in, and when he put his hand in his pocket he was amazed to find he still had his watch, which he grabbed off the locker when he was leaving his cabin and away in the corner of his other pocket he found my little ring. On the start of our voyage, I broke it and gave it to him until we could get it mended, I still have it with me to this day.” Florrie’s Diary (1964)
“Do you think this is the ring that’s at the museum?” Eve asked.
I can answer that now. This is the ring that’s on display at the Museum. It was never repaired.
I wish I could have told Florrie, that Robert Crellin, the man she knew as Uncle Bob, planned to marry her mother, adopt her and her sister, and return as a family to Silverton. But from her diary—where she explains how much she wanted Robert to adopt her. It seems that Florrie died without ever knowing that Crellin and her mother were romantically involved.
My sole consolation is that the link between the little broken ring and Florrie is somehow repaired.
Here is a link to the film:
This is an excerpt from a feature story that appeared in the Summer 2025 edition of British Columbia History magazine.
Sébastien Hudon is an author, curator, art critic, lecturer, appraiser and collection development consultant specializing in the history of Quebec photography and Canadian art.
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Nice story, my Dad was a bobby in Preston, and Wigan.
Absolutely thrilling history of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland. Having just cruised down the St. Lawrence in July, 2025, and having read your book, I love reading other tidbits. However, our cruise ship passed over the sinking area during the nighttime hours. I do have an old copy of the book, The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland, written in 1914. A family member had purchased it because they, or another family member, may have been going to be passengers on that fateful cruise, but did not.