The water was calm and the skies clear on that fateful night 100 years ago Saturday and for that reason, many of the passengers on the Shipping News boat of the week didn’t take the order to get in the lifeboats seriously.
It was serious though. The 299-foot gash torn by an iceberg in the side of the ill-fated Titanic was a fatal wound that sent the ship to the bottom of the Atlantic at 2:20 a.m. on April 14, 1912, taking 1,517 passengers with her.
Of a dozen passengers who had been headed for British Columbia, only one, Hilda Slayter, a 30-year-old singer, survived. She married Denman Island farmer Harry Lacon and a road there still carries the Lacon name.
• Boaters won’t want to be late for the annual Deep Bay Yacht Club’s annual marine and water sports consignment sale this weekend.
The event, to be held at the Bowser Legion on Highway 19A, is slated to run on Sunday, April 15, from noon to 3 p.m.
The sale involves any boating, fishing or water sports items.
Items for sale can be dropped off between 9 and 11 a.m. on Sunday, with prices attached. Volunteers from the yacht club will sell them and turn 75 per cent of the proceeds to the former owner, with payment mailed within a week.
Any unsold items must be picked up between 3 and 4 p.m. on Sunday, with all unsold items not picked up becoming the property of the Deep Bay Yacht Club.
For more information call Rick Nickerson at 250-757-8438.
• There’s bad news for all the kayak fans in District 69 who have been looking forward to the annual Paddlefest event in Ladysmith.
The event, held for the past 14 years in mid-May at Transfer Beach, has been called off this year by the Vancouver Island Paddlefest Society.
The one-year hiatus, say organizers, will be used to develop a new strategic plan and restructuring the volunteer and business model to help accommodate the needs of the public as well as of the exhibitors.
