In Grade 7, I had to give my first speech. What on Earth would I talk about for a whole three minutes? It would be an eternity.
This is a serious decision for a 12-year-old. At least I thought so at the time. Therefore, I would reach into the past.
Around this time, I read the book, A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord. It was a seminal tome, which Lord wrote from interviewing 63 survivors of a disaster. A Night to Remember was spellbinding, a minute-by-minute narrative of what happened. That book, and the movie based on it, likely made Titanic a fixture in 20th century popular culture, instead of one of thousands of ships that have long been forgotten after slipping under the waters of the Atlantic.
My speech was about Titanic. I even taped together four piece of letter-sized paper for my scale-drawing of the ship's starboard side to use as a speech prop. It took me three hours to make that drawing. This wasn't just any old public speaking event for me.
My mom wrote a similar speech when she was in Grade 7, but she recounts being disqualified because, as the teacher said, "No one would be interested in that subject."
How wrong he was.
There's been a family fascination with the Titanic that runs through the generations on my mother's side of the family.
My grandfather worked in Edmonton when he was a young man. He apparently met a man who, as a child, survived the Titanic. This was long before the Titanic became the phenomena that is today. "They even wrote a book about it," the survivor told him.
On the other side of my mom's family, my great-grandfather transited the Atlantic on the Carpathia, but not, as it turns out, on that fateful trip. The Carpathia was the ship that rescued the survivors of Titanic.
In 1985, Titanic was found by researcher Robert Ballard. The world would soon share the fascination I had bred into me.
Step forward to 2011. Numerous dives have gone to Titanic. One of the biggest movies of all time was based on it, and included actual wreck footage. The world has been Titanic-crazy for nearly 26 years.
So it was with no small wonder that my wife and I went to see the Titanic exhibit while in Las Vegas in February. I could care less about the poker rooms or shows. I wanted to see Titanic.
The exhibit features a number of pieces recovered from the wreck itself, as well as recreations of different areas of the ship. You can have your picture taken on the rebuilt grand staircase. Under glass you'll find dishware, cutlery, wallets, paper currency, ship's fittings ... the list goes on and on.
But what really stood out for me was the "Big Piece." In 1998, RMS Titanic Inc., the company with salvage rights to the ship, successfully brought up a chunk of the hull. It's 25.5 feet long and 20.5 feet tall, weighing 15 tons. It came from the upper part of the starboard side of the ship, under the third funnel.
It was an eerie feeling, standing there in the near darkness of the exhibit space. The rivets looked huge, yet crude. The steel plating was substantial. It had, how do I say it, a presence.
I thought to myself, "I have been fascinated with this ship my entire life, and I never dreamed I would ever see it, or at least a part of it."
I'm not sure what I felt, or if I should have felt anything. Is this a memorial? Should they have just left well enough alone? Did they really need to make it a tourist trap in Las Vegas, of all places?
Yes, I finally thought, they did. If there was one place that the world could come to for a chance to lay eyes on what so many have marvelled over, this was it.
I was sad to see it, but glad for it. It's almost like a small chapter in my life can come to a close. I'm not sure why it was so important to me, other than it was.
From A Night to Remember, this became a day I would never forget.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
