COLUMN: Don’t Mind the Mess – The ship that sailed through time

I’ve always been a Titanic fanatic. But not in the way people might think. My fascination has never come from a macabre obsession with disaster or death — it’s rooted in something deeper. It’s empathy. It’s heartbreak. It’s awe. The story of Titanic, for me, is a profoundly human one. A cautionary tale. A love letter. A requiem.

I own every book I can find on the Titanic. My shelves groan under the weight of them — some yellowed with age, others shiny and new. I’ve studied her like an old friend. I’ve traced my fingers over deck plans, imagined the feel of the polished wood underfoot, the weight of the heavy silverware in the first-class dining room. I’ve stared at black-and-white photos of families who never made it home, their lives suspended forever in time.

When James Cameron’s Titanic hit theatres in 1997, I stood in line all night to see it. I was pregnant with my second youngest son, battling morning sickness and exhaustion, but it didn’t matter. I got into the theatre at 4 a.m., and I still remember the emotion that washed over me during that final descent into the freezing Atlantic. I cried for people I’d never met. I still do.

For the past few years, I’ve followed a Titanic page that recounts each day leading up to April 14, 1912, in real time. Every spring, I walk that journey again. I meet the same passengers — millionaires and immigrants, maids and mechanics — and I remember their names. Their stories. Their dreams. I know what’s coming, and still, my heart hopes for a different ending.

I’ve watched simulations of the sinking — digital renderings that walk minute by painful minute through that horrific night. The iceberg strike. The chaos. The silence. The way lifeboats were lowered half full. The orchestra playing as water crept over the decks. The disbelief. The desperation. The courage.

There’s something about Titanic that feels eternal — a ghost ship that still whispers to us. Maybe it’s because it was meant to be invincible. Maybe it’s because of the arrogance, the blind confidence in man-made perfection. Maybe it’s the small details — the baker who survived because he drank enough whiskey to stay warm in the water, the last letters posted in Queenstown, the little boy’s shoes displayed in the Halifax museum.

It’s the tragedy of so many things done too late — too few lifeboats, warnings ignored, ice fields dismissed. The fact that everything that could go wrong, did. And still, there was grace in the midst of the horror. Acts of selflessness. Gentle goodbyes. People choosing love in the face of death.

Why do we keep telling this story? Why do we spend millions on dives to the ocean floor? Why do we still gather pieces of a broken ship like sacred relics?

Because Titanic reminds us what it means to be human. Fragile. Flawed. Hopeful. It reminds us how a single night can divide time into before and after. It teaches us that even in the darkest hours, people can shine.

One day, I’d love to stand quietly among the headstones in Halifax’s Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where many of the Titanic’s victims were laid to rest. I imagine running my hand along the names. Saying thank you. Not just for the history — but for the lesson.

Titanic was more than a ship. It was a dream. It was a warning. And over a hundred years later, it still calls to us, not because we want to relive the tragedy — but because we want to understand it. To feel it. To promise ourselves we’ll never make the same mistakes again.

And because deep down, we still believe that every life aboard mattered.