Today’s highlight was visiting the Empress of Ireland Museum. The Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner that sank in 1914 after colliding with a coal ship Storstad in dense fog. The Empress of Ireland sank in 14 minutes and 1012 of the 1477 people aboard died. William Clark, who worked on the Titanic and survived her sinking, also worked on the Empress of Ireland and survived her sinking.

The museum has a large number of artifacts recovered from the wreck on display.

Some of the display tables are made from teak planks recovered from the ship. A history study from McGill, who is worked at the museum for the summer, gave us some interesting extra bits of information. One of the displays features the brass letters of the ship’s name from the stern of the ship. All of the letters except for the ‘D’ in ‘IRELAND’ are solid brass. The original ‘D’ must have been lost or damaged and was replaced with a brass sheet affixed to cork.

The wreck site, in 45m of water off the coast was designated a historic site which protects further artifacts from being removed. Many divers have done this very challenging dive and five have lost their lives in the process.

Now hungry, we stopped for croissants and coffee and tea at a local bakery.

Tonight we are staying at the Phare Cap Chat campground featuring a working lighthouse, a beautiful view of the St. Lawrence, walkways and tree. The folks running the campground are really welcoming and supportive and the sites are very reasonably priced.