Calgary couple’s tale of survival aboard RMS Titanic
Posted Apr 13, 2012 7:26 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
This weekend marks 100 years since one of the largest disasters in maritime history.
The grandson of two Calgary survivors says the sinking of the RMS Titanic is an event that defined their entire lives.
First class passengers Albert and Vera Dick were returning from their honeymoon in Europe when the ship struck an iceberg.
Retired engineer and family man Bruce Van Norman lives in Seattle now but was raised by his grandparents for a short time in the community of Mount Royal.
He recalls fondly the stories his grandfather use to share with him; he tells 660News Mr. Dick wanted to make sure he knew the truth.
According to Van Norman, the couple never really knew the ship was going to sink until panic started to set in near some of the rescue boats.
A 17-year-old Vera refused to leave her husband, who was coaxing her to get into one of the first three boats.
He says it wasn’t until the fourth boat that the pair were herded in, adding it was never Albert’s intent to become a survivor.
“This wasn’t something of his design or creation,” says Van Norman. “It was something that he was thrown into and what he did with it was change his direction in life.”
The couple then had to watch the ship break in two, as it sank below the icy waters of the Atlantic.
They returned to Calgary to run the Hotel Alexandra and built a mansion in affluent Mount Royal.
But Van Norman says it was something the couple never truly forgot.
“My grandfather was permanently changed,” he says. “He was an entrepreneur and was out to stake his place in the world and afterwards he was family oriented.”
He says there was a stigma attached to surviving the disaster and knew that some considered him not socially acceptable.
To this day, the Seattle man says he has not been able to sit through a full screening of James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic.
“I’ve seen clips of it, the only part I really liked was the scene of the ship going down and the lights going out,” he says. “Which sort of matches something my grandmother once wrote.”
Albert and Vera Dick lived out the rest of their days in Calgary to the ages of 90 and 79 respectively.
