Titanic exhibit returns

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

Larry Robinson, a Titanic historian and co-founder of the Canadian Titanic Society, is back at the library this April to once again speak about his passion.
A display of some of his memorabilia was set up at the Strathmore Municipal Library on April 1, and on April 10 he will be hosting two programs to talk about the passenger liner, which sank after colliding with an iceberg on April 15, 1912 during her maiden voyage.
“People loved, loved listening to Larry talk about his passion,” said Assistant Director of Library Services Carmen Erison about Robinson’s last visit in 2012.
“He has a rare archival silent movie footage of the Titanic, and the Olympic and Titanic’s captain Edward Smith. He’s going to be speaking about the ships of the White Star Line, their construction, and providing a lot of the little known details that people just don’t know about.”
Robinson has an extensive collection of memorabilia, which includes over 2,000 books, the builder’s photographs from the Harland and Wolff and the complete Titanic prints by marine artist Ken Marschall, and has also met several Titanic survivors, including Eva Hart.
“He has such an extensive knowledge of Titanic that at our last program we had a lady raise her hand who had family on the Titanic and Larry was able to name that lady’s entire family,” said Erison.
For those that attended the exhibit a couple years ago, this time Robinson brought a few new items from his collection to share.
“Titanic keeps everybody’s interest up all the time. It keeps me going on a daily basis,” said Robinson.
“I try to keep it different every show for the people that come back, they see something different. Same with the small exhibit material stuff, I bring different stuff as well.”
One of his favourite pieces of memorabilia that he brought for this exhibit is a piece of cabin wood from the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic.
“It was dismantled in 1935, a lot of the cabin furnishings were taken out and put into a paint that were used for paint offices in a paint factory and in 1997 they destroyed the paint factory, tore it down and so all the Olympic’s wood work came up for sale, so I was able to grab a panel from C86’s suite room and also a large panel, which I won’t bring to the exhibit because it’s so heavy, it’s a large panel of oak from the grand staircase,” said Robinson.
“You feel that 100-year-old wood, sure it’s the Olympic but the same craftsmen that worked the Olympic were transferred right over to the Titanic when it was done.”
In Grade 6 he had read the book ‘A Night to Remember’ and it grabbed his attention, turning into a life-long passion.
He brought his nephew Brett Zanidean, 11, who is also an enthusiast and who Robinson hopes will take over for him one day.
“It was the first biggest ship, so I kind of got interested in that and then I learned that a lot of people were on it, and it’s just interesting to me,” said Zanidean.
“I like how much work they put into it, and how they got that nice of a ship back in the day.”
The books are what he enjoys most about his uncle’s collection.
The children’s program will run April 10 at the library from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The adult program will be on from 7p.m. to 9 p.m. Both programs will provide a different look to the ship and what happened that fateful day.