OTTAWA, TODAY – Mr. Stéphane Ouellette, President and Chief Executive Officer, MNCTP, laid a wreath at the Royal Canadian Navy Monument (Richmond Island, Ottawa) in remembrance of the sinking of RMS Titanic.

RMS Titanic, the famous British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line, collided with an iceberg, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City, at 11:40 pm, on April 14, and sank at 2:20 a.m., on April 15, 1912.

There were an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew on board, of which more than 1,500 souls perished. Among her passengers, the ocean liner carried hundreds of immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and other European nations that were seeking a new life in the United States of America. The ship also had some of the wealthiest people in the world on board. Titanic was under the command of Captain Edward John Smith, a British merchant navy officer, who went down with the ship. Mr. Thomas Andrews, Chief Naval Architect of the shipyard, also died in this calamity.

Of the many passengers that tragically perished, Mr. Charles Melville Hays was an American that came to Canada in the early 1900s with a vision of building a transcontinental railway, complete with a few deluxe hotels in major cities along the way. In Ottawa, one of Mr. Hays’ enduring legacies was to become The Fairmont Château Laurier, one of the most famous landmarks in North America. The construction of the hotel was completed in 1912. He died just days before the Château was scheduled to open. Titanic was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, and was the largest ship in the world at the time she entered service.

The sinking of RMS Titanic is one of modern history's deadliest peacetime commercial marine disasters.