Into the Mist

Into the Mist: The Story of the Empress of Ireland
By Anne Renaud
Dundurn Press, 2010. 106 pgs. Young Adult Nonfiction

After the completion of the cross-Canadian railroad, and with the Canadian Pacific Railway had established themselves in delivering the mail across the continent and built up a small fleet for getting mail across the Pacific Ocean, they turned their attention to the Atlantic mail trade. The Empress of Ireland was one of the ships built to meet that need. After eight years of successfully crossing the ocean, the Empress was struck by another ship and sunk within hours, killing over one thousand people.

This book is pretty short but it's jam-packed with interesting information. There weren't as many details about the actual sinking of the ship as I'd expected, but it did have snippets about passengers and lots of photographs that really helped readers get a feel for the time period and the interior of the ship. I would have liked to see a little more about the ship's sinking and the ways lives were affected, but other than that, I really enjoyed the book.

AE