The Saskatchewan connections to the tragedy of the Titanic

More than a century after the Titanic sank, Saskatchewan connections including Charles Melville Hayes are still remembered. Fruzsina De Cloedt has the story.

More than 110 years after it perished on its maiden voyage that frigid April night, the memory of the RMS Titanic still lingers in the minds of many, especially for some in a certain Saskatchewan community.

April 15, 2026, marks 114 years since what could be considered the most famous shipwreck in history.

“They couldn’t see the dark iceberg because it was nighttime and then it sank because of the iceberg and [because] they couldn’t turn fast enough,” said Kale Myondick, a young Titanic enthusiast from Yorkton, Sask.

His family’s home is peppered with drawings of the famous ship. A giant Lego Titanic is the centrepiece of the Myondicks’ living room.

“It only had 20 lifeboats. They should have had around 40 or 50,” he explained.

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Due to the lack of lifeboats, 1,500 people perished after the ship, which was said to be unsinkable, was swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean.

Many of its passengers were headed to Canada, including Charles Melville Hays.

“He had a vision, he wanted to make Melville the hub,” said Jennifer Stein, Melville’s communication manager. “We are the hub between Winnipeg and Vancouver. We are the main hub of the now CN rail, and we have so much history tied with the railway and Charles Melville Hays.”

The city that carries the late businessman’s name still remembers him fondly.

“He had gone overseas to try and acquire more funding to keep building his railway and of course, he was one of the people that perished on the Titanic,” Stein said.

Stein recalled an anecdote about Hays’ criticism regarding ocean liners of the time.

“I can’t quote it word for word, but it was just to the fact that ‘If we keep pushing things at this speed, disaster will happen.’ And it’s kind of crazy that disaster happened on the ship that he was on, coming back to Canada,” she said.

Charles Melville Hays’ name appears in old newspapers reporting on the disaster. He was listed as a first-class passenger. An April 16, 1912 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle even dedicated a paragraph, saying “he’s beyond question the greatest railroad genius of Canada.”

Hays’ body was later recovered by the C.S. Minia. His jacket, though not worn on the infamous ship, is on display at the Melville Heritage Museum, courtesy of the businessman’s family.

Charles Melville Hays was not the only passenger who had a connection to the landlocked land of living skies.

The brother of Moose Jaw’s mayor at the time, Frank Hubert Maybery, also perished in the disaster. His name appears on the list of passengers in contemporary news reports, though it is sometimes misspelled, quite ironically, as “Mayberg.”

British brothers Lewis and Owen Braund were also said to be on the RMS Titanic, though due to their third-class tickets, their names did not circulate in print newspapers.

Their relative had settled in Saskatoon, and so the brothers were on their way to try their luck in the nearby Qu’Appelle Valley.

For many Canadians, the Titanic is not just a tragic story or a pop-culture phenomenon, but a story with family ties.

“The first movie I remember going to was when my dad and my mom took us to that Titanic movie. It was in the early 50s somewhere,” Ituna, Sask. resident Diane Olech told CTV News.

Olech’s father crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1913, just a year after the Titanic sank.

“It was very important [for him] that he realized that he came across safely when this luxury ship sank. He just wanted us to see how he did come to Canada and how important it was that he was safe,” she recalled.

Today, the world remembers those who perished at sea, for theirs was not only a story of class and technology, but of countless people who crossed an ocean in hope of a better future.