Disaster Great Lakes

Geoff Hamilton, a former columnist for the Queen’s Journal, is a
Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

This book looks at 63 “disasters”—from shipwrecks to city
fires—on and around the Great Lakes from 1780 to the present. Arranged
by lake, the entries include black-and-white photographs or drawings,
which are accompanied by explanations of the circumstances of the event.
A map marking the disaster sites is included, along with a selected
bibliography offering many suggestions for further reading.

The author correctly asserts in her introduction that this volume “is
filled with compelling stories that illuminate some of [the] particular
moments in time that captivated nations.” We do indeed get a good
number of “important insights into the past—the technological
failings and resulting improvements, the laws that governed industries,
and the people who traveled and worked on these magnificent lakes.” A
voyeuristic strain is predominant, however, and the book is really a
compendium of gripping anecdotes that serve as (rather lurid)
entertainment. Long writes clearly and engagingly, and has plenty of
dramatic material to work with: the sinkings of the Mataafa and the Lady
Elgin, and the burning of the Noronic, are handled with considerable
narrative skill. The black-and-white pictures are often stunning, giving
a powerful visual sense of the impact of these catastrophic events.

Those who are interested in the Great Lakes region as a whole will no
doubt enjoy this book, although the selection of “disasters” it
offers and their thematic connection to one another can sometimes be
puzzling. Most of the entries relate, understandably, to shipping
accidents, but there are also entries for sundry urban fires and
explosions, airplane crashes, train wrecks, mining accidents, and the
Love Canal pollution scandal, all of which happened on land near one of
the Great Lakes. This makes for varied reading, but also blurs the
book’s focus: what, really, does the crash of Flight 621 at Toronto
Airport in 1970 have to do with the foundering of the Algoma off Оsle
Royale in 1885? Proximity to one of the lakes is not always enough to
link the documented events persuasively, and a feeling of incoherence
haunts some of the selections.