Yves Berube at work. (Courtesy of the artist)

The Canadian Mint made a commemorative coin for the centennial of the sinking of the SS Princess Sophia. Yves Bérubé, the artist who created the image for the coin, isn’t the first to be inspired by the tale. He spoke to KHNS’s Claire Stremple from his home in Nova Scotia.

The sinking of Canadian Pacific steamer SS Princess Sophia captured the imagination of more than one artist–musicians memorialize the fateful night in song, residents of Juneau produced a whole opera, and Haines mounted a play. There’s even a silver coin to commemorate the centennial of the event.

Yves Bérubé is the artist the Canadian Mint commissioned to create the image. “I tried to be very respectful and realistic with the history,’ he said.  Bérubé is a Canadian Maritime artist from Nova Scotia, but he’s more than familiar with the history of the Princess Sophia. In the 1990s he worked on a documentary about the Princess Sophia and did lengthy research on the subject. In creating a painting and design for the coin, Bérubé got another chance to put all that research to work. This time, through his art. “Yes, that’s my job to put on a canvas and save our history,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if its US or Canada. It’s our coast.”

The Sophia may have been a Canadian vessel, but her passengers were Alaskans and Yukoners who shared a common landscape and fate in the Lynn Canal.  “We have to teach that in school and bring that alive. And make sure the future generations will remember,” said Bérubé.

The sinking of the SS Princess Sophia was the biggest maritime disaster in Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia. The remains of the Canadian vessel lie at the bottom of the Lynn Canal, where she sank en route from Skagway to Juneau in October  1918. Everyone on board–nearly 350 people–died. Yet outside the events of the centennial there’s little cultural memory of the Princess Sophia. Just ask Steve Hites, a Sophia-phile and Skagway artist who wrote a song about the sinking for his album, Yukon Legacy.

“I think first it has to be said that it didn’t capture the imagination for some time!” he laughed. But the story captivated Hites from the moment he heard it. And it turns out Hitesis familiar with the coin Bérubé made.

“I have a commemorative coin. I’m holding it in my hand as I speak to you,” he said. “It’s a beautiful painting with with a ¾ artist’s view of the vessel as it runs right up onto the reef, smoke stack blowing smoke. She’s going full speed ahead and the waves are crashing around her as her bow scrapes up onto the top of the rocks.”

Hites says the story is the ultimate tragedy. But why hasn’t it been told until recently, one hundred years after the fact?

“It just hasn’t been told when someone makes a movie starring Leonardo diCaprio…” Hites joked. “We love survivor stories…It’s very difficult to try to imagine being on that ship because one’s mortality is right there in the center.”

Though the Sophia’s tale took years to resurface, Hites feels confident it will endure and even grow as more people hear it. And for locals, its message is all the more poignant.

“The fact of the sinking of the Sophia is the fact that some 350 human beings breathed their last breaths in a terrible, terrible, terrible way to die.  In a place just down the street from where we live.  And  they were people just like us,” said Hites.

It’s a history that’s bigger than borders, but still hits home.