Having been picked clean of its most easily accessible artefacts, the best and safest location to ‘explore’ the Empress today may actually be a museum, especially the Site historique maritime de la Pointe-au-Père in Rimouski, which has long been the place of choice to see some of the hundreds of artefacts recovered from the ship before treasure hunting was outlawed. On a clear day and with a good pair of binoculars, you may even see the buoy that marks the Empress of Ireland’s grave. And coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Canada’s worst maritime disaster, the Canadian Museum of History inaugurated its long-awaited exhibit in May 2014, made possible by the acquisition of the Philippe Beaudry Collection in 2012. It was a big draw until it closed on April 6, 2015. The museum exhibition in Gatineau, just across the Rideau River from the nation’s capital, Ottawa, was titled ‘Canada’s Titanic – The Empress of Ireland’, and it is still the most comprehensive collection of artefacts and archival material related to the sinking of the Empress of Ireland ever assembled. Valued at more than $3 million dollars, it was declared of “outstanding significance and national importance” by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board. Comprised of more than 500 items, it includes the ship’s fog bell, the compass binnacle and other navigational instruments, portholes, dining-room furniture, light fixtures, dishware, utensils and personal items. There are also two ship models of the Empress, a company flag and archival materials such as historic photos, newspapers and personal papers, including an eight-year-old survivor’s memoir of her harrowing rescue. During my visit, I was deeply touched by the victims’ stories thanks to a clever and visually startling montage of sights and sounds that serve to put you in the moment, and experience on some level the suffering of the passengers as the ship went down. It greatly affected how I now feel about the possibility of someday returning – or not – to dive the wreck.