When the sun shines through the yellow autumn leaves, it is hard to imagine that just steps from the Errol Road Cemetery, hundreds of people lost their lives on Lake Huron.
Plympton-Wyoming marked the 100th anniversary of the Great Storm of 1913 Saturday. For days, the storm raged across the lake taking down 19 ships and killing at least 250 sailors.
All along Sarnia-Lambton’s coastline, farmers “trimmed their lamps” and went to the shoreline when the storm subsided to find wreckage from the ships and bodies.
The sailors who washed ashore in Plympton-Wyoming and Lambton Shores were taken to a makeshift morgue in Thedford to be identified.
Plympton-Wyoming Mayor Lonny Napper says the storms on the lake had claimed other sailors, including an unknown man who is buried in the now closed Errol Cemetery. On the anniversary of the storm, which was called The White Hurricane, Napper unveiled a monument in honour of those who lost their lives on Lake Huron, including those from 1913.
“This is place of tranquil sunsets…this (marker to the unknown sailor) shows Lake Huron can be most devastating,” says Napper while remembering the dead.
And prayers were said for those who lost their lives and the people they left behind. “We remember the families left to take care of themselves,” prayed Rev. Kim Metcalfe of the Camlachie Anglican Church. “We give thanks to God for the new technology that has been developed to prevent this from happening again.”