Class, Race and a Big Boat
An unlikely meeting of two figures is wobbly
by Sarah Deshaies
You’ll remember the flurry of stories and reports that arrived last spring to coincide with the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic. All that fuss proves that the tragedy still holds our imaginations captive, decades later. So here is Titanic: The Untold Story, a tale that might otherwise be consigned to the deep for some theatre-goers.
Joseph Laroche is thought to have been the sole black passenger aboard the Titanic. An Engineer by training, he boarded the doomed ship with his pregnant wife and two little daughters at Cherbourg, France bound for Haiti, his homeland. Faced with discrimination and little hope of work in Paris, Laroche (Conrad Caton) was seeking a new life, like others on the ship.
