The Demise of the SS Corfu Island

On December 20th in 1963 a violent storm hit the Magdalen Islands. The ship known as the SS Corfu Island had run aground. It was miraculous because usually the announcement of a shipwreck around the Magdalen Islands meant an almost certain loss of life. This story is told by one of the last remaining sailors; Frixos Sekkides. Frixos was lucky and he knew it. Finally, when I was safe in the dory ... I glanced back at the SS Corfu Island for the last time ... She had been built in Canada and had ended up in Canada to finally shed her crew safely on the shores of the Magdalen Islands: like the salmon that spent years in the open oceans, returning from their long and arduous journey against strong currents and myriads of other dangers, to their natal stream, primarily to spawn and ... to die. Frixos Sekkides was lucky and he knew it. Forty-four years after the above shipwreck, he returned to the scene, to say thank you to those who had saved his life. As journalist George Gaudet says in his foreword: "the story is the story of a past without compromise, as open as the author, generous and as truthful as his faithful and prodigious memory."