Mrs.
THOMAS DAVID MELDRUM BURNSIDE (JOSEPHINE SMYTH EATON), Saloon Class
Passenger
[No Picture Provided]
Josephine Burnside, née Eaton, 49, was the daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Timothy Eaton. Her father was the founder of Eaton's
Department Store. Josephine married a Thomas Burnside of
Toronto. Thomas had been an engineer at Ballyclare Paper Mills in
Ireland before emigrating to Canada. He and Josephine had a
daughter, Iris, around 1895. Josephine and Iris were traveling on
the Lusitania in May of 1915
to visit relatives in Cullybackey, Ballymena, Co. Antrim, Ireland.
Josephine Burnside was eating lunch with daughter Iris and friends
Frederick McMurtry, George Powell and Walter McLean when the ship was
struck. Her memory was blurry and she lost track of her daughter.
She remembered trying to get into a lifeboat when the ship sank.
Iris did not survive.
Eaton's, by 1896 was already a fixture in Canadian society. Until
1950, Eaton's billed itself as "the largest retail organization in the
British Empire." They also sponsored the Santa Claus parade in
Toronto, the largest parade in North America. Eaton's fell upon
hard times in the 1970's and did not recover. Due to financial
difficulties, Eaton's discontinued sponsorship of the Santa Claus
parade in 1982 and filed for bankruptcy in 1997.
Sears Canada in bought out Eaton's in 1999 and tried to redevelop
Eaton's (now eatons, with a lower-case "e") as an upscale version of
Sears Canada. The plan failed and eatons across Canada closed in
2002.
Contributors:
Senan Molony
Michael Poirier
Hildo Thiel
References:
Molony, Senan. Lusitania:
An Irish Tragedy.
Mercier Press, 2004.
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