The love story behind the lost Bluenose II sailor
CBC
The stranger made a stir that summer of 1966 in Yarmouth, N.S.
Strong and handsome, blond hair and blue eyes, he seemed like something dropped out of a movie.
With his Quebecois accent, the well-dressed, clean-shaven young sailor turned a few heads.
Cora Doucette, then 19, noticed him. She didn't know his name at first, so she called him Cute Guy.
"I forgot — or I chose to forget — my mother's words about fishermen," she said.
"Mum was concerned about us falling in love with a fisherman. Because she knew of friends who had lost loved ones like that. I never thought it would happen. I didn't think my sisters or me would fall in love with a fisherman."
His name was Neil Robitaille.
Doucette did indeed fall in love, and the two spoke of marriage in a succession of love letters. But that hoped-for wedding never happened.
Robitaille took a gig crewing the Bluenose II, and on Jan. 6, 1969, it sailed out of the Halifax harbour bound for Bermuda. Two days later, a storm caught the ship, and towering waves washed two sailors overboard.
One, Craig Harding, made it back to the Bluenose.
The other — Neil Robitaille — didn't.
Doucette woke up that morning to the news that her beloved was missing at sea.
"It was awful. I kept praying, I kept hoping that they would find his body," she said.
They never did.
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