The SS Noronic was called “The Queen of the Lakes” for more than 30 years, cruising to ports around the Great Lakes with hundreds of passengers enjoying her many creature comforts. It all ended in the early morning hours of Sept. 17, 1949 when fire swept through the ship while it was docked in Toronto. The blaze killed 119 and sent the city’s emergency workers scrambling to help. Some of those efforts were recounted on the front page of The Register’s Sept. 24, 1949 issue:

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JAKARTA, Indonesia – At least 91 people have been confirmed dead after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Indonesia's Lombok Island on Aug. 5 a week after another powerful quake killed more than a dozen people.

April 15 marked the anniversary of one of the worst maritime tragedies — the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, when more than 1,500 died. Our regular visit to The Catholic Register Archive reveals some of the lessons and heroes of that disaster from this edited report in the April 25, 1912 issue:

WASHINGTON – After hundreds more migrants perished last weekend in the deadly Mediterranean passage to Europe, one Catholic expert insisted that the root causes of migration need to be addressed.

In mid-April The Globe & Mail gave two days of coverage to the suicide of Adam Maier-Clayton, just 27 years old. He lived for years with a variety of psychiatric disorders and unremitting pain. There is no doubt he knew suffering.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis sent "heartfelt condolences" to the citizens of Ghana after at least 150 people were killed in a gas explosion in the country's capital, Accra.

BOSTON - The parents of Martin Richard, the youngest victim killed in the Boston Marathon bombings two years ago, are asking that the death penalty be taken "off the table" for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

MANCHESTER, England - The heir to the British throne suggested that Islamic leaders must speak out against the persecution of Christians by Muslims if they are to guarantee freedom within their own countries.

GUELPH, ONT.  - In my role as a vice principal in a Catholic high school, God is revealed in raw emotional landscapes: old-fashioned fist fights, cruel words in 120 character texts that ravage reputations, startlingly tragic losses.