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reputation, nor did his tendency to run around outside in his bathing suit during storms or float on Bras d’Or Lake on an inner tube smoking cigars for hours on end. Even after dark, his granddaughter reminisced, she’d often spot the glowing tip of his cigar in the gloom of the inlet.
    Shortly after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bell formed the Aerial Experimentation Association. Under his auspices, John McCurdy designed and piloted the first heavier-than-air aircraft in the British Empire. The Silver Dart lifted off from the ice in Baddeck on January 9, 1909, flying nearly a mile at an altitude of thirty feet. This technology was subsequentlyadapted to build high-speed hydrofoils (or hydrodromes, as Bell called them). It was hoped these vessels could be used to hunt down German U-Boats that were causing such devastation to shipping in World War I. In 1919, together with Casey Baldwin, Bell set the world waterspeed record of 70.86 miles per hour in the HD 4. This record was not broken for ten years. With the end of the war, the government lost interest in the hydrodrome project. The work of Bell and Baldwin was revived in the 1970s when Canada built a hydrofoil submarine chaser, appropriately named the
Bras d’Or
.
    The HD 4 rotted on the shore for years until salvaged and incorporated into the displays of the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck. This national historic site retains many of Bell’s original inventions, which were donated by the family, as well as a full-scale replica of the HD 4. Here also can be seen Bell’s artificial lung and his early X-ray equipment. There is even a telephone which used sunlight to transmit sound, impractical at the time, but anticipating fibre-optic and laser communication by a hundred years.
    Aleck Bell loved to invent, and he loved people. One of his employees had eight children and did not own a house. The man was astounded when Bell handed him an envelope containing the deed to a home as a Christmas present. Perhaps most of all, the inventor adored children. Bell met Helen Keller when she was only six years old, and, recognizing the child’s potential, he directed her to the Perkins Institute, where she came under the tutelage of Annie Sullivan. Later in life, Keller dedicated her autobiography to Bell to thank him for the help he had given her.
    Bell was financially impractical, but his wife and friends ensured that he had the means to continue to invent and to indulge his generous dedication to science and humanity. However, he never allowed any of his medical devices to be patented as he felt it immoral to benefit financially from the misfortune of others. The inventor died at Beinn Breagh in 1922, and his wife followed five months later. Here they lie buried, their graves overlooking the misty inlets of Cape Breton which they loved so much.
    George Burden

----
    Dr. Alfred Pain, a second-class passenger on the
Titanic
. COURTESY OF ALAN HUSTAK COLLECTION

THE PHYSICIANS
OF THE
TITANIC
    Millions of words have been written about the sinking of the
Titanic
on April 15, 1912. Despite the monumental effort to try to make some sense of this horrendous tragedy, countless mysteries and thousands of untold stories of those who survived and those who did not continue to interest researchers.
    For me, the nine doctors, eight men and one woman, now known to have been on that ill-fated ship represent a most fascinating conundrum. Although several of these physicians have received some attention, others remain notable only because they had the bad luck of being on the
Titanic
when it met its infamous demise.
    Dr. William O’Loughlin was the White Star Line’s chief surgeon. Born in Ireland, he was an orphan who was raised and educated by an uncle. He proved to be a distinguished student and in 1869 should have received a medical degree. But this didn’t happen. Unfortunately for him, the Catholic university he had attended did not have a royal