'Titanic' 25th anniversary: How the blockbuster put Halifax on the map

A remastered version of “Titanic” will be released in theatres in 3D-4K this weekend for the film's 25th anniversary.

The movie hit theatres in December 1997 and became the first film to surpass $1 billion at the Global Box Office.

Around the same time, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax expanded its exhibit about the ill-fated ship.

Gerry Lunn, the museum's curator of exhibitions, believes the Halifax showcase has the world's largest collection of wooden objects from the ship that were collected at the time of the sinking.

Nova Scotia still has strong ties to the disaster, which happened on April 14, 1912 when the ship struck an iceberg south of Newfoundland during its maiden voyage from England to New York.

Two cable ships from Nova Scotia helped with the recovery efforts of victims.

 

A mahogany deck chair recovered from the Titanic disaster site is seen at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax on Tuesday, April 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

"Many of those bodies, although they were buried at sea, many of them came back to Halifax and to this day are buried here in Halifax," said Lunn.

The movie's director, James Cameron, and his researchers even used the Halifax museum as a resource to make the reenactment of the disaster more realistic.

"Not many people realize, the carved-out panel that we have as a part of the exhibit was the piece that James Cameron used as the basis of the prop in which Rose was floating on in the sad, latter part of the movie," Lunn said.

An artifact collected from the Titanic that is part of the exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.

Parts of the movie were also filmed in Nova Scotia.

Darlene MacNevin worked as an extra in the film and says it's wild to be part of such an iconic movie.

"The main scene I remember filming was when the older Rose dropped the necklace into the water," she said.

"It's incredible when I think about, you know, I have James Cameron on my acting resume as a director."

Lunn says the world's interest in the shipwreck resulted in a massive tourism boost to the museum.

"The calendar year 1997, we saw about 113,000 people. The movie came out, our exhibit on the Titanic opened about the same time [and] the very next year, almost a quarter of a million visitors. It was huge," he said.

"To this day, Titanic as subject matter and Halifax's connection as it's told in the exhibit still draws people to the museum."

And the museum isn't the only draw to Halifax for Titanic tourists.

"In Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where 121 of the Titanic victims are buried, there's a grave marker [that says] J. Dawson," said Lunn.

This Feb. 29, 2012 photo shows rows of tombstones at the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax. In 1912, ships from this old port city on the Atlantic set out to recover the Titanic's dead. They brought back more than 330 bodies; 150 are buried in three Halifax cemeteries. (AP Photo/Robert Gillies)

The grave is for a man named Joseph Dawson, who was a coal worker on the ship.

However, many confused it for the grave of Jack Dawson – a fictional character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie.

"That was the single most warn patch of grass in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery," said Lunn. "People would leave flowers, ticket stubs and love notes, and small toys and stuffies."

This Feb. 29, 2012 photo shows the headstone of Joseph Dawson, who shoveled coal aboard the Titanic, at the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax. (AP Photo/Robert Gillies)

Lunn says a world-renowned movie having such a significant connection to the East Coast is something very special.

"I had not seen anything quite like that up to that point and I have not seen anything near the effect the Titanic had on this museum and visitation to the province of Nova Scotia since," he said.

Showtimes and theatre locations for the remastered version of “Titanic” can be found online.