Around Swedish America in 
Day 6 - Ripple Rock
When you drive north from Campbell River you soon come to the "Seymour Narrows Lookout" over what was once the famous Ripple Rock. After unfruitful attempts to blast the rock in 1943 and 1945, the marine hazard was finally removed in the world's largest non-atomic blast ever in 1958.
The only way to place the explosives under the rock, due to the rapid and treacherous tide, was to make a 570-foot (174 meters) shaft on Maud Island and then drill a 2,500 foot (762 meters) tunnel under the sea bed to the rock where 1,400 tons of Nitramex 2H explosives (or ten times the amount of explosives needed for a similar explosion above water) were placed. This "marvel of engineering" operation took about 75 men and three shifts of hard rock miners working around the clock, to advance the shaft and tunnel about six feet per day.
The blast spectacle (that you can see on film in the Museum in Campbell River) lasted less than 10 seconds before the debris was engulfed in a cloud of gas. The event was broadcast on live television, which was quite a novelty at the time, across the country. People in Campbell River could see the blast on the screen, but did not feel anything even though the explosion was only a few miles away. No damage was sustained. Even the five orca, a school of porpoises, two sea lions and one fur seal seen near the area before the explosion were all seen again alive afterwards.
Before its destruction, Ripple Rock had claimed at least 114 lives, sinking or damaging more than 20 large vessels and at least 100 smaller vessels. One of the last ships to hit Ripple Rock was the Sundancer cruise ship on her third Alaska cruise. One of the first people to inspect the partially submerged luxury cruise ship was Lars Jonsson, the CEO of the Axel Johnson group's ship engineering and repair arm that had once converted the Swedish Svea Corona ferry to the Sundancer cruise ship. Lars Jonsson could not do nothing about Sundancer that was a total write-off, but he fell in love with and married Laurie, the daughter of the cruise ship owner.
Today Lars Jonsson is the Honorary Consul of Sweden in Seattle and a successful real estate developer in both Sweden and the United States. When he moved to Seattle, he sold his Swedish real estate holdings at top prices and took advantage of discounted US prices through his Stellar International Holdings that has successfully achieved in excess of 20% annual growth in equity since it was founded in 1989. Last year Lars and Laurie extended their annual month in Sweden to a year, while Lars worked through his company Bygg Vesta AB with apartment developments in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö as well as a first on-campus student housing development in Linköping. Laurie, with a distinguished past in the travel industry is a powerhouse in her own right with a long list of merits and awards and posts on several boards. Both Lars and Laurie are involved in philantrophical projects, for example, funding and connecting diabetes research in Linköping and Seattle and organizing a Diabetes Awareness Day in Seattle each year. Whenever they can, they take off with their children Jonas, Jenny and Markus on their 85 feet Golden Eagle yacht, where Lars does all the cooking, favouring mostly fish dishes.