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This website is dedicated to the lighthouse keepers of British Columbia, Canada, and for the general public who want to learn what life was/is like on a lighthouse. This site also supports the fight against the automation and destruction of ALL lighthouses and the environment surrounding them.

Also available here is a large database (db) of names of British Columbia (BC) Lighthouse Keepers – past and present.

Click for more information . . .

Plus, I will toss in anything lighthouse that seems interesting – such as museums, paintings, websites, catalogues, art, toys, drawings, videos, books, manuals, music, poetry, etc.

I would also like to include environmental issues that affect the lands and oceans on the BC coast such as pollution, garbage, possible oil spills, shipwrecks, etc. as these are all part of the role of the lighthouse keeper who sees and knows everything on the coast.

Everybody that likes lighthouses likes lighthouse information and memorabilia!

For earlier notes or suggestions, please see QUICK INFO in the header bar above.

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A humpback whale breaching off the west coast of Vancouver Island

A great article on humpback whales on the BC coast with lots of information and photos! Click photo.

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February 28, 2013 – ASSISTANT LIGHTKEEPER JOBS - COMPETITION NOW OPEN (link)

Assistant Lightkeeper

Organization Name: Fisheries and Oceans Canada – Canadian Coast Guard
Locations: Various Locations
Classification: LI – 03, LI – 04, LI – 05 or LI – 06
Salary: $35,825 to $48,071
Closing Date: March 18, 2013 – 23:59, Pacific Time Useful Information
Reference Number: DFO13J-012543-000004
Selection Process Number: 13-DFO-EA-WEST-CCG-75582
Vacancies: Number to be determined

Please see my job search webpage for updated information.

In Memorium – Reg Gunn (1929 – 2013)

Posted on April 27, 2013 by retlkpr

Reg Gunn

Captain Reginald (Reg) Gunn. It is with great heartfelt sadness that we announce the passing of our loved one on April 27, 2013. Reg was born on June 22, 1929 in the County of Durham, England. He came to Canada in 1951, where he joined the Canadian Coast Guard. In 1961, he earned his Master of Home-Trade Steamship, and served at sea on the west coast of Canada. In 1974, he accepted the position of Regional Superintendent of Marine Search and Rescue, Canadian Coast Guard, at the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria, B.C. He was responsible for developing the successful ocean drift program known as CANSARP, which resulted in many lives at sea being saved. Reg retired from the Coast Guard in 1991 after 40 years of service. After retiring, he volunteered at the University of Victoria, in the ESL Study Centre for 13 years. Over the years, he befriended and mentored many students and kept in touch with them. He will be greatly missed by his loving wife Margaret, daughters Susan Nash (Mark), Mary (Brian) and son Gordon (Jerri-lyn), and grandsons Hayden Gunn and Gabriel Nash, his brother Norman, in Wales, along with family and many friends. In keeping with Reg’s wishes, no service will be held. His life will be quietly celebrated by his family. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the S.P.C.A. Biscuit Fund. Always Remembered, Always Loved. Bravo Zulu! – Published in The Times Colonist on May 4, 2013

To include your memories in Reg’s memorial please click this link.

Reg was never a lighthouse keeper but he was a friend to the lighthouse keeper’s. Please read his story about his life with the lighthouse keepers.

In Memorium – Fred Wood (1915 – 2013)

Posted on February 6, 2013 by retlkpr

Fred Wood

Frederick Henry Wood, June 19, 1915 – February 6, 2013 Fred Wood, long time resident of the Shawnigan Lake area, passed peacefully away at Cowichan District Hospital on February 6. He was 97 years of age and had only been ill a short time. Mr. Wood was born in Ottawa, son of the late Thomas Wood and Annie Winges. He came to Victoria in 1938, and married his “ever lovin” Alice (nee Cole) in 1940. Fred and Alice settled in Shawnigan Lake to raise their sons, where Fred enjoyed active involvement in the community and self employment in the logging industry for many years. In 1970 Fred joined the Canadian Coast Guard as a lighthouse keeper, where he and Alice spent a very special decade living on various light stations on the pacific coast. Fred and Alice retired to Victoria, then finally to Cobble Hill in 2001 to live out their golden years. Throughout his life, Fred was an avid gardener, his favourite crop being his tomato plants, which he grew to perfection. Fred was predeceased by his youngest son Tom in 2007. He is survived by Alice, his beloved wife of 72 years, his son Richard (Reta), daughter-in-law Susan and grandsons Dan, Chris and Steve. No service by request. A small Remembrance will be held at a later date. “Anything happen come.”- Published in Victoria Times-Colonist on March 29, 2013

To include your memories in Fred’s memorial please click this link.

F H Wood obit

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McInnes Island Lighthouse – a Tale from the 1950s

Posted on January 26, 2013 by retlkpr

I published a report January 04, 2012 on the building of McInnes Island lighthouse in 1953 based on the adventures of Ken Stewart who was part of the construction crew. I updated that post later with more information in the form of a PDF file.

1977

When I arrived with my family in the winter of 1977 the first thing we did was explore the island. Pictured left is a small log cabin buried back in the woods on the trail to the SW tip of the island.

Now let’s skip ahead to December 09, 2012 when I received an email from Mrs. K. Marshall with another photo of the same cabin taken about twenty-two (22) years earlier! What a delight to see what she had written on who built the cabin and also for her to see my photo taken so many years later.

In her email she said:

My grandfather James “Jimmie” Smith was a junior lighthouse keeper on McInnes for a few years in the late 1950s.
He was there with my grandmother Mildred “Millie”, and their 2 daughters who were teenagers at the time, my mother Carol and her sister Sharon.

These photos are of a driftwood log cabin that my Mom and her sister built on the island. I’ve been scanning old family photos this past week and have quite a few from the lighthouses.

I’d be really curious to know if the cabin was still standing while you were stationed there.

Well, as I told her the cabin was there in the winter of 1977, but by the summer of 1978 we had burnt it down as it was very unsafe for anybody to venture inside and could not be repaired. An email from her Mom, the Carol mentioned above, says:

Pool area - labelled

[To build] the cabin I pulled and carried the logs from just below the cabin from the beach. The shakes I cut those with a hand saw to length. Split them with Mom’s best butcher knife and a hammer on the back of the knife….that didn’t go over at all well…believe me.

McInnes island - no labels

That end of the island where the cabin was. No one had trails there at all. Sharon and I started to explore that area. Dad, Bruce and Tony when they realized where we where disappearing to, they cut the logs of the trail so the adults could get into that area.

The swimming pool was past the

The swimming pool

cabin. You went up the hill and there was the natural crater in the rock. Dad and Mom used a washing soda to clean it all. Then the guys had a pump and hoses. They pumped new sea water up into the basin. Dad made up a bag of concrete to sort of plug one end of the crater. We just lived in that area all good days. Lots of nights we spent in the cabin. Continue reading →

Lightkeepers to the Rescue – AGAIN!

Posted on January 22, 2013 by retlkpr

This is a past and very notable lifesaving rescue by two BC lightkeepers, Lynn Hauer and assistant lightkeeper Wolfgang Luebke who were at Chatham Point lighthouse at the time.

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Chatham point lighthouse - photo from Margaret Lutz

We sleep with the radios always on, and ‘with one ear open’.

At 3 AM on April 30, 2012 I was awakened by the unmistakeable sound of a Mayday distress signal. Being able to copy both sides of the communication, I knew it was within our response area. I sprang out of bed. Comox Coast Guard Radio was responding to the call from a very concerned woman, “We don’t have a lifeboat; we are putting our life jackets on now. We are bailing but it isn’t helping!!”

I knew we could be there in 10 to 20 minutes; we were tasked by Rescue Coordination Center. Assistant lightkeeper Wolfgang Luebke and I responded in our 18 foot aluminum station boat. It was pitch black out, and raining. We made our way by compass bearing, across Johnstone Strait into Burgess Passage.

Arriving on scene, we found a man and woman frantically bailing water with ice cream pails! Their bilge pump was inoperative. Their efforts were futile. Their ‘kicker’ motor was under water, and the large outboard was next. Water was pouring in around the re-boarding gate and inches from flooding completely over the transom, which would have seen them go down in minutes. We began pumping the water out of their vessel, with the Honda pump that is always stored under the seat of our station boat. We were all very relieved to see the flood water level slowly subsiding.

Cape Palmerston

The Cape Palmerston (CG SAR vessel) arrived on scene approximately 40 minutes after us. We saved an $80K boat from going to the bottom, and we surely saved a man and his wife from drowning; they would have been in that frigid water with only PFDs, for more than a half hour, had two keepers from Chatham Point Light not been there…we wouldn’t have been there if not for your SEEING THE LIGHT!

Lynn Hauer

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This letter was from from Lynn Hauer, a lightkeeper at Chatham Point and it was addressed to Canadian senator Nancy Greene, hence the reference to Seeing the Light. Senator Greene and her friends were very important in fighting to keep BC lighthouses manned. If unmanned, these people would probably have died. Many instances happen daily where a BC lightkeeper helps a mariner. Many of them you will never read about as they go into station reports and are lost in the central Coast Guard office paperwork – well, not actually lost, just suppressed.

The only way for the lightkeepers to get attention is to report their rescues to the Press (forbidden) or have it written up by myself, or other people outside the arm of Coast Guard censorship.

As Lynn said in a preface to the email she passed around to the lighthouse keepers:

It is important to keep the Senators up to speed of things that are going on. They support lightkeepers (LKs), we should keep them in the loop. They and the public recognize and care about what LKs do.

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The following emails show how the email was received by Senator Greene.

Dear Lynn,

First, thank you for your quick action! You are so right.

Thanks also for passing this on to me. I will circulate it as best I can.

All the best!

Nancy

Thank you so much Nancy.
Your recognition means very much to Wolfgang and I. The thank you that we received from the couple that night, we extend to you.

Lynn, Ann, and Thyr

A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers

Posted on January 1, 2013 by retlkpr

We all know what collective nouns are do we not? OK, I had completely forgotten the English language term until I saw the title above.

Collective nouns are the names given to collections or groups, be they beasts, birds, people or things. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon in many languages of the world e.g. English, German, Swedish, etc.

We have all heard of a a pack of coyotes, a flock of birds, a troop of Boy Scouts, and a fleet of cars.

The use of collective nouns started back in the 14th and 15th centuries to designate collections of wildlife in hunting terminology (Wikipedia) but where did the term a plague of lighthouse keepers come from?

According again to Wikipedia, ”A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” is a track from the British band Van der Graaf Generator’s fourth album Pawn Hearts (1971). It is notable for being a concept piece over 23 minutes long, which comprises the whole B-side of the album.

Now this collective noun has never been used before as far as I can find out, and will probably now become embedded into the English language as another collective noun. Although sounding deadly as in infectious, the term in this case, as explained by the composer means a gathering as in “a pride of lions, a murder of crows, so a plague of lighthouse-keepers“.

This term will not in general be used very often as a plague of lighthouse keepers is a very rare commodity, as mentioned in my article Our First Union Meeting-Nov. 13, 1994. Because of their isolation, lighthouse keepers do not get together very often in a group or gathering.

For those of you interested in hearing the musical piece, it is available on Youtube.

Also, the lyrics and other information is available in a Google Search.

OK, that is solved. Now what are we going to call a group of lighthouses? Any suggestions? Again this is a very rare occurrence except at a river mouth, harbour opening, etc. Maybe a confluence of lighthouses? or? Any suggestions?

Lighthouse History – 52 (1927-12-13 – 1929-05-19)

Posted on December 30, 2012 by retlkpr

The following extracts taken from early Victoria, British Columbia (BC) newspapers are credited to Leona Taylor for her excellent work in indexing the papers. Full information can be found here: ”Index of Historical Victoria Newspapers“, 2007-09.

Please Note: December 20, 2012 - I am continuing this series with Lighthouse History #51 because the newspapers have now been indexed up to 1932. I quit posting at #50 as the extracts only went to 1926. They have now been extended from 1927 to 1932 so I will sift through the data for anything lighhouse!

Died Dec 11, 1927 at V, Frederic Argyle, 52, born Dec 25, 1871 at Rocky Point lighthouse, where his father, who came here in the Royal Engineers, under Colonel Moody, was lightkeeper for many years, son of Thomas Argyle of Englandl and, and Ellen Tufts, of Halifax, NS. Leaves widow, Mrs E R. Pallbearers: G Ball, H C Helgesen, T F Helgesen, T Foster, Herbert Parker, W Welty. Metchosin burial. [Colonist, 1927-12-13*]

Died Apr 17, 1928 at Victoria, BC, Ellen Josephine Forsyth, 53, wife of James T, lighthousekeeper at Race Rocks. Born in NS, resident of BC 48 years. Leaves husband, daughter, 2 sisters, 2 brothers [Guthro]. Pallbearers: N Bertucci, W H P Trowsdale, W Muir, A E Whittaker, Captain G Evans, J Talbot. [Colonist, 1928-04-19*]

Died Jul 4, 1928 at Saturna Island, BC, James Georgeson, 79, leaves widow, Joan, 4 daughters, 3 sons. Born Oct 20, 1849, he came to Canada from the Shetland Islands in 1887, and was keeper of the East Point lighthouse for 32 years. He was granted the Imperial long service medal. Mayne Island burial. [Colonist, 1928-07-28*]

Rosina, 52 [47], wife of the Daniel O’Brien, Entrance Island lighthousekeeper, drowned today in Entrance Island. She was with her husband in a rowboat, and, on attempting to make a landing, the boat upset, throwing both into the water. O’Brien reached shore safely and ran to the McConvey ranch for help. McConvey, Bennett and Griffith returned with him to the scene and took Mrs O’Brien from the water. Formerly of Victoria, born in County Down, Ireland. Also leaves son, and a sister. Pallbearers: E Burkmar, W Mills, A Morgan, G Morgan, W Fisher, R Trowsdale. [Colonist, 1928-10-13, p. 15]

Mar 29, 8 – Tofino lifeboat brought Mr Halkett from Ucluelet to inspect the lifesaving station and Lennard Island lighthouse… [Colonist, 1929-03-19*]

Died Apr 3, 1929 at Victoria, BC, Henry Herbert Smithman, 39, born in North Carolina, he leaves widow, 4 children, mother, brother, 6 sisters. He served overseas in the Great War with PLI and was lighthousekeeper at Sister’s Rock Light. New Westminster burial. [Colonist, 1929-04-04*]

T Guerney to relieve D McPhee at Lennard Island lighthouse for 3 weeks. Owing to the Tofino customs office being closed, Fred Towler, postmaster, has been appointed to take over minor customs duties. [Colonist, 1929-05-19, p. 8]

Reprint – Machias Island Subject of Dispute Between Canada and US

Posted on December 28, 2012 by retlkpr

As I stated in my post The Lighthouse as a Sovereignty Symbol, put a lighthouse on your disputed territory and it is yours, or something to that effect. Now here is another ongoing dispute coming to light again – Canada vs USA. According to my theory above, Canada wins! – retlkpr

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Machias Seal Island a seabird sanctuary

The Canadian Press

Posted: Dec 23, 2012 7:37 PM AT Last Updated: Dec 24, 2012 12:38 PM AT

The Canadian flag flutters in the breeze by the lighthouse at Machias Seal Island. (Photograph by: Fred J. Field-The Canadian Press)

A tiny island between New Brunswick and Maine is the subject of renewed calls from both sides of the border to settle a territorial dispute once and for all.

Machias Seal Island is a flat, treeless piece of rock located about 19 kilometres southwest of Grand Manan Island and east of Maine at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy.

The island is a sanctuary for many kinds of seabirds including the Atlantic Puffin and draws visitors from around the world to observe them in the summer. more . . .

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Lighthouse History – 51 (1927-02-04 – 1927-06-29)

Posted on December 22, 2012 by retlkpr

Please Note: December 20, 2012 - I am continuing the series with this Lighthouse History #51 because the newspapers have now been indexed up to 1932. I quit posting at #50 as the extracts only went to 1926. They have now been extended from 1927 to 1932 so I will sift through the data for anything lighhouse! So far, a lot of it appears to be obituaries.

Henry Georgeson, 91, retired keeper of Active Pass lighthouse died Feb 3. [funeral Feb 10, 12...] [Colonist, 1927-02-04, p. 4]

Died May 9, 1927 at V, Captain James Christensen, 86. Resident here in 1864, aged 21, born in Denmark. He worked his way out in a cargo ship from Liverpool. Here he tried shore pursuits until he joined Surprise as mate, and in that capacity in 1869 came in contact with the loss of US bark John Bright, off Hesquiat… [see earlier accounts]
Christensen was afterwards on schooner Alert, with Captain William Spring, and continued trading on the West Coast for some years. He was a pioneer in the sealing trade. His last journey to the west coast was to take material for the erection of Cape Beale lighthouse in 1876. He was successively in command of Beaver, Pilot, tugs Alexander and Lorne, and in 1891 became pilot for Victoria and Nanaimo districts [8 years].
In 1868 he married Mary Linklater, and leaves son, Andrew. His other son, Captain James Christensen, succeeded him as commander of Lorne and afterwards ran other tugs out of Victoria until 1894. In that year he lost his life with all the crew of steamer Estelle, which foundered off Cape Mudge. IOOF. Pallbearers: Captains J E Butler and J Gosse, E More, J Woodriff, W McKay, R Lawson. May 11, 14 – How Captain Christensen Conquered the Doubters… Family plot, H 093b094 E 23. [Colonist, 1927-05-08*] Continue reading →

Reprint – Restoring Canaveral Light – Brick by Brick!

Posted on November 12, 2012 by retlkpr

Restoring Canaveral Light – Brick by Brick!

The mission statement of the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse Foundation is “To Assist the 45th Space Wing in preserving, protecting, and interpreting the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse and its historical significance to the Florida Space Coast, State of Florida, and our Nation.” The US Air Force owns and maintains Cape Canaveral Light, but the Foundation exists to be of assistance in its restoration and to share its remarkable history.

In many ways Cape Canaveral and the Lighthouse is a bridge between the age of exploration and exploration yet to come; a bridge between the sea and the stars!

On October 13th, 2012 I attended a gathering at the Canaveral Lighthouse with my father to celebrate the progress having been made on the restoration of this special and significant beacon. Although, we had visited the light by special permission a couple of years ago in order to photograph, I did not then have the opportunity to see the interior of the tower. Saturday, October 13th, could not have been a more perfect day to gather, discuss goals, walk the newly built Keeper’s Brick Paver Walkway, and climb!! I have to say right here that I was amazed that my 88 year old father was able to navigate the stairs better than I did! The metal lighthouse is lined with brick and the winding stairs curl upwards around a center pole with no hand railing along the brick walls. Of course, it was probably because I was lugging my heavy camera!! Probably!! Continue reading →

VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA

Sat, May 18, 2013 - 14:38

Lighthouse Memories

- bringing a little life into your lights

Category Archives: Keepers

Forward

Aside

Assistant Lightkeeper

In Memorium – Reg Gunn (1929 – 2013)

In Memorium – Fred Wood (1915 – 2013)

McInnes Island Lighthouse – a Tale from the 1950s

Lightkeepers to the Rescue – AGAIN!

A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers

Lighthouse History – 52 (1927-12-13 – 1929-05-19)

Reprint – Machias Island Subject of Dispute Between Canada and US

Lighthouse History – 51 (1927-02-04 – 1927-06-29)

Reprint – Restoring Canaveral Light – Brick by Brick!

Restoring Canaveral Light – Brick by Brick!