Port Bickerton & Area Planning Association
Research: Shelley Kaiser, Helen Kaiser, Barbara Jean Shea, (Rev'd) David Curry ed. (Rev'd) David Curry * 1997 Port Bickerton & Area Planning Association Port Bickerton, Nova Scotia Sharing the Light *Light that is not shared is darkness. Lighthouses are about light shared...* A Lighthouse *storyboard* Sampler The Nova Scotia Lighthouse Interpretive Centre Port Bickerton Nova Scotia Lighthouses belong to the story of humanity...[They] witness to humanity's restless spirit of exploration and discovery and to the desire for safety and security; in short, to our going out and our return. The lights of our journey by sea are equally the lights of our culture and history... *** The story of Lighthouses may be said to begin with *Pharos* - one of the earliest and, undoubtedly, the longest standing lighthouse in the world...At once a light and a symbol of intellectual light, the Pharos of Alexandria stood until it was toppled by an earthquake in 1349 AD, far outlasting the Museum and the Library of Alexandria, but, like them, bequeathing the legacy of *light shared* to future generations. An outstanding monument in its own day, it was reckoned among the *seven wonder the ancient world*... *** The story of North American lights begins with the eighteenth century colonial settlements of the French and English. In 1716, a light was placed on Little Brewster Island in the outer harbour of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1734, the French built a lighthouse at Fortress Louisburg, Ile Royale, now Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The founding of Halifax in 1749 by Governor Edward Cornwallis marked a determined effort at British settlement as a counter to the French presence at Louisburg and in Quebec... *** Yet many lightkeepers learned to thrive...Paul Cranford, the last keeper on St. Paul's Island, and currently keeping the Machias Seal Island Light, the last staffed light in the Maritimes, is now an authority on Cape Breton fiddling. He has a number of recordings and published music to his credit. One song is *The Graveyard of the Gulf*, a lament for St. Paul's Island. [Songstress] Laura Smith also lived on St. Paul's Island for a time. The lights, we may say, are part of the story of *East Coast Music*, like *the Queensport Light* celebrated in Stan Rogers' song *Fogarty's Cove*... *** So much of what belongs to the life of a lighthouse keeper is captured in the writings of Evelyn Richardson, such as her classic story of life on Bon Portage - *We Keep a Light*... *The chain of human life unrolls as limitless as the waves in the sea that laps all shores; it is good to know of those who went this way before and to think of those who will come after. The spots of earth we call our own, as we take our place in the life continuity, never actually belong to any of us; what are really ours are the eyes and the ears to see and hear, and the soul to love and understand the beauties around us.* May we, indeed, have the eyes and the ears to see and hear, and the souls to understand both the beauties and the histories of the lights of our maritime and Canadian story. They are all around us. They are part of the human and divine story of *light shared*. There have been many women lightkeepers in Nova Scotia. Most were appointed after the death of their husbands.Women living on the lights led challenging lives...act[ing]as unpaid assistants, the *unpaid curate as it were. Evelyn Richardson demonstrated eloquently the nature of the cooperative efforts of husband and wife and family that went into lightkeeing in her maritime classic, *We Keep a Light*. The significance of the *we* should not be overlooked. The strong and obvious tradition of women lightkeepers was not always acknowledged. When the keeper of the Parrsboro light, Mr Howard, died in 1855, his widow requested the position of lightkeeper. Her request was denied by Mr. Bell, the chairman of the Board of Works who claimed that *there is no lighthouse in the charge of a female*... There is the irony that ... women were recognized as worthy of paid positions only when lightkeeping was disappearing as a way of life in Nova Scotia. *** Lightkeeping [is] a lonely experience...The isolation proved too much for some. Chris Mills, the author of *Vanishing Lights* concluded that *most light keepers are a bit nuts*... animosities between keepers were part of the darker side of the lights. One foghorn engineer on St. Paul's Island found himself at *the wrong end of an isoceles triangle* and committed suicide. *Bushed* is the term used for those who *go off the deep end* from the isolation... *** The 1752 decison of the Governor's Council to establish *a Lighthouse at the Entrance of the Harbour of Halifax* led to the building of the Sambro Light in 1758. It has guarded the entrance of Halifax Harbour to this day. The Sambro Light is acclaimed as the oldest operational lighthouse in North America and has recently received an international historic designation. The light warns mariners of the dangerous granite ledges at the entrance to Halifax Harbour, one of the finest harbours on the continent... *** *Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom*. John Henry Newman (1801 - 1890) may or may not have had lighthouses in mind when he wrote this well-known hymn. Yet lights are the symbols of kindness and hospitality as well as security and guidance. They symbolize what is best in us - our kindly regard for our fellow human beings... *** There are many things that go bang in the night, but only to prevent other things, such as ships, from going bump in the night! Along with the lights which were often occluded by fog in coastal locations, noise was used to warn off or to signal ships... In Canada, some of the methods used to warn mariners of danger were cannons (which still can be seen on Sambro Island, for instance), guns, hand-cranked fog whistles, bells and gongs. *** The first steam fog whistle in Canada was installed on Partridge Island in St. John Harbour, New Brunswick. It was a Nova Scotian light keeper, Captain Ellis, who invented the *diaphone* that is still in use today... The diaphone produced a blast at a more constant pitch and for a fraction of the energy required to fuel its predecessor, the Scottish steam whistle. One example of the diaphone's great range is that light keepers in Cape Ray, Newfoundland, could at times hear the diaphone from St. Paul's Island off the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia... *** The general authority for lighthouses in England is Trinity House. During the late fifteenth century, the Corporation of Trinity House existed as a religious house with special duties related to pilotage and the needs of mariners in distress... Keeping a light was a charitable duty, a kind of work of corporal mercy. But there was no formal system for the organization of lights and lightkeeping...The responsibilities of Trinity House came to include lighthouse design, construction and maintenance along the coasts of England, Wales, the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and, eventually, Britain's colonies around the world, particularly in North America. Other maritime countries would establish complementary organisations, such as the Service des Phares et Balises in France, 1792, and its Commission des Phares, set up in 1811. *** In former years, life saving stations or *humane establishments* as they were called, were maintained in several places along our coastline. There were life saving stations at St. Paul's Island, Scatarie, Sable Island and Seal Island...These stations were set up in order to reduce the sad and appalling tragedy of deaths resulting from shipwrecks along our all-too-rugged coast. In 1812, eight hundred people drowned on St. Paul's Island; in 1835, two hundred people lost their lives when four ships were thrown upon the same rocks. Small wonder that a life saving station was eventually placed on this craggy cairn of the sea-dead. *** Light is a powerful symbol which has shaped our imagination and understanding from antiquity to modernity. Mystical and magical, even metaphysical, like light itself, lighthouses are a strong reminder of what is best in humanity. Against the raging forces of wind and sea, against the blackness of the night and the power of the storm, they signal our care for one another; our concern for safety and our desire for hospitality towards the neighbour and the stranger, towards the friend and the sojourner. Even in the fog, they sound a welcoming note and signal a kindly presence.

Revised Jan. 14, 1998