Gary Troake was 40 years old when he drowned off the coast of Twillingate Island, N.L. in 2000. His father, a local fisherman, found his body.
“He drowned right under the lighthouse, less than 500 yards [from it],” says Jack Troake.
He believes his son’s death could have been prevented. “If there was a lighthouse keeper, doing his job like was required of him years ago, he’d be doing his walk about and he would have seen the minute that boat capsized.”
Someone could have been on scene within 10 or 15 minutes, he says
Long Point Lighthouse, Twillingate Island, N.L.
Coast Guard cost-cutting
The Standing Senate Committee for Fisheries and Oceans is recommending the Coast Guard determine the necessity of lightkeepers on a “lightstation-by-lightstation” basis.
Canada has 50 remaining staffed lighthouses, 27 in British Columbia and 23 in Newfoundland and Labrador – including the Long Point lighthouse on Twillingate Island.
In 2009 the Coast Guard – an agency within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans responsible for lighthouses – moved ahead with a cost-cutting plan to de-staff these remaining lightstations. The Coast Guard estimates that for the 2008-2009 year staffed lighthouses cost $11.5 million.
Gail Shea, minister of Fisheries and Oceans, put the plan on hold in September 2009 after the department was “flooded” with letters from people opposed to the de-staffing.
In March 2010, Shea asked the Senate committee to review the staffing issue. The committee decided to broaden the scope of its review to include the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act.
The committee released its first report in December, focusing on staffing. The final report in March will address the heritage act.
Public opposition
The Coast Guard's automation and staff removal plan began in 1970. Canada had 264 staffed lighthouses at the time.
By 1998, public pressure had stopped any further lightkeeper removal in British Columbia and Newfoundland, but the public wasn’t able to stop the Coast Guard from reducing lightkeeping duties. The Senate committee found public opinion hadn’t changed since 1998.
Alice Woods, the lightkeeper at the Chatham Point lightstation in B.C., says this is the third time in her 15-year career with the Coast Guard that it has tried to ignore public opinion on lighthouse staffing, something she says is “unconscionable.”
“Not all lighthouses are equal,” says Newfoundland senator Bill Rompkey, chair of the standing committee.
Troake agrees. “For commercial traffic, like for large ships, in this day and age I don’t think anyone can argue that they need a staffed lighthouse or that they need a lighthouse at all,” he says, referring to the navigation technology used on commercial ships. “But in the area where I live, the Twillingate area, where we’ve got tons of small vessels that go to sea...I certainly think it should be manned.”
"Technology simply cannot be 100 per cent reliable all the time."Lightkeepers Still Needed
In areas where the light is still used for navigation, the committee found a lightkeeper has value even if the light is automated.
“Technology simply cannot be 100 per cent reliable all the time,” says Rompkey.
The committee heard that lights could be out for long periods of time. It’s only when someone reports an outage that it’s fixed – an issue the committee says could be avoided by a lightkeeper.
Woods says the Coast Guard has reduced the bulb wattage in lighthouses, meaning the lights don’t give off as much heat as they used to. This may be good for hydro costs, but Woods says it means condensation, ice and snow can build up on the light.
“What’s very interesting is that with these low wattages, lightkeepers are needed as much as they were in the past not to keep the light as much itself but to provide a way for that light to be seen. They’re scraping ice and snow off of the lens so these major aids can be seen and be seen brightly,” she says. “It’s a fallacy to say these things are totally automated.”
Faulty technology affords another important role for lightkeepers.
Chatham Point Lighthouse, Vancouver Island, B.C.
Environment Canada says weather reports from lightkeepers are not essential because it has automated weather buoys and other contracted weather observers, but buoys do break down, usually during extreme weather.
That’s why Rick Snowdon, the president of the Sea Kayak Guides Alliance of B.C., supports lightkeepers, saying in an e-mail that they can describe how rough the seas are, something weather buoys can’t do.
A lightkeeper can also benefit tourism, says Fred Bridger, the president of the Twillingate Islands Tourism Association. “People who come from away are always curious about lighthouses and what they do.”
Rompkey agrees. “You’ve got to remember that on the East Coast when the fisheries have failed, tourism is quite often an alternative in terms of economic plans,” he says.
That’s another reason why the report stresses the need to determine the future of lightkeepers on an individual lighthouse basis.
Cost-sharing possibilities
The committee recommends increasing the duties for lightkeepers that remain and a cost-sharing program among government departments to offset the expense to the Coast Guard. This could include, for instance, a contribution from Environment Canada for weather monitoring.
A cost-sharing program could also help the Coast Guard afford increased search and rescue training for lightkeepers.
As Troake says, “You can’t put a dollar value on a human life. If you only save one life in five years I think the money’s well invested.”
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans refused to comment until the Senate committee releases its final report.
Front page photo courtesy of the Senate of Canada.
