This is what we heard on the radio from the Coast Guard station:
Marine forecasts issued by the Pacific Weather Centre of Environment Canada at 4 AM PDT Saturday 9 September for the period ending 4 AM Sunday with an outlook for the following 24 hours. The next scheduled forecast will be issued at 10:30 AM PDT.
Synopsis A trough of low pressure over Queen Charlotte Sound will slide Over Vancouver Island later today. A cold front just west of Bowie will approach the Charlottes this afternoon. Over northern and central waters strong winds near the trough will rise to strong to gale force southeasterlies as the front approaches. Over southern waters light to moderate northwest winds will shift to moderate to heavy southeast later today as the trough moves to the south. As the front approaches from the west forecast sea state values are combined wind wave and swell height.
Central coast from McInnes Island to Pine Island. Storm warning issued. Winds southeast 30 to 40 knots this morning then rising to southeasterly 40 to 50 this afternoon. Winds rising to south 50 to 60 this evening then to southeast storm force winds overnight. Overcast. Heavy rain. Seas 1 to 2 metres building to 2 to 3 tonight. Outlook. Winds continuing southeast storm force winds. Continue reading Preparing for a Winter Storm→
There have been many reports, newspaper articles, books, etc. written about the disaster that occurred at Egg Island Lighthouse station November 2nd, 1948 – none of which tell the true story. A few of the newspaper reporters of that time interviewed my father, many more got their stories second, third and fourth hand. None of the authors of the books written since have ever interviewed or talked directly to my father, Robert Laurence Wilkins, my mother, Ada Marie Wilkins or myself, Dennis Edward Wilkins. I mention the names in full to finally get the characters of the story straight.
Many of the stories in print are, in themselves, very interesting and intriguing – lacking only in the fact that that is not what or how it all happened. The fault may not lie with the various authors; the Government of Canada did much to avoid the truth from being heard then and later. Now that both my mother and father are dead, and most of the other players in the story are long since past, I feel reasonably safe in documenting the story. The purpose of this record is primarily for my family and friends, who have always shown a greater fascination for the story than myself (perhaps since I was there). Secondly, there may be the odd other person who has heard the story before and would appreciate knowing just what really happened that day.
Originally published in the January/February 2007 issue of Legion Magazine
We hadn’t expected gourmet Hungarian goulash served up on Royal Doulton china. But at the Cape Scott light station on the remote northwestern tip of Vancouver Island–a place that is normally engulfed in wet grey and storms–today is an exception. The sky is azure, there’s not a puff of wind, and Principal Keeper Harvey Humchitt and his partner Assistant Keeper Todd Maliszewski have house guests.
After sweating through 24 kilometres of squishy rain forest trails we’re no match for the fine linens and silver flatware spread impeccably before us on the dining table. The trek through the forest is the only way to get here without a boat or helicopter. After a couple of greeting barks from their dog Lady, Humchitt welcomes us to Cape Scott. Continue reading The Lightkeepers by Graham Chandler→
Cape Beale, . . . a lighthouse which later came to notice in a gallant and romantic rescue resulting from the actions of Mr. and Mrs. Paterson who kept the light from 1895 to 1908.
In December 1906, the United States barque Coloma left the Puget Sound with a cargo of lumber for Australia. There was a gale from the southeast and, cracking on to take advantage of this fair wind to clear the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the old wooden vessel sprang a leak when she encountered a heavy sea off Cape Flattery. With her decks awash, and the gear aloft carrying away as she pitched in an enormous swell, the Coloma was soon unmanageable and hoisted her ensign upside down in token of distress as she drifted down to leeward and the outlying reefs of Cape Beale.
In this position, and doubtless having let go her anchors to the bitter end, the barque was sighted from the lighthouse. The only chance of help lay in alerting the Quadra, then under the command of Captain Charles Hackett, which Paterson knew was lying at anchor in Bamfield Inlet, six miles away. The lifeboat, it will be recalled, was not on station at Bamfield until the following year. Telephone lines were down and the light keeper was unable to leave his foghorn which required constant attention. Although the trail was blocked by fallen trees and lay for much of the distance along a rocky shore. Mrs. Paterson at once insisted on making the journey herself. It was then night, and in darkness and dreadful weather she set off with a lantern and her dog, hoping against hope to be in time.
The plan was to get the news to James Mackay at Bamfield who would row off to the Quadra and raise the alarm. Arriving at the house physically exhausted, drenched to the skin and with her shoes and clothing ripped to pieces, it was found that Mackay was away from home repairing the telephone wires. Nothing daunted, Minnie Paterson and Mrs. Mackay themselves launched the boat and came alongside the Quadra as daylight came. Captain Hackett weighed anchor at once and the Quadra punched her way out of the Inlet against a heavy swell rolling in from the Pacific. Off Cape Beale the wreck was sighted, a boat was lowered under the command of the second officer Mr. James E. McDonald, and the distressed crew were recovered. No sooner had the boat returned to the Quadra than the derelict parted her cables and drove ashore to destruction. Mr. McDonald was promoted to chief officer shortly afterwards.
Immediately after her courageous action, and before the return of the Quadra with the shipwrecked men, Mrs. Paterson walked all the way back to the lighthouse. She had five children to look after and her husband was constantly at work in a period of rain and bad visibility. It was another week before communications were restored, and only then did the Paterson’s learn of the triumphal rescue which had resulted. Unfortunately, the results of Mrs. Paterson’s tremendous exertion soon made themselves apparent and she never entirely recovered, dying five years later.
Originally I had this article titled as Lighthouse Time referring to the time we were required to be at work on the station. Lighthouse Time-Keeping (leading up to automation) is a better phrase as it reflects punching the clock, etc. which we did not actually have do on a lighthouse. Someone was always there. You never left a lighthouse alone.
On the lighthouse we worked to get the job done. When it was done we could relax. We were on watch all the time.
In the early days (1800s – 1950s) the lighthouse was a one family station and if an assistant was required for heavy work then it was up to the keeper to hire a person from the local community using his own wages to pay the person. The keepers hours of duty were long and hard and were broken only when the wife was free to help out. Two man and/or family stations were only on very isolated stations with keepers on duty approximately twelve hour shifts but usually longer. Actually, at that time, no shifts were set down on paper – the station had to be manned no matter what.
In the 1950s to 1970s the stations with more duties, equipment, or isolation had an extra man so there were one-, two- and three-man stations. These people were on duty at differing hours. A one-man station required the keeper to sometimes sleep in the engine/fog alarm room when heavy fog was prevalent for days on end. In the mid 1960s the two-man stations had a shift time of twelve hours each man and three-man stations eight hours each. The early 1970s saw some automated equipment installed and most three-man stations reduced to two-man and a susequent increase in the number of hours on duty without an increase in pay.
Late 1970s brought more talk of automation, more equipment, especially station monitoring equipment for automation, but no increase in the keeper’s pay. In fact the first closing of some stations was started, automation equipment was put in place and keepers were ignored.
Finally by the mid 1980s a job description was given to the lighthouse keepers and this would be what their wages were based on – more duties, more pay.
Keepers were requested to submit a list of the duties they performed and the time involved. But only Coast Guard related work was to be on the list. All the extra work the lightkeeper did was not recorded – jobs such as weather reporting, sea water samples, search and rescue, bird and animal surveys, pollution watch, radio watch, etc. This, according to the Coast Guard was not the job of a lighthouse keeper.
Again in the mid 1980s, automation in Ottawa computers and on the lights designated that we had to have hours of work laid down. Up to that time we were paid a yearly wage divided by the number of government paydays in a year (52). This gave us our bi-monthly wage. Divided by the number of hours we were on duty (for seven days a week you must remember), this worked out to very much less than the minimum wage at the time. Finally the government worked out that we would all have an eight hour shift each, during daylight hours and they worked it out this way:
As you can see the by the first table the shifts were 8 hours long in two periods as we were supposed to ignore the station during our one hour break at lunch and breakfast and supper.
The second table shows that weather reports did not fit into this shift pattern at lunchtime.
The third table shows the extra quarter hour (or half hour, depending on the intensity of weather) we used to make the observations and record all afterwards. The result was a normal nine- to ten-hour day but we were only listed as working eight.
What the government did not include was overtime! We had an eight hour shift to work. Finished! They did not consider the times when we were phone in the night for weather reports, where one had to dress, go outside, read the barograph and write-up the weather; or the nights where we baby-sat a boat in distress because Coast Guard radio was tied up with so many incidents because of bad weather; or the nights the engines shut down because of bad fuel delivered to us; or the time the main light blew out twice in a row; or the time the battery went dead on their automatic engines and shut down the station (the battery controlled the control panel) – I can list hundreds of times we worked through the nights, but all on an eight hour shift!
Pay Stub
You will notice on the pay stub (left) the highlighted number 56 under “Hours of Work”. This is eight hours a day for seven days (8 hours X 7 days = 56 hours). You can also see by the shift chart that daylight hours (which were imposed to stop us collecting shift differential1) were an impossibility unless you were working in the summer above the Arctic Circle!
But, there was a good side. We worked as we wished. No office supervisor and no daily logging in and out. We could work twelve hours here and then go fishing for four hours, always mindful of the radio, the weather, engines, fog, and the light. We could work a morning shift and spend the next eight hours unloading a supply ship (no overtime) and then hit the sack. Next day we could take it easy! Only the weather reports at 3AM , 6AM, 9AM, Noon, etc.
But then the Coast Guard decided that we had to report exactly what we were doing! They issued us with log books and a new set of rules and we were supposed to log everything we did during our shift!
Well we filled the books with every little detail we performed. Contrary to our job description we included all the local, marine, synoptic, special and extra weathers. All the radio contacts, all the ship contacts, all the jobs done and listed every minute of the shift. We filled reams of books and sent them into the office every month. It didn’t help us, didn’t help them, but gave us an extra entry in the logbook “0900-0910 Filling out logbook”!
Present day (November 2006) the Coast Guard removed most of the foghorns (no monitoring), lowered or changed the intensity of the lights, removed range lights, removed radio beacons and their towers, removed weather equipment such as barometers, wind recorders, etc., and removed from the lightkeepers duties most weather reporting details so that they have become glorified groundskeepers.
But rest assured, as long as the government lets them remain on duty, they will come to your assistance with a radioed weather report, a can of gas or a friendly hello. God Bless all lighthousekeepers!
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FOOTNOTES:
1Shift Differential – Additional pay for work regularly performed outside normal daytime hours, usually defined as before &AM and after 6PM.
McInnes with weather instruments (lower half) – photo John Coldwell
One of the duties on most of the lighthouse stations, and especially on McInnes Island, up to 2003, was the reporting of local weather (weather visible in the immediate area of the station) to Environment Canada (EC) – earlier called the Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) – for re-broadcast to boaters, pilots and climatologists.
Extreme Tendency November 05, 1988 – scan Glenn Borgens
Every three hours during the day, starting at around three o’clock in the morning we would collect the information on sky condition, visibilty, wind speed and direction, rain/snowfall, wet and dry bulb temperatures plus maximum and minimum temperatures, station pressure and tendency (whether pressure was rising or falling and how rapidly), and sea and swell height. This was then recorded on AES forms or in a notebook depending on the station. Not all stations reported or had the instruments for all observations. These records were forwarded to AES every month along with a Climate Summary for the month. Continue reading Weather Observing – a Large Part of the Job→
The following memory was passed on to me by Margit Losel. It happened during their time at Boat Bluff in the years 1977 – 1980. They were lucky! They were able to get off and on the lighthouse. Some stations were too isolated for this method to work. – retlkpr
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Boat Bluff c.1970s - photo Ray McKenzie
We were living on Boat Bluff Light and my oldest son Simon was an infant. He developed a very bad case of Croup. One stormy night he all but stopped breathing and we tried frantically to get some help.
We finally managed to get a radio patch through Bull Harbour Coast Guard Radio with a doctor in Bella Bella. The radio reception was so poor that the connection with the doctor broke up all the time, but we did understand that Simon needed medical attention as soon as possible.
Here is another story from Ms. Juanita (Swanson) DuLong. She was a young girl on most of these stations, but living there, and hearing stories from her parents, she has created lighthouse memories from the 1950s time. Her older stories are found here, here and here. One more to come she says.
It is said that for every person on earth, there is a place our soul will recognize as home.
Nootka lighthouse
Sometime in 1955, I was lucky enough to find that Nootka was mine. Ever since, no matter where or how I was living, I went home whenever possible. Today, my husband and I live on the West coast of Vancouver Island, not far from Nootka Island.
Nootka Lighthouse is picturesque, with 360 degree views of scenery. The area is steeped in history, being the true birthplace of B.C. Brick fragments are still sometimes found from the Spanish fort that so long ago enjoyed those same views.
The article I posted earlier about the storm at Cape Scott brought to mind a story I had written for the old website. This story (below) brought to the attention of the government one of the important attributes of BC lighthouse keepers – they are on-site!
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Helicopter pad at McInnes
On Thursday October 12, 1984 Roger Mogg (my assistant) and I were up at the helicopter pad at McInnes Island lighthouse enjoying the clear Fall weather after lunch. We had been shooting clay pigeons with our shotguns and a newly acquired launcher. The wind was light, with very few clouds in the sky, so it made a perfect day for target practice in between weather reports.
Just then Karen called up that Stan at Egg Island had just notified the Coast Guard radio station in Bull Harbour that he had unexpected high winds and seas. Roger and I looked at each other and joked that Stan must have been into his home-made wine again! Looking down towards Calvert Island (between us and Egg Island) from our location on the helo (helicopter) pad we could see only clear sky with a trace of cirrus cloud. Calvert was over forty miles (64 kms) away and we could just see the top of it on the horizon. Egg Island was further south still. Continue reading The Storm of October 1984→
