Category Archives: Haida Gwaii

Light at the End of the World

Adult Memories, Automation, Beachcombing, British Columbia, Canada, Communication, Construction, Equipment, Foghorns, Groceries & Mail, Haida Gwaii, History, Keepers, Light, Lighthouses, Mysteries, On The Job, Operators, Radio, Recreation, Reprint, Ships, Stories, Storms, Transportation, Wildlife,

Light at the End of the World
Three Months on Cape St. James, 1941

by Hallvard Dahlie (orig from Raincoast 18, 1998) with notes from Jim Derham-Reid (last keeper on Cape St. James before automation)

Image1A strange interlude in my brief seafaring life took place in the fall of 1941, when I signed on as assistant lighthouse keeper at Cape St. James, a light perched on top of a three-hundred-foot rock at the very southern tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands. I had quit school earlier that year, at the age of sixteen, and found a job on the CGS Alberni, a lighthouse tender operating out of Prince Rupert. But when she had to go into dry dock at the beginning of September for a new wartime grey paint job and a bit of refurbishing, I chose to take a stint out at the lighthouse rather than scrape barnacles and paint for three months. Continue reading Light at the End of the World →