lighthouse

noun, a tower or other structure containing a beacon light to warn or guide ships (COD)

“You can hardly see the old lighthouse now ’cause the light isn’t very bright now like compared to the background of all the city lights, eh. You don’t notice it like you used to.”

“My Dad was born and raised over there. He run the lighthouse up there at Nine Mile Point ’til ’72.

“Well he was lightkeeper up there. Then he went from there down to Hill Island as lightkeeper. And then Four Mile light used to be out on pillars on Snake Island.”

“He used to have his ranges. We called them ‘ranges’ back in those days. When you stood at Nine Mile up at the lighthouse, and you looked towards Kingston, they used to be Snake Island and the nylon plant.”

“They used to row out to this lighthouse, night and morning, and put the light on, turn it back out.”

“Dad, he farmed after he went to the lighthouse for a while, but it was just too much. I mean, he had to be there. Like, for an example, you’d be there, and if a thunderstorm comes through, you had to blow the horn. That’s that simple, and so he was pretty well tied to the place.”

“Yeah, we lived at the lighthouse. Yeah. And the old house right here next door. You’ll see when we go out. That’s where Mother and Dad lived when I was born.”

“That’s the lighthouses on Main Duck. Yeah, there was three of them out there, ah, the lightkeeper, the assistant lightkeeper, and they had the -— I call it the wireless out there -— but the ship-to-shore. And there was three of them. Now Dad, there was only the two up here because it was just the horn and the light but out there, they had a three-man operation.”

“Years ago, before the ferry come, the Old Grenville used to bring our supplies to the lighthouse, and she used to lay out off the corner, drop the hook and stay there.”

“The only thing is, they had to watch how they voted back in those days. Dad never voted all years he was up the lighthouse because if they found out you voted the wrong way, let’s face it, you were gone. It was that simple.”

“See the lighthouse, power didn’t go to the lighthouse ’til 1955, before there was hydro up at Nine Mile. So you didn’t have the convenience. We have them old coal oil lamps, and you’d just sit them on the corner of the table.”

“In ’41 he went to the lighthouse. He still farmed a bit but he couldn’t do both. That’s just because back in those days you had to be up there, eh, with the old foghorn and that.”

“They were crossing back and forth over there at the lighthouse, where the light is. That’s where they used to cross with the boats.”

“We used to go out from the lighthouse down there and look around. It was a big thrill to walk down and go through it, eh. She was a pretty sound old place, you know, really? They had her up in the air so she didn’t dry rot or that, eh. But as I said when she lit, she was only a coal oil light, I know that, eh, with just coal oil in there.”