light

noun, a lamp or fire serving as a signal or beacon, esp. on a ship or in a lighthouse (“light, n.1.” OED); in the interviews, ‘light’ refers specifically to the light in the lighthouse at Nine Mile

“The light had, in the centre of it, had a weight. And it was about a 700 pound weight.”

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

“He helped Dad with the painting and everything. The grass cutting. But he also made sure that the horn blew when the weather got bad, the light was lit.”

“During the war, they kept the light going in the wintertime due to the fact that they were training pilots over here at Norman Rogers. They kept the light going but never the horn.”

“You had to light the light when the sun went down, and you turned the light out at sunrise, and you’d go up. And the light itself, you had two tanks. One was coal oil and one was the air tank. Everything worked under pressure, right?”

“It had the kitchen and everything downstairs. Then you went up a set of stairs to the bedroom, and then from there you went on up into the light itself.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My great-great-grandfather and grandmother, they were lightkeepers out there. And they had a house down on Four Mile …  They used to row out there and light the light. There was never a foghorn. But anyway, they got pneumonia one fall, and they died out there.”

“Each fog station and light station on the Great Lakes had a different time. Like, I’ll give you an example. Nine Mile up here, when the old schooners used to come in, she had a three second light flash every thirty seconds. The horn blew a three second blast every thirty seconds. So these old timers, when they come in, they didn’t have to, for an example, see the light but they could time the horn.”