My House Is a Lighthouse: Stores of Lighthouses and Their Keepers
My House Is a Lighthouse: Stores of Lighthouses and Their Keepers
Today there are just fifty-one staffed lighthouses remaining in Canada, and only one in the United States. Skeletal towers with computerized lights have sprung up where once proud lighthouse keepers and their families kept watch, lived, and played. These automatic light flash warnings, but they are simply machines. They cannot reach out, as their keepers once did, to rescue fishers and small boats from danger.
Some of the working lightkeepers you will meet in these pages yearn for the sound of the helicopter coming to take the home at the end of a long and lonely shift. Others can think of no better place to be than their remote and rugged station. All feel a devotion to being of service and having a fine purpose in life.
Valued by their communities, they have stayed on to fulfill their time-old mission:
Keep the light shining.
Be ever watchful.
Help those in trouble at sea.
Lighthouses usually conjure images of beacons of safety with a light rhythmically flashing, likely maintained by a dozy, old, bearded man, reclining while ensuring the light doesn’t miss a beat. While watching the light hasn’t changed, lightkeeping duties have changed, and lightkeepers no longer fit the stereotype.
From British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland/Labrador, and Massachusetts, the lightkeepers included in My House is a Lighthouse demonstrate great passion for their lightkeeping jobs but acknowledge the job may not be for everyone. Readers will be astonished to learn that, due to the isolated locations of some lighthouses, some lightkeepers survive without WiFi and don’t even mind it! They’re too busy guiding, and chatting with, tourists; watching for, and rescuing, people who find themselves in emergencies on the water; treating medical emergencies; tracking bird and fish populations; and seeking out petroglyphs. They do find time to enjoy nature and solitude but not nearly as much as landlubbers think. Illustrations, primarily in colour on almost every page, give readers a taste of the areas in which each lighthouse is located, and it’s not just rocks and water.
My House is a Lighthouse provides readers with a glimpse into a career they may not have otherwise considered or would not have known was a possibility. While some lighthouses are being automated, there are still lighthouses along the west and east coasts that need a person, or couple, to manage the light and foghorn and to tackle all the extra tasks that vary based on location. Number lovers will enjoy the stats at the beginning of each lightkeeper profile: how often the light flashes, and the frequency, or discontinuation of, the foghorn, and anyone who enjoys trivia will love the ‘Did you know?’s and other extras set outside the main text in colourful boxes.
The varied skills and tasks shared in the lightkeeper profiles, scientific asides, and sources throughout are for anyone who wants to learn more about any of the topics touched on. My House is a Lighthouse has something for everyone, including a thorough glossary to fill in any gaps, especially for those ‘landlubbers’ who haven’t spent much time near the ocean. No matter what your interests are, My House is a Lighthouse has a lighthouse for everyone!
Crystal Sutherland, librarian at the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.