IT COULD BE ARGUED that once you’ve seen one lighthouse, you’ve seen them all. But the
more you visit, the more you appreciate these marvels of engineering. Towers cling to the craggy bedrock of some of the most rugged headlands on Lake Superior. Tons of concrete, rebar, two- by-fours, aluminum roofing, oil drums, asbestos insulation, lead paint and more were hauled to the middle of nowhere where the buildings were erected largely by hand. So it makes sense the government favored cookie-cutter architecture. Structures were often duplicated from place to place—the keepers’ houses at Île Parisienne, at Lake Superior’s south end, mirror those at Michipicoten Harbour on the east shore; and the light towers at Battle and Davieaux islands are twins, as are those at Otter and Slate islands. More importantly, though, the simple
argument of design ignores the human aspect of the lights. Regrettably, I don’t know much about how Pim occupied his lightkeeping days. But many stories documented from other lights tell of an unpredictable existence—from uplifting tales of quaint family life to accounts of tragedy and suffering that make your blood run cold. The assistant keeper’s house at Otter Island is located in Old Dave’s Harbour, a crescent- shaped nook three kilometers off the Pukaskwa mainland, midway along a 200-kilometer-long stretch of wilderness. It’s a haunting place: Native Ojibwa made mysterious, prehistoric stone structures here, believed by some to align with the setting sun on the June solstice. Trees grow to
the water’s edge, muffling the sound of the swell on the outer coast and creating quietude that’s unsettling after days of wind and waves. Fog flows like gauze through the narrow channels, and a few remnant woodland caribou ghost into thick bush. The atmosphere is made spookier still by the decrepit two-storey Victorian, with its peeling paint, sagging eaves and creaking floors. “I don’t want to stay here,” says Anne, a
client I’m guiding on a sea kayak trip along the Pukaskwa coast. Relaxing on the cement pier in front of the eerie house, I’ve just told the story of assistant keeper John Moore, who slipped, cracked his head and died here on a cold night in November 1930. Main keeper Gilbert MacLachlan tended his colleague’s body for two weeks, until a Coast Guard vessel arrived to transport man and corpse home at the end of the shipping season. I assure my guest we’re safe and show her the lighthouse logbook revealing the numerous times I’ve camped here before: Windbound again… Played lightkeeper for a few days… Nice here but hoping for calm… I’ve lost count how many times I’ve made the long walk to the lighthouse on Otter’s rocky tip, desperate to pull in fragments of the weather forecast through static on the marine radio. “So you’re saying we’re going to be stuck here awhile?” she asks. I don’t bother mentioning that even in good conditions, it’s a white-knuckle paddle to the north or south along a cliff-bound shore with few landings. Heebie-jeebies aside, Otter Island is a welcome refuge on a treacherous coast.
Oftentimes, the journey to and from beacons
comprised the greatest risk of the lightkeeping profession. In the 1910s, the Coast Guard issued sailboats to lightkeepers for their commute to work—a short-lived policy that proved deadly for some unlucky workers. In December 1919, Caribou Island keeper
George Johnston survived an epic eight-day escape, piloting a tiny, open-decked boat through massive waves, ice chunks and freezing spray back to the mainland. A couple of years later, when the government decided to assign a Coast Guard boat for the job, the CGS Lambton disappeared in a winter storm without a trace. Twenty-two men died, including new Caribou lightkeeper George Penefold. Lightkeepers suffered heart attacks, starved
to death, fell through the ice, and drowned in various boating accidents. Lake Superior’s first Canadian light was built on Talbot Island, a knife- edge escarpment 100 kilometers east of Thunder Bay, in 1867. It was abandoned after three Talbot keepers perished on the job in just six seasons. One drowned and another died of exposure in separate end-of-season boating mishaps. Keeper Thomas Lamphier died suddenly while overwintering. After guarding his frozen corpse for months, Lamphier’s wife was discovered the following spring in a state of madness, her once- black hair turned pure white. The site, long-since overgrown, became known as the “lighthouse of doom.”
ENIGMATIC, PREHISTORIC STONEWORKS AND THE RAMSHACKLE ASSISTANT LIGHTKEEPER'S HOUSE MAKE OTTER ISLAND A HAUNTING LANDFALL FOR KAYAKERS. PHOTO: VIRGINIA MARSHALL
58 PADDLING MAGAZINE
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