My Light. (30/05/04)
		The following is a fictional story based on facts by The Hawk Road. I ain't much of a writer by nature but, like my son Sidney used to say, I should at least try. He said that my old reel-to-reel sound recordings ain't very practical today with MP3 players and everything. I didn't bother to ask what an MP3 player was. I used to be one of the fellas that kept the Cape Light goin' back in the day. I first landed on The Cape in 1931 and stayed 'til 1945, then when Albert called 'er quits in '52, I went back and stayed another eighteen years. I guess that adds up to 32 years, and when I think of it that way, that's a big chunk of a fella's life. I look back on those days in my mind from time to time and wonder what it amounts to in today's book. Everything's so fast now. There ain't no moments where you can enjoy just standin' on the shore at low water and takin' a whiff of the flats. There's always a boat rumblin' or a tourist's kid squealin' that he wants to get back in the car. But I ain't here to complain about the things that come with gettin' old. I guess I should fill ya in on how The Light came to be. The Mi'kmaqs used to call The Cape "Kespoogwitik", which meant "where the land ends". Portugese mappers named it "Beusablom", or "a sandy bay". Champlain, that famous French guy that explored all kinds a places, called it "Cap de Sable", and when the first New England settlers came in 1761 they finally gave it the English translation "Cape Sable". The Cape's about three miles long, with ledges and shoals that run seaward south and west of Cape Sable for four and a half miles. This was pretty dangerous to shipping vessels, and a lot of boats sank there. There were a lot of petitions to put a light on the island, but they were ignored until the mail ship from Liverpool, England, the SS Hungarian, went down on February 20, 1860. 205 people drowned. The first lighthouse was built in 1861. It was made of wood and 65 feet high. Even though the most lives had been lost near The Cape than anywhere else on the coast, the request to put in a white light fell on deaf ears. They made a red light, lit by nineteen lanterns, and it was by far more expensive to keep runnin' than any other lighthouse around. On November 12th, John Hervey Doane lit The Light for the first time. If it was a clear night, it couldn't be seen over a distance of eight miles. Four-sevenths of the power of the light was lost through the thick red glazing of the lantern. Then there was talk of puttin' another light at the other end of the island, but they didn't bother. In 1870 they finally put in a flashing white light, and in 1876 a steam-whistle fog alarm was added. The lighthouse that I came to love was built in 1924. She was a thing of beauty, made of reinforced concrete and shaped like one of those octagons, standing 101 feet from base to vane. It's still the tallest lighthouse in Nova Scotia, somethin' I bet all you young fellas who spend most of your life on the sea didn't know. It flashed a white light every five seconds and you could see it from 22 nautical miles away. They put a 3rd-order Fresnel lens in 'er, which was a keener for sure. When I showed up I didn't really know what to expect. I had thought about what it would mean to live on an island, and thought I was ready for it. I wasn't ready for the work it took to keep things goin', though. The lamp was kerosene vapour, which meant that the kerosene had to be carried up to the light. Then the pressure tank had to be pumped, and let me tell ya, there ain't nothin' that makes your arms go to jelly like doin' that. We built lots of buildings around The Light, and I'd have to say that was my favorite part. I wasn't no stranger to hard work, and Sidney wasn't either. We had sheep and other animals, and it's a good thing, too. When the Light was running smooth and our chores were done, we could always tend to the critters to pass time. Like I said before, I had this sound recorder that most of you fellas would find pretty big by today's standards. I didn't care, though. I took it everywhere with me. I recorded our picnics, the noises on the island...everything that made a noise, and even some things that didn't, were documented on those spinning reels. My favorite things to record were the diesel engines, and if you played me one of those reels today I could tell you how they were running at that time. Sidney used to love the foghorn, and recorded that the most. These were simple joys that kept us happy.
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