IMPERIAL LIGHTHOUSES

Each one is unique

Although very similar in design, each lighthouse has its own unique characteristics. Window placements vary in order to sight approaching vessels from different directions. The lights are different, too. Originally, each was fitted with the most up-to-date of lenses, the Fresnel lens and Argand lamp manufactured by the Louis Sautter Company of Paris. The difference came in the flash, or lack of it. Chantry Island's was a fixed white light, Point Clark had a white revolving light, Griffith Island a fixed white and Cove Island a flashing white.

The red lantern room--a lighthouse signature!--atop the structures is made of a cast iron frame, crowned with a copper alloy dome and a ventilator. Twelve panes of glass surround the lamp. In the cold winter months, these panes became condensed with moisture from the heat of the lamp and then iced up on the outside. The brave lightkeeper would head outside to scrape the ice off the windows so the beacon remained visible to lake travellers.

Around the inside of each tower are indoor eavestroughs to carry the moisture to the outside. The water was then drained away through decorative gargoyle heads, visible when standing on the railed area surrounding the lamp room. A metal handhold between each window pane gave the lightkeeper something firm to hold onto while climbing up to wash windows or scrape ice.

A separate stone and timber dwelling with a slate roof was constructed at each site for the lightkeeper and his family's living quarters.

Construction

The construction of the imperial lighthouses did not go smoothly. Transportation difficulties, shipwrecks, delays in the delivery of equipment, uncooperative weather conditions and a demand for higher wages on the part of the workers for labouring under difficult conditions and in remote areas all added up to increased costs and inevitably delayed completion dates.

The final cost of the six imperial lighthouses was $222,563.91 (approximately $37,000 each), way above the cost of the original estimate and a huge sum for a newly settled Upper Canada. The legacy of John Brown and his lighthouses, though, is impossible to measure in mere dollars and cents. The imperial lighthouses still stand, nobly and peacefully, beacons of stability and security on the shore of the often turbulent waters of Ontario's Natural Retreat.

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