Beginnings are as elusive as wispy summer clouds—impalpable, yet poignant.
I can't remember the exact moment when I decided to apply to the Canadian Coast Guard to become a lighthouse keeper, but I think it was triggered in a fusty portable where I was teaching English. An incident shook me. Why was I still teaching in a classroom at age sixty? Some days I couldn't breathe. Each afternoon, I flopped on the couch and watched reruns of Big Bang Theory.
I was lost, rudderless, caught in a dead calm.
I called my old friend, who was an assistant lightkeeper. I'd visited her twice before and had an inkling of what the job entailed.
"You should apply," she said. "They need relief staff to replace assistants when they go on leave."
There are twenty-seven staffed lighthouses on the BC Coast, most with two keepers: a principal and an assistant. Some are married, but those who aren't live in separate quarters, those quaint white and grey bungalows with bright red roofs you see when you're boating the West Coast.
I could take a year leave from teaching, work relief, and eventually apply for my own station. There was nothing to keep me in the city. My daughter was moving out and my dear old golden retriever had just died.
My pulse quickened with the thought of a nautical adventure. "How do I apply?" She sent me a link to the online Government of Canada job advertisement. “You need your Marine Radio Certificate and Standard First Aid.”
Imagining a life by the sea, I acquired my Pleasure Craft Operators Card as well. After all, they might need me to drive a boat.
On Canada Day weekend, I hauled a mass of gear almost five hundred kilometers from the Lower Mainland to the Coast Guard station in Port Hardy, and parked my car at the small three-runway airport. Hired for an extended tour, I had no idea when I’d see home again.
During the thirty-minute boat ride in the Canadian Coast Guard lifeboat from Port Hardy to Balaclava Island, I stand shivering on the flybridge of the red and white Cape Sutil, my hair whipping every which way in the cold wind. Note to self: Knit a wool seaman’s toque. You’re going to need it.
Off the port bow, I spot a pod of breaching humpbacks and hot blood rushes through my veins, while all around, rock and cedar islands shimmer in shades only Emily Carr could capture. Ahead, the small station boat from the lightstation skips toward us, bow up on the churning sea.
“We’ve got a huge wake,” the captain says, “and this is as close as we can get.” He nods to the craft. “That’s your ride.”
By serendipity, I’m here to replace my friend and know the principal keeper who will train me. She boards with her two small bags, and we share a fleeting moment while the crew transfers my totes, a canvas gear bag bulging with clothing, books, and technology, even my guitar. I can’t tolerate wheat or dairy and must depend on monthly grocery orders delivered by helicopter, so bring as much food as I can manage. I clamber into the small boat, eyes bright and lips trembling, while all around me, the wind whirls and the sea sings her siren song.
A few weeks later, I board my first Coast Guard helicopter for the sixty-minute flight north to Addenbroke Island. Flying through azure skies amid wispy clouds, I feel like a dragonfly, hovering alive and free, far above the earth. The station fronts the Inside Passage, and three humpbacks circle the shoreline all day long. Each time I hear that thrilling “Pfuussshhh,” I drop my knitting needles and dash outside to photograph them. Their ghostly songs and acrobatic antics entrance me. Spiraling beneath a shoal of fish, they exhale a bubble net visible from shore. The lightkeeper teaches me to use GarageBand and iMovie to record their antics.
Then, I’m off to Cape Scott, on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island. A burly bear, whom I name Leroy, drinks from the rain barrel outside my window. It’s charming until it’s time to dump the compost. A lesson on the bear banger doesn’t suffice. “You want me to walk through the forest with a pail of tasty leftovers?” This keeper teaches me to drive the emerald green John Deere tractor and even lift the bucket.
At a drive-in station along the confluence of Johnston Strait and Discovery Passage, I bolt awake one black night to see a massive cruise ship, lights glaring like a downtown hotel, passing my window. In the morning, mist shrouds the alien landscape in pastel streaks like the aurora borealis.
But I’m wary here and on an indefinite post that could become full-time. Even the thrill of watching hundreds of Pacific white-sided dolphins leap down the strait doesn’t lift the sense of foreboding that rounds my shoulders. For days, I’ve felt an energetic presence in my bungalow. Someone has died here—someone who isn’t willing to share their home.
Soon after, I’m standing on flat, dry grass, chatting with the other keeper, when something hits the back of my knees and kicks out my legs. I fall straight back and hit hard.
“What just happened?” he asks.
I stand and shake it off. I know what happened, but I’d rather not say. Some keepers will share their ghost stories; others are hesitant. I’ll keep this one to myself. The next morning, I lift a sheet of plywood, turn, and gasp. I feel as if an unknown assailant has stabbed me through the chest with a spear. I drop the wood and clutch my breastbone. For a moment, I can’t move or breathe.
“Go swim in the sea,” the other keeper suggests. “It can cure anything.”
A few days later, he helps me load my car, and I drive home with a pool noodle jammed against my spine. Though I’m in agony, I’m relieved to leave this place. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. Later, an x-ray reveals a fracture in one of my thoracic vertebrates.
Recovered and undeterred, I accept another post several weeks later, just off the shore of Nanaimo. It’s a magical land of basking seals, kaleidoscope skies, and a colossal sea lion who rivals Jabba the Hutt. But there are no ghosts, as far as I can tell.
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Another day, he suggests we boat into Tofino for supplies. His zodiac rests on a trailer atop a steep, rocky cliff. To launch it, we must drag the trailer into position, gather our equipment, and prep the boat before attaching it to a winch by means of a giant iron hook. My job is to hold the bow line and keep the teetering boat vertical while he operates the winch from the cliff above. After lowering it down the high line one foot at a time, he drops it into the channel. Together, we carry the skiff down the cement steps to the boat ramp so he can row out to the zodiac, board it, and motor back to pick me up.
When we return, the whole process is reversed. As we close in on the cement ramp, the wind is blowing us out.
“This could be tricky,” he says. “Stand in the bow, and when I say jump, you jump.”
He yells, and I jump. But the ebbing tide has exposed algae-slick rocks. As my rubber boots hit the slippery cement, I waver and thrust out my hands. “Damn!” My little finger hits the hard surface. Is it broken or just sprained? It’s stiff, swollen, and purple, and I can’t use it for days.
“Don’t tell them I hurt myself again,” I say. Yet doubt harangues me. You’re not cut out for this. You’re sixty years old. Fragile. Broken. Your skin is like crepe paper, and you’re a klutz. Look at your body. It’s a maze of scars. Give up and go home.
But I’ve accepted an eight-week spring post at Nootka, a heritage lighthouse. How can I give that up?
En route to Nootka, I ride shotgun in the helicopter 4,000 feet above the West Coast Trail. Wide-eyed and gut-trembling, I make small talk with the pilot. There’s just the two of us, along with 240 pounds of my gear stowed in the cargo hold. Below us, an impenetrable wall of evergreens is edged by teal waters, frothy tides, and sandy beaches. It could be the Caribbean. The clouds over Nootka flutter like fine white lace on a cyan sky, above a sea that surges across the 50th parallel from Vancouver Island to Russia.
As we descend on crescent-shaped Friendly Cove, the white and red Nootka lightstation sparkles in the sunlight, and my heart pounds. Built on San Rafael Island in 1958, it’s a mere infant compared to the rest of this place. In preparation for my eight-week post, I’ve been reading White Slaves of Maquinna. Originally a 48-page journal, it was penned by nineteen-year-old John R. Jewitt between 1803 and 1805, using a concoction of berry juice mixed with powdered charcoal. I wonder if any blood penetrated the mix. In his journal, Jewitt recounts his time here with the people of Yuquot.
Now deemed a Canadian National Historic Site, this place is a hotbed of colonialism and conflict. As the story goes, Nootka is a misnomer credited to Captain James Cook. In need of rest, water, and repairs after a hot time in the tropics, Cook directed his two ships, Resolution and Discovery, toward this inlet in the spring of 1778. In his journal, he writes that once anchored, three canoes approached, and “a person in one of the two last stood up and made a long harangue, inviting us to land …” Others came alongside to trade. Cook presumed that one word he heard, nutka, meant themselves, though it referred to something else. Regardless, the People were branded Nootka.
Cook’s crew stayed for the month of April, just as I’m about to do, only two centuries ago. It’s a trivial amount of time compared to the four thousand plus years that the amalgamated Mowachacht/Muchalacht People have made this their traditional territory. Yuquot is the center of their world.
Once settled, I relax on a massive deadfall on the lunate beach and try to imagine what this landscape looked like hundreds or thousands of years ago. The natural landscape cannot have changed much over time. Rocks are pillars of the earth, and ocean tides ebb and flow forever. The sea tumbles stones into smooth pebbles, old trees collapse, and new life springs from their dust. There is no death, only regeneration. This land, jutting into Nootka Sound, was once the summer meeting place of many villages who paddled this bountiful sea. I imagine bighouses, framed from solid cedar posts and banked with cedar planks, stretching along the shore of Friendly Cove. It’s said that twenty once stood here, home to hundreds of families. Dugout canoes lined the beach. I close my eyes and try to conjure seafood feasts, drying salmon, smoking fires, potlatches, ceremonies, dances, carvers, and children at play.
My research tells me that Yuquot means “where the winds blow from many directions.” Indeed, in the few days I’ve been living here, tuning into the weather, the winds have shifted often. Winter can be brutal on the edge of the Pacific. Each fall, the house planks were taken down and loaded into canoes along with provisions, and families paddled northward up Tahsis Inlet to their winter village.
I imagine riding a raven eastward across the sound, through Zuchiarte Channel and Muchalacht Inlet, all the way to Gold River. This is where most of the Indigenous People relocated in the 1960s. Only the Williams family remains. Living in a lone, weathered home on the beach at Friendly Cove, Ray and his wife still engage in the seasonal activities of their ancestors. Out in his boat every day, Ray searches for signs of herring as he awaits spawning time. Hemlock branches are cut and laid on the dock, ready to be sunk in the water. After the herring spawn, the branches will be raised and cleaned. Herring eggs are a traditional delicacy. When the herring arrive, I’m told the milky blue cove bustles with whales, seals, eagles, and other creatures eager to fill their bellies with spring protein. I stare down the long dock. I also await the herring.
For now, I’m content to watch a pair of sea otters frolic in the shallow kelp forest. A member of the weasel family, they’re adept at using tools and protect the kelp by preying on urchins, crabs, mussels, and other marine species that would consume them. In Cook’s day, these magical creatures were the impetus for maritime trade until they were hunted to near extinction. Alaskan sea otters were reintroduced to British Columbia in the late 1970s, a fact that accounts for this pair’s presence.
Each morning, I climb down the steep, scarlet ladder that’s part of the trolley apparatus used to winch equipment up and over the rocks. In my pocket, I carry a pen and paper to record the figures on the meteorological instruments housed in the Stevenson Screen. I’m determined not to give in to doubt or get hurt again and know a tumble down the trolley could break my fragile sixty-year-old bones.
This is the first time I’ve had to report supplementary weather reports for aviators, as well as marine forecasts, and my writer’s brain doesn’t manage scientific numbers, though Mr. T has given me a lesson. Aviation reports involve cloud levels and density, relative humidity, and climate observations that include maximum and minimum temperatures, as well as the amount of precipitation—facts gleaned from the Stevenson Screen.
Perhaps sensing my anxiety, Mr. T says, “Just do the morning shift, and the rest of the day is yours.” He’s a night owl, whose lights are usually still on when I rise in darkness at 4:00 a.m. for my first weather report. The house is spacious—three bedrooms, each with a deep pillow-top mattress, doors that lock, windows that open, a sliding door onto a wraparound deck with million-dollar views, Internet, and a huge satellite-driven television. Built on a jutting rock overlooking the sea, it’s glamping at its finest.
When Emily Carr visited the lighthouse in 1929, she described it as a “strange wild perch” on a “nosegay of rocks, bunched with trees, spliced with wildflowers.” As romantic as it sounds, I seldom sleep, though I retreat to my bed at 7:30 each night. Anxious that I’ll miss my first weather report, I toss and turn for hours. Nootka is the first of several stations called by the Tofino Coast Guard, as it’s the furthest north. If I muddle it, everyone will hear.
One morning, I’m awakened by the voice of the Coast Guard operator on my in-house radio. “Nootka? Ready with your weather?”
“Shit!” Adrenalin rips through my veins. I’m still in bed, have no idea what’s happening in the black predawn, and will have to run to the engine room in my robe to answer him.
“Nootka? Are you there?” The pounding blood in my brain smacks the silence.
“Uh, yah. This is Nootka. We’ve got clear, fifteen, low southwest, one foot chop.”
Mr. T. He’s saved me. Then, a realization: This is why he stays up every night until my first weather report is done. I can barely look him in the eye.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says later. “We’ve all missed the odd weather over the years.”
When the clouds break, I go exploring with Lucy, his Bichon frisé. Missing her mother, whom I’m replacing for two months, this brave, wee dog has become my companion. Generations of lightkeepers have planted bulbs around the station, so daffodils and grape hyacinths flash splashes of Easter color and cheer on gray days. Here, the weather is constantly changing, due to those winds that “blow from many directions.”
One day, I cling to the rock in a drizzly mantle of mist. Visibility: two miles. As always, the octagonal aluminum lantern beams from its scarlet gallery atop the square white tower to alert mariners of impending danger. One of the first things Mr. T does is escort me up the enclosed metal staircase to inspect the light in the 32-foot tower. How many lives has the revolving beam saved on days and nights like this?
The next day, I cross the silver land bridge overlooking the gorge and wander down the trail to the cove, breathing in the sun. Along the pathway, pink fawn lilies blossom. Snakes surprise me, slithering from the threat of my thick rubber boots, while birds twitter in the echoing waves. After hearing reports of wolves on the Nootka Trail, I’ve started carrying a big stick like former President Roosevelt, though mine is not metaphorical.
I notice that Ray has taken away the hemlock branches that occupied the dock for weeks. The herring came into the cove twice but didn’t spawn. When he tells me it’s sad for his people, I sympathize. I wonder how he feels about the white church that rests on the treed neck of land between the sandy driftwood-laden beach that fronts them and the long, pebbled beach that stretches from Yuquot Point northward up the coast, behind them. As each rush of waves rocks its shore, music, like a bottle of cascading glass marbles, harmonizes with the winds. Standing at the base of the church steps, its siren song sends shivers up my arms.
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This is the third Roman Catholic church to be built at Yuquot. The first was constructed by the Spanish in the 1790s, when they established a naval outpost and fort here on San Rafael Island, close to where the lighthouse stands. It was not to last. Missionary Father Brabant ordered the second church to be built a century later in a cove west of the bighouses. Before it burned to the ground in 1954, Emily Carr captured its essence in a famous painting she called “Indian Church.” Rows of white crosses in the picketed churchyard mark the devastation that destroyed so many Indigenous communities. Between 1778, when Captain Cook anchored here, and 1900, the population was reduced by a staggering nine-tenths. Disease, carried by the European traders and explorers, was the main culprit. Today, Carr’s renowned, renamed painting hangs in the Art Gallery of Ontario. “Church in Yuquot Village” is not just a more accurate title; it’s politically correct.
My writer’s soul wonders how the church burned and why. There must be a story. I’ve been drawn to the cove since I arrived and explore it with Lucy when the tide is low enough to allow us entry past the barricade of barnacle-clad rocks. Water cascades down the stones between fallen trees. I wonder if the graves are still here, malingering beneath the trees, bones buried deep in the soil. And what of the spirits of the dead? Do they linger too?
Two years after the fire, a new white church was erected in its present location between the two beaches. Built in a neo-Gothic style, replete with buttresses, arched windows, and spire, its bell tower embraces a full-size, welcoming Jesus. The People have reclaimed it as a cultural center and are restoring this building where they’ve gathered for generations. I climb the steep, cracked, moss-strewn steps and shove open the door. The historic past is recorded in the vestibule with two stained glass windows sent by the government of Spain. One, commemorating the Nootka Convention, illustrates the meeting of Captains Bodega y Quadra and George Vancouver.
In the 1780s, Nootka Sound was the paramount anchorage on the Pacific Northwest coast. As such, it became a contested space, coveted by Russia, Britain, and Spain, though thousands of Nuu-Chah-Nulth families lived here as their ancestors had for millennia. After much fighting, Great Britain and Spain agreed to cease hostilities, share information and trade. The People hover in stained glass shadows, draped in blankets, and wearing woven cedar hats, while great masted ships anchor above them in the cove. Indigenous art and cedar branches now adorn the sacred hall. A polychromatic eagle and two-headed serpent are flanked by painted totem poles depicting animal spirits with earnest expressions. Below the eagle’s talons rests a huge black whale, its mouth defined by wide, white teeth—the symbol of a whaling people. I visit often and examine other plaques, yellowing photographs, and newspaper articles that paper the vestibule.
One haunting image will not let me go—the contents of a five-by-six-foot wooden building known as the “Nootka Whalers’ Washing House.” As the story goes, in 1904, it was purchased from two Elders and spirited away under cover of night. George Hunt, working under anthropologist Franz Boas, orchestrated the purchase, which reportedly gained the men $500.00 but lost a community a sacred and powerful treasure. Since it was whaling season, most of the community was at sea in their dugouts. How did they feel when they returned?
At the time of the sale, the building stood along a sacred lake farther up the trail past the cemetery. Before setting out in their canoes, whalers fasted, prayed, and practiced ritual bathing in the pristine water. Whale hunting was a hazardous endeavor that required rituals and spiritual blessings. Hunters flung harpoons, their heads carved from mussels’ shells, at the breaching whale. Once embedded, the cetacean’s body could be kept afloat by long lines attached to sealskin buoys and hauled into shore.
The structure ended up in the American Museum in New York, where it’s been moldering in the basement for the past century. I wonder if power still emanates from the carved talismans. The monochrome photograph shows several tall, thin, carved wooden figures. Their lips are pulled fierce and flat beneath their long noses. At their feet are human skulls. Mystical magic glows around these figures—or is this just my imagination? As I reread White Slaves of Maquinna, I wonder about those skulls. Perhaps that’s why I’m plagued by wild, fractured dreams in those rare moments of REM.
Sleep deprivation engulfs me, leeching memories, and siphoning my ability to focus. Is it feeding my obsession? The gory story replays in my mind whether I’m awake or dreaming. Jewitt was working as a blacksmith aboard the Boston when Captain John Salter anchored with a crew of twenty-seven men in Nootka Sound in March 1803. Meetings seemed amicable. Salter even loaned Maquinna a double-barreled musket for duck hunting. The next day, the chief returned with several ducks for the captain and confessed that he’d broken one of the musket locks. As the story goes, Salter took the gun and struck Maquinna on the head with the breach. Once Maquinna’s people were back on shore, tempers swelled. Orators retold the tale, while warriors recalled insults and injuries they’d suffered at the hands of the Europeans. Soon, a cry for revenge echoed through the village.
Three days later, as Salter’s crew was preparing to sail north, Maquinna's warrior-filled canoes approached the Boston. Wearing the mask of a bear on his painted face, he performed rituals. What did the crew think? Did they see this behavior as a threat or just chalk it up to some bizarre cultural practice? Salter invited Maquinna to board the Boston and dine with him. During their meal, the chief advised the captain to send his men to Friendly Cove, where they could catch many salmon for their voyage. Ten men disembarked while the rest of the crew prepared to get underway. Once they’d gone, Maquinna seized Salter and flung him overboard, where the old women waited in their canoes. Laughing and hoisting their paddles, they dashed the shocked captain’s brains out.
This image replays over and over in my mind—the cackling women, the bloody paddles, and Salter screaming and flailing in a raging sea.
The remaining crew were slain, and Maquinna’s people sang a victory song. The ignorant shore crew were captured, clubbed, shot, and decapitated, their heads brought aboard ship and arranged on the deck according to their station. Young Jewitt, who was being held downstairs, was dragged up to do a literal headcount.
What grisly nightmares plagued the nineteen-year-old blacksmith over the ensuing two years he spent at Yuquot? Maquinna spared Jewitt’s life. When the old sailmaker was discovered in his hidey hole, Jewitt claimed the man was his father and begged the chief to spare him too. What would life be like for a lone Englishman among strangers who’d murdered his shipmates? Maquinna acquiesced. What did he see in the young blacksmith? Was it just his alchemical skill in turning metal into weaponry or was it something else?
I find it ironic that the journal’s entitled “White Slaves.” From what I’ve read, Jewitt was no slave. I presume the title was the publisher’s invention. Indeed, the first-hand ethnographic account created a sensation when published in 1815. Jewitt was adopted into Maquinna’s family; arrangements were made for him to marry the daughter of a nearby chief, and he bonded with the community. Having to chop and carry wood was his main complaint. In time, Maquinna gave Jewitt slaves of his own.
When I read that the heads of the horrified crew were placed on sticks around the cove, a new vision fills my mind. Are these the skulls still trapped in the basement of the American Museum in New York? If not, whose skulls are they? Before I drift off at night, I dwell on these murdered men. What happened to their headless bodies? Are their bones sunk in ooze and algae beneath the sea, or did they burn along with the ship? This place has seen much death.
I feel a quick stab where the vertebrate broke in my back and remember how my legs were kicked out from under me. I spend hours walking the path I’ve named the Trail of Graves and exploring the cemetery with its twentieth century dates and massive headstones. What befell those poor souls? And what of all the mariners whose ships capsized and sank in this “Graveyard of the Pacific?”
On Wednesday, April 23, I’m curled up musing when my bed suddenly shifts.
Stretching out my arms, I cling to each side. It feels as if several hands are clutching it and shoving it back and forth across the room. The Spirits! I’ve called them from their graves!
Springing up, I stare at the bed, then use my teacherly voice: “I’m sorry. Please leave me alone.”
From out of the silence, a voice rumbles and I flinch. “Yeah, we just experienced a sizable earthquake here. Did you all feel that? Everyone all right?”
Earthquake? What? The voice is real. It’s a man. On the radio. I shake my head at my own folly. Am I losing my mind? As the night wears on, the wind roars and rain pelts the windows. I curl up in bed but cannot sleep. What if the epicenter had been closer? What if this house, perched on the edge of a rock overhanging the Pacific Ocean, slipped off into the sea? Would I join the spirits of this place and never make it home? Be trapped here forever, like them? At last, I drowse.
At daybreak, I perceive an eerie silence. I think of the Earth. She is a real and vibrant force, and very much alive in all her guises. Gaea. Terra. Mother Earth. From time to time, she rocks humanity in her arms to remind us who’s in charge.
A week before I’m scheduled to fly home, I pride myself on my accomplishments at Nootka. I’ve sunk into the history of this place, given over 160 marine weather reports and 50 aviation reports, survived a 6.7-magnitude earthquake, and not hurt myself once. As a lightkeeper, I’ve grown in confidence. I could retire from teaching and apply for a station of my own.
On Saturday, I awaken in darkness and report the 4:30 weather, then flop back into bed to rest. When 7:00 arrives, I wander outside only to encounter a dense circle of fog enveloping the station—yet when I stare straight up, the sky is clear and blue. I’m standing in a doughnut hole. What obscure trick of Nature is this?
After the warm air clears the fog, I set off for my hike. Rather than wear my clunky rubber boots, I embrace Spring by breaking out my runners for the first time. On my way back to the station, I stop to chat with a biologist and photograph the otters in the cove. A rainbow flotilla of sea kayakers settles on the beach. It’s a beautiful day, and the Uchuck III will soon be arriving with scads of sightseers eager to explore this place I’ve grown to love. I wave to the kayakers and mount a massive driftwood log I’ve used as a bridge for weeks. I’m halfway across when I realize I’m still holding the wolf stick I keep at the end of the log. I turn back, stash it in its usual place, and begin again. I’m nearing the end when my toe catches on a nub and CRASH! Down I go, hard on my shin. Pain shoots up my leg.
Is it broken? Am I broken again? Dare I tell Mr. T?
I limp up the switchback to the lighthouse. The impact leaves a long, bloody abrasion down my shin. I slather it with lavender oil and cover it with gauze, hoping to avoid infection. I keep my leg up while the bruise spreads from knee to ankle—eight inches long and three inches wide.
You’re not cut out for this, the voice chides. It’s time to go home.
This time, I listen. One day the wound will heal, but I’ll carry my scars forever, along with my recollections of a year spent working on the BC lights.
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