One of Canada’s Last Lightkeepers Recalls His Watch From the Rugged Coasts of Newfoundland

Barry Porter, a retired lighthouse keeper with the Canadian Coast Guard, poses near an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Courtesy of Barry Porter

Isolation, beauty, danger, rescues—Barry Porter’s two decades as a lighthouse keeper on Newfoundland’s remote coasts had its dull moments and its adventures.

He had time to do things. He spent several months rehabilitating a paralyzed beagle. He half-tamed an arctic fox.

He’s known the fear of becoming polar bear prey. He’s risked life and limb on rough seas in the middle of winter.

He’s part of a dwindling tradition of lightkeepers who have kept countless sailors safe for millennia. When he started in 1983, it threatened to be a career with no future.

“Automation was dangled over our heads my entire career and to this day,” the now-retired Porter told The Epoch Times. About half of Newfoundland and Labrador’s lighthouses have become automated since his early days in the profession. The province currently has 23 manned lighthouses out of the 51 left nationwide.

“I’ve seen some of the best equipment in the world fail, and the backup systems fail,” Porter said. “I still feel that at certain locations ... a lightkeeper perched on the cliff with a set of binoculars is far better than any computer.”

He recalled one such time his eyes saved the day where a computer might have failed.

A Crack in the Ice

Porter sat about 100 metres above sea level, looking through binoculars over Notre Dame Bay on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. He was working at the Long Point Lighthouse, the first lighthouse he was stationed at in the early years of his career.

Hunters in that region walk out several kilometres on the ice to hunt seals. A few dozen hunters were out there that March day in 1987.

“It was a beautiful sunny day, not a draft of wind—and then something changed outside. The ice started to break away from the rocks,” he said. “When you’re standing on the ice yourself, a couple miles out amongst this rough, rugged ice, you’re not aware of it, you can’t see it happening.”

He watched as the crack spread 50 metres, 200 metres, a kilometre. He ran down the stairs of the light tower to the controls of a giant foghorn on the ground level. He flipped switches and waited for the air compressor to build up enough pressure to sound a blast that could be heard some 15 kilometres out.

He blasted the foghorn five times. It was a sound with such urgency, so penetrating, that Porter himself felt the terror of it.

In was enough to warn the hunters. Back up in the tower with his binoculars, he watched as they hurried for the shore. He went to a nearby cove where some of them had come ashore and they told him that they had run into a gap in the ice the size of a lake. They had to board an ice raft to get across it.

“They thanked me for firing off the foghorn,” Porter said. “The foghorn saved people’s lives there, probably, and a human being had to be there to do that. That’s not something that a computer chip is going to do.”

Long Point Lighthouse near Crow Head on the northeast coast of Newfoundland on Sept. 19, 2019. Gareth Janzen/Shutterstock

Porter helped many others over the years, including a ship whose pilot got lost in rough seas late one night. He guided him via radio into a safe port.

Porter developed a keen eye even without his binoculars, and that helped him make an off-duty rescue once. He spotted some kids in a lake who were in danger of drowning. No one else had realized they were in trouble, he said, but he saw them because his eyes are trained to spot trouble on the water.

He has faced danger himself at times. He recalled a dicey endeavour to make it home to his wife and young son for Christmas day in 1997. 

Getting Home for Christmas

Porter was working at the Surgeon Cove Head Lighthouse on Exploits Islands at the time, and he was ready for the shift switch. He worked one month on, one month off, and got every second Christmas off. At some lighthouses, he worked solo, but at this one he had a work partner. They were eagerly awaiting their replacements ahead of Christmas when a bad storm kicked up.

Usually the crew change is done with a helicopter, but no helicopter was coming for them in that weather. It was a 30-kilometre ride on open ocean by boat, and it wasn’t likely anyone was coming by boat either. But their replacements knew how important it was to them to get home for Christmas, and they hired a local boater with enough skill and courage to make the trip.

“It was a northeast wind, probably 60–80 mile-an-hour wind, and it was a big sea,” Porter recalled. “At Surgeon Cove Point Lighthouse, there is no wharf, there’s no dock. It’s on the edge of a cliff and you got to just jump.”

He knew if he didn’t time it just right, he'd end up in the freezing cold ocean amid huge swells.

The boat was rising and falling some four to six kilometres, Porter said. The rocks were icy and treacherous. The replacement workers threw their supplies up for Porter and his partner to catch, then jumped ashore themselves. He waited for the boat to rise to its peak, and made the jump.

It wasn’t exactly “by the book”—it flouted all the safety regulations—but “it was just something we had to do and lightkeepers did it all around the island back then,” he said.

“Thankfully, I got home for Christmas to my wife and my little boy.”

Aerial view of Long Point Lighthouse, which was constructed in 1876 and is still active. Russ Heinl/Shutterstock

Porter’s daughter was born the following year. He found it hard being away from his children so much as they grew up. But on the other hand, he said, he was available for them 24/7 every other month when he was at home.

The job had its tradeoffs in many ways.

The scenery included icebergs, rugged cliffs, snowy owls, and minke whales. Polar bears sometimes came around, and he recalled the nervous business of going outside for some of his duties when a polar bear had been spotted nearby. He saw tracks, but luckily never had a close encounter.

Rehabilitating a Dog, Feeding a Fox

Porter often had his beagle, Gypsy, with him for company. Gypsy filled his time for the better part of one of his years as a lightkeeper when she got a slipped disc in her back and became paralyzed.

He flew Gypsy out to Guelph, Ont., for back surgery, but she was still like “a piece of rubber” when she returned, Porter said. He was stationed at the Long Point lighthouse in Twillingate at the time, the same place he saved the hunters from the break in the ice.

The lighthouse was built in 1876 and is a heritage site that draws tourists. Porter recalled how Gypsy stole the show, with tourists often paying her more attention than the lighthouse and the icebergs.

Gypsy, Barry Porter's beagle, with the Long Point Lighthouse in the background. Barry Porter

Porter massaged Gypsy’s feet and ankles, bent her knees, and squeezed her hips, as part of his efforts to get her hindquarters working again. Her bladder was also affected and he had to squeeze that as well. He made her a cart to pull along with her front legs (he was a welder before becoming a lighthouse keeper), but her legs and feet would still get sores from rubbing.

He took her swimming in a local lake as part of her rehabilitation. After months without progress, he was starting to lose hope and the water was starting to cool as fall approached. Then he felt a kick from her hind leg.

“I said, ‘Wow, there’s a signal coming from her brain, to her spine, to her legs,” Porter recalled. He kept at it, and Gypsy recovered about 80 percent use of her hind legs, he estimates. She couldn’t run, but she could walk, and her bladder functioned normally again. She lived another seven years, to the age of 14.

Gypsy was with him berry picking on Bacalhao Island some years later when a grey fox scurried out of the bushes and startled him. It was 1991 and he was working at a lighthouse on the small island, which is only about three kilometres long and 100 metres wide, Porter said.

Barry Porter stands on a ladder at the Bacalhao Island lighthouse in Newfoundland and Labrador. Courtesy of Barry Porter

Bacalhao Island lighthouse has been in operation on Bacalhao Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, since 1894. Kraig Anderson/Lighthousefriends.com

A view of Surgeon Cove Head lighthouse at the northwest point of the Exploit Islands, Newfoundland and Labrador. Barry Porter

When Porter encountered the fox on the island, he figured it must have drifted over on an ice floe and gotten stranded there. As winter came, he spotted the fox getting closer to the lighthouse around dinner time, likely drawn by the smell of food cooking. Its grey fur had turned a beautiful white.

“I started saving up some some bones, some scraps, a piece of fat, a piece of meat, and I started throwing it out to the fox,” he said. Over the course of a few weeks, he threw the food scraps closer and closer to the lighthouse. Eventually, the fox would take it right off his fork. And one day, it brought him a little fox pup—it must have been pregnant when it landed on the island.

“It was a thrill to have that interaction with such a wild animal,” he said.

Barry Porter poses on the shore near his home in Porterville, Newfoundland and Labrador. Courtesy of Barry Porter

Porter misses some aspects of that lifestyle, but his retirement isn’t so different. He lives in the town he grew up in, Porterville, with a population of 45. It’s on the northern coast of Newfoundland, in sight of the ocean and not far from the places he kept watch as a lightkeeper.

He started a diary in 1985, and a few years ago he drew from it to write the book “Adventures of a Lightkeeper: A Memoir.” He plans to write a children’s book about Gypsy next.

In the book, Porter looks back not only on his own experiences, but also at the long tradition of lightkeepers, including the pioneer lightkeepers who worked at the same four lighthouses he did.

“I’m old school and I still feel that they serve a purpose,” he said of lightkeepers. In addition to spotting flares, maintaining equipment, boosting coastal security, and making rescues, he sees it also as more than just a job.

“Keeping light is a way of life,” he said.