Lighting Time

I guess every little kid has some thrilling event in their childhood that stands out above all else through their life, and so it has been with me. I have done some things in my life that set the adrenalin pumping, but nothing has ever compared with lighting time.

My dad took over as light keeper on Green Island in the fall of 1928, six years before I was born. My older siblings spent their early years there, drifting away when the Siren call of the outside world, was heard, first my brother Willis to the “North Country” to work in the gold mines in Timmins. Irene, my eldest sister, would marry, Doug Fanning , and they would become the parents of our poet laureate , Jimmy Doug.

Sister Ardie would wend her way to Halifax and work in various jobs there during the harsh years of WWII, eventually marrying Vernon Zwicker and returning to a life on the Island.

Brother Jimmy; who lived but eighteen months and succumbed to spinal meningitis, left a large hole in the family’s life. My parents talked and reminisced fondly of him to the day of their deaths.

I’m not sure how old I was when I first went up with my dad to ‘light’ the light. Probably about five years of age. The apparatus was a thing of awe; I would drift off to sleep at night, with the throaty roar of the light, in my ears, for it filled the whole dwelling with it’s noise when it was lit.

We would climb the stairs from the living room and turn right off the hall into the light room, a room about 10 x 12 feet that housed the supplies for the light and I can still see in my minds eyes the large bottle of methyl hydrate that sat on the work bench, this was used to preheat the generator tube. 

The apparatus was of French design and manufacture, and consisted of two metal tanks, one of about thirty liters, for kerosene, the about one hundred fifty liters for compressed air. These tanks were situated just below the lantern, in a small space appropriately called the tank room.

The tanks were inter connected by copper tubing, fitted with valves to control the flow of air and oil. The air was supplied by a brass hand pump.

Dad would say to me, “I guess it’s time to go up and light the light”. so we would mount the stairs, and the first thing was to fill the oil tank from a carrying can, then he would pump the air to forty eight PSI.

Then we would go to the lantern. Dad would polish the reflectors, using flannel and jewellers rouge. The reflectors were parabolic in shape and made of silvered copper. After this was done he would fjll the spirit pan (this is the wording in the instruction book for that apparatus) with methyl hydrate. This pan surrounded the base of the generator and was used to pre-heat it so the kerosene would vaporize upon contact with the hot metal.

While the alcohol burned, dad would spin me a wonderful yarn of hunting or fishing , or of an imaginary brother and sister whose names were Johnny and Mary. Or he would lift me up so I could see out the lantern windows and point out land marks to me such as Fenton’s Ridge, The
Haycock, Green Island Hill, now known as Tower Hill, (It lies back of Donahues Lake) and is the site of a fire tower,) and other points of interest on the mainland or at sea.

The alcohol would be burned by the time the story ended-and now was the time!  Dad would give me a Buffalo match (anyone remember them?) and I would clutch it tightly in my hand, he would go down to the tank room and turn the valve on the air tank that admitted the compressed air to
the oil tank, this forced the kerosene upward toward the generator and burner and as all the lines had been drained down, it took about ten seconds for the oil to reach the generator.

As soon as he opened the valve dad would quickly run up the few steps to the lantern and pick me up so that I could touch the match to the hot burner to ignite it, then hold the flame to the white oil vapour forming above the diffuser cone at the top of the burner. Mission control; we
have Ignition!! The white vapour would turn to blue flame with a roar, and dad would pass me the pliers to pick up the mantle carrier, which had a diameter of 55mm, and the mantle was this diameter by 110mm high. I would set the mantle carefully on the burner top and the lantern would be lit as if with the light from a hundred suns. I was taught not to look directly at the light when the mantle was in place, and it was advised that dark glasses should be worn.

Dad would adjust the burner draft so as to get maximum brilliance, wind the clockwork mechanism that caused the light to revolve and when he was satisfied we would go down to supper.

I will never forget the rush of applying the match that lit the Light!

Shanachie