Feds urged to help save lighthouses

Alan Cochrane -

Battered and bruised by the harsh weather of the Northumberland Strait, the 140-year-old lighthouse at Cape Jourimain should be a symbol of New Brunswick, but lighthouse researcher Kelly-Ann Loughery says it is more a symbol of neglect.

"There are only nine octagonal-shaped wooden lighthouse towers left in New Brunswick and that's one of them. If I had to pick one lighthouse to be saved, that's the one. How embarassing is it for people to come across the Confederation Bridge and see this," says Loughery, who is now working on a book about lighthouses.

"They are our history," she adds. "If we lose them, we can't get them back. We are the Maritime Provinces. These lighthouses have taken care of us for centuries and now its time for us to take care of them."

The Cape Jourimain lighthouse, which is part of the nature centre near the Confederation Bridge, is one of about 70 authentic lighthouse towers in New Brunswick whose future is uncertain at the moment.

Greg Fallon, executive director of the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre, said this week that the non-profit group is now working on a plan to purchase the lighthouse and restore it.

"Everyone assumes that we own it but we don't. It is still owned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans but we want to take ownership of it."

Fallon says the group is now applying for federal and provincial funding for an engineering study. He says the lighthouse needs to be moved soon, because the shoreline is eroding and it could fall into the sea in about five or six years.

Many of these towers are over 100 years old, built to guide ships through troubled waters along rocky coastlines of oceans, rivers and lakes. Over time they have become symbolic of the maritime lifestyle but are now being abandoned by the federal government.

Just days before the sinking of the current government and the election call, the Canadian Senate threw a rescue lifeline to Canada's lighthouses. The Senate's Fisheries and Oceans Committee issued a report stating that lighthouses across the country should be preserved for future generations. The Senate report says, in essence, that local communities or groups should have a chance to take possession of the the abandoned lighthouses and then apply for federal funding to fix them up and use them as a community resource. But it will be up to the next government to decide how to proceed with this plan and how much funding these community groups will get.

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