Moments after Alice Woods got a bulletin from Ottawa announcing the government had abandoned plans to phase out lighthouse keepers on both the East and West coasts, she typed an e-mail to her colleagues.

“Thanks to all for your work for the people of the coast. You have, as always, protected them,” she wrote from her base at the Chatham Point light station, overlooking the Inside Passage, on British Columbia’s south coast.
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The fight to preserve Canada’s staffed lighthouses, which began almost three decades ago, took on new momentum after keepers learned last September that the government was planning to fully automate the country’s remaining manned light stations.

That news was enough to prompt Steve Bergh, who has been a keeper at Chatham Point light station on northeastern Vancouver Island for the past 20 years, to cancel plans to retire in order to throw his weight behind efforts to prevent the move.

“I felt a responsibility to the users,” says Bergh, also president of B.C. Lightkeepers Local 20232.