One snowy night a few years ago, Alice Woods sounded a foghorn from the lighthouse she oversees on the British Columbia coast and guided in a boater who had lost his way.

The boater arrived cold and wet at Chatham Point lighthouse, on Vancouver Island about 25 miles north of Campbell River, where Woods warmed him, fed him and kept him overnight.

“He was hypothermic and running out of fuel, out of light,” Woods recalled. “It was a bad situation.”