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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Plans to destaff lighthouses across Canada are being halted, Vancouver Island North MP John Duncan announced Wednesday morning.

“Light stations and lightkeepers on B.C.’s coast are an icon and important for safety, sovereignty and science,” said the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, in a conference call.

The lighthouse keepers are community liaisons and liaisons with government agencies “and in strategic locations where we need a presence,” Duncan said.

The support of a senate committee is great, says Jim Abram, but it’s just one step to saving manned lightstations.

The former Cape Mudge lightkeeper, and longtime advocate of maintaining manned lightstations on the B.C. coast, watched Tuesday’s announcement online as the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans said the destaffing of lighthouses should be halted.

The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is calling on the Canadian Coast Guard to halt its lighthouse destaffing plan.

Any destaffing, continued staffing or restaffing of lighthouses should only take place after consultation with lightkeepers, the committee’s report urges.

The report follows a recent visit by the committee members to lighthouses on the east and west coasts of Canada.

“The views we heard on both coasts were overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the keepers. And that is what we are unanimously recommending,” said Senator Bill Rompkey, committee chair.