July 7, Flag Raising and Bell Ringing

With spectacular weather, a group of nearly 100 people walked out to the keepers house at Swallow Tail on July 7th, the 152nd anniversary of the light house first being lit.  Two RCMP officers were present, along with the Honourable Rick Doucet, the MLA for the area and Kirk Cheney representing the Village of Grand Manan who have been very supportive of the restoration efforts at the Swallow Tail light station and are in the process of reconsolidating the light station with the acquisition of the light tower in the near future. 



RCMP officers breaking flag at annual flag raising

 After a brief welcoming, Wayne Clifford, John Peacock, MJ Edwards, Millie and Alexandre Banks played an impromptu piece on the bronze fog bell, returned to the property in November 2011.  The new deck around the bell acted as a natural stage for the event.  Members of Before the Mast (http://www.beforethemastseashanties.com/) continued with two songs before everyone was given a chance to play the bell if they wished.

The Lahey Family was represented to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of 22 years of service by George Lahey as light keeper .  The Dalzell family regrettably could not make the event which also marked the 100th anniversary of the retiring of George Dalzell as light keeper after 19 years of service.

Before the Mast helping celebrate the Swallow Tail light station anniversary

The descendants of the late light keeper, George Lahey, ringing the fog bell

Despite damage from many years of use and also being moved several times, the bell sounded wonderful and could be heard beyond the peninsula.  Listen to three different strikes of the bell here: http://www.freesound.org/people/bob.burgess/sounds/160882/

Looking for former light keepers at Swallowtail and photos



Colourful sky behind Swallowtail Light at sunset January 3, 2011



We were successful in being awarded a grant from Heritage Canada Legacy Fund in April.  This grant is dedicated to the former lightkeepers at Swallowtail Light on Grand Manan Island and will involve returning the brass fog bell to the peninsula this summer, upgrading the trails, parking and installing a winch for the stairs. 

The one problem we have is a gap in our knowledge of all of the light keepers and assistant light keepers who have worked at Swallowtail Light.  We are also interested in getting copies of any photographs of the former keepers that can be added to the historical display we are developing.

Please let us know if you have anything that might be of help.

Grand Manan Museum Lighthouse Life Evening

On Tuesday, July 27, the Grand Manan Museum held a "Lighthouse Life" evening with a number of guest speakers who had lived and worked at a number of lighthouses and fog stations around Grand Manan.

Howard Ingalls started off the night. He and his wife had been stationed at Swallowtail in 1957-1959. A wealth of information about the technical aspect of running a light station, tending the light at Swallowtail in the late 1950s was relatively easy because the light was electric. He did need to turn it off at dawn and on again at dusk.


He lived in both the original keepers house and the "modern" duplex. When the wind blew hard, he said the roof would lift on the old keepers house so much that you could see daylight. He couldn't understand why the roof didn't completely blow off. It was a real treat to have a new house that could be heated and wasn't in need of constant repair. The heat for the house was initially coal brought by the government steamers and winched up the hill on the tramway. This was also how all the building materials for the new house were landed. The boathouse had a large barrel stove in it and a Wisconsin engine and a Fairbanks winch to bring the car up the tram way. There was another winch further down the cliff where a derrick was located and supplies were winched from boats into the car and carried up the cliff. The boathouse was used as a workshop and also a place to store the dory which could also be winched up and down the cliff. Even a high water it was necessary to use the derrick to lower or lift items into the cove because the tram way did not go all the way to the water's edge. There are many records of the tram way needing repair after storms but that was also the case for the buildings and walkways which took the full force of storms.

He and Perry Ingersoll, son of Gilbert Ingersoll who was an assistant keeper at Swallowtail and also a casual keeper himself, related getting water at Swallowtail in the new house. The water was brought from Saint John by the government steamer and pumped into the cistern. There was a manual pump that was used to pump the water from the cistern to the attic and from the attic was gravity feed throughout the house. When an electric pump was installed, it greatly improved the ease of pumping the water to the attic. Although the keepers duplex was equipped with gutters to catch rain water from the roof, the wind blew so hard that very little rain was ever captured. This water could not be trusted as drinking water and cans of water were often carried onto the point. As Perry Ingersoll related, no one ever walked out to the point empty handed. A 308' well was drilled in 1966 at the top of the stairs. This provided water to the house but it took a long time to fill the cisterns and in the winter the line would freeze so the cisterns could only be filled during a warm period, above freezing. Perry remembered missing school one day when a load of "bad" water was brought from Saint John. It took quite a while to flush the cisterns, pump them dry, and replace with better water.



Each keeper had to supply furniture and food at each light or fog station and lived with their families. They were on call 24/7 and had two weeks a year for vacation. The modern system has changed the lives of light keepers. They work 28 days on and 28 days off and have everything supplied. Grimmer Ingersoll had a garden where he grew many of his vegetables. The large garden was located on Lighthouse Road. There was an annual moving of the garden tractor from off the point to the garden each spring and then back again when the gardening ended. The thin soil at Swallowtail didn't yield much produce. Once the concrete stairs were built (wooden stairs were there until the 1960s), the tractor could be winched up and down the stairs. The extra width to the stairs with the flat portion to one side helped when the tractor needed to be moved. Planks were temporarily placed over the stairs and the wheels could then run freely up or down the stairs. The only short coming of removing the tractor from the peninsula for the summer was that everything once again had to be carried by hand. The path had to be widened for the tractor and rocks were removed by pick-axe or dynamite!


Children often boarded with relatives to go to school, although the luxury of living at Swallowtail meant that there was access to the North Head village and school after hiking across the point, the bridge and the stairs, although Perry Ingersoll and Laurel Hinsdale, daughter of Grimmer Ingersoll and cousin to Perry, said that they sometimes headed off to school (in all kinds of weather), only to find it cancelled. Laurel clearly remembers the Groundhog Day Gale in 1976. Small pebbles were being carried through the air and hitting on the school house. The children were sent home but the wind was so strong that Laurel couldn't get home herself and her father came to walk her to the house. The wind was so strong they had to crawl the entire way. Whenever the weather was bad he would pick up the children at the school or at the bus stop and help them get home so they wouldn't be blown off the trail and potentially over the cliff edge. Communication was not as convenient as today but there was a crank phone which connected the garage at the top of the hill to the keepers house to the lighthouse.



When the Fish Fluke Point Light or Grand Harbour Light was decommissioned, Grimmer Ingersoll got permission to move the garage to Swallowtail. Penny O'Neill remembered having a trapeze in the building when her family lived at Fish Fluke Point. They also kept the rabbits they trapped in the building. Perry remembers being involved with his father Gilbert and Grimmer. Both had Jeeps, a Landrover and a Scout. They jacked up the building and removed parts of the floor where barrels were fitted to help the building float. They manoeuvred the building to the water's edge and towed it to Ingalls Head. Although when they started the wind was light, a stiff breeze was blowing by the time they started towing the building across Grand Harbour. They were not sure they were going to make it to Ingalls Head but fortunes prevailed and they were able to make the crossing. On the Ingalls Head side, they fitted wheels under the building and were able to tow it to the head of the Ingalls Head road and left it by the theatre until the next day. They only used both Jeeps on steep sections and had little problem getting the building almost to Swallowtail. The very steep hill did cause problems and they had to use both Jeeps and all the horsepower they had to get the building the last distance. The building was perched out over the knoll and Grimmer installed a hatch in the floor so he could work on vehicles.

The walls of the garage are covered in various colours of paint that Grimmer used to paint the interior of the lighthouse and the keepers house. He was known to mix colours together to come up with new colours and when he cleaned his brushes, the colours were added to the walls. The lighthouse was open to the public and the keepers were responsible for keeping it looking presentable. There was a guest book and furniture in the lighthouse on the second of the three floors. Each level was painted a different colour. It wasn't until the strobe fog detector system was installed in 1970 and a room built to contain the equipment that the lighthouse was then locked.


A lightkeeper's life was not easy and the whole family joined in whether it was learning how to light the light, run the fog horn or just general maintenance. The work was not easy and the living standards varied depending on where the light house was located. Swallowtail was considered one of the better locations. But along with the light and fog horn duties, the keepers had to fill out weather reports, maintenance reports, paint, make minor repairs, welcome visitors and as a courtesy, the fog bell at Swallowtail was rung every time the ferry went by.

Not all Work

I often think of tending a light as being one of work, whether maintenance of the property or the light but because families often lived at these light stations, there was time for entertainment. Norma Neves loaned me this photo of her mother Alma Naves on a seesaw with Doris Moses, taken in 1959. You can see Swallowtail lighthouse in the background. This seesaw would have been in the yard of the old house, just above the new house. The new keepers house was built in 1958 and replaced the original 1860 house which was torn down. A replica of this seesaw would be a great addition to the property. Notice also the bird houses. There were a number of these around the keepers house and lighthouse. Not sure what species they were built for but would be a good question to ask those who lived at Swallowtail. You can also see the chimney that heated the bell house, the small addition on the lighthouse. This building was moved in 1922 from the extreme end of the peninsula to the lighthouse to make ringing the fog bell easier for the keepers, instead of hiking back and forth from the lighthouse to the bell house on the point. anyone who is familiar with the Bay of Fundy can appreciate how much work this would be in our often long stretches of fog, particularly in the summer but can occur year round , as it is today as I write this post.

Norma also had an undated photo of herself on the boardwalk leading from the keepers house to the lighthouse. You can clearly see the detail in the windows that used to grace the lighthouse, removed to reduce maintenance and water leakage. The windows were single pane, 12 over 8. The porch covering the entrance to the lighthouse also no longer exists and when the soil was removed from around the lighthouse to remove lead from years of scrapping and painting the lighthouse, the soil level is significantly lower. There was concern that the lead in the soil was slowly leaching toward the coast and could one day end up in the ocean. The boardwalks no longer exist as well, although they were an original feature when the lighthouse was built in 1860. This extensive system of boardwalks would be a wonderful asset to rebuild, however, because of the wind and winter gales, maintenance of the boardwalks was a challenge with storm damage frequently occurring. They would have to be firmly attached. The style of the railings is similar to the existing railings on the footbridge.

Thanks Norma for the loan of these photos.

Remembrance - 1918

With Remembrance Day just past, a story involving the light keepers at Gannet Rock during WW1 was brought to my attention. Light keepers were often involved in life saving and the light keepers of Grand Manan lights were no exception.

In 1918, the German navy sent U-boats to the eastern seaboard which was largely unprotected. The vessel U-156 had orders to mine New York Harbour, patrol the Gulf of Maine and in particular Boston, Saint John and Halifax harbours, cut the transatlantic cable at Canso and capture a vessel to use as a raider. Her presence in the Bay of Fundy was unknown until a load of sailors from the schooner Dornfontein landed at Gannet Rock lighthouse in dories at 6:30 AM on August 3, 1918.

"On July 31, 1918, the new four-masted schooner Dornfontein cleared Saint John harbour bound for South Africa with a load of lumber. Three days later, 10 kilometres south of Grand Manan Island, N.B., U-156 suddenly rose from the sea and brought the Dornfontein to a halt with two shots across her bow.

While the schooner’s crew was hustled aboard the submarine, the Germans looted the vessel and then set it ablaze. As the ship burned to the waterline, her crew were fed a dinner of bully beef and rice. Then, five hours after the ordeal began, the schooner’s crew was put into dories and sent off amid waves and wishes of “Good luck!”, a sentiment not shared by the crew who had been “robbed of all we had on board worth taking.” But at least the sailors had escaped with their lives, and brought their story ashore at Gannet Rock, Grand Manan, the next day." Read the complete article: http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2005/03/the-u-boat-summer-of-1918/

Stormy October Swallowtail

Fall brings with it lots of wind when you live on an island in the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. In one storm this October, one third of the Canadian flag disappeared. The wind at Swallowtail is always a bit worse because the peninsula sticks out into the bay and there are no trees or buildings to block or slow the wind.

Flags at the ferry ticket office, a short ditance away were not affected by this wind storm and always last much longer than any flying at Swallowtail. A flag that I have that is brought in each night lasts for years but has to be replaced, not from wear but because of fading.

The extreme wind was another reason for the board walks that used to connect the keepers house to the lighthouse, something to hold onto when moving between the two buildings but even those were at risk and were sometimes blown out of place and damaged in severe gales.

Here are a couple of shots of a windy October day. Northeast wind whips up seas quickly. With some wind storms, the spray can actually go over the lighthouse, hence the cables that hold the tower from toppling over.

Florida Rotarians

The time draws near (next Friday and Saturday) when a group of Rotarians from Seminole, Florida, will be arriving to help us with the buildings on the light keepers property. The paint has been donated and we have arranged for scaffolding. The group will help paint the two buildings at the top of the hill and also the light keepers house, beginning with that building on the weather sides (north and east) and seeing how much they get done.

We are overwhelmed that people from as far away as Florida would take time from their busy lives to help us. The Grand Manan Rotarians will be having their meeting on Friday morning next week instead of Thursday so these Rotarians can attend. There will also be a dinner at Castalia Marsh Retreat for a more casual interaction with each other that night. The following evening, dinner will be at the Inn at Whale Cove and hopeful an evening sail with Whales-n-Sails to see the light house property from the water and the sunset.

Anyone interested in joining in the work and play can meet Friday or Saturday morning at the Swallowtail property.

Elodie and Thomas Foster

After talking with Claire Foster today, I drove to the cemetery where both Elodie and Thomas Foster, lightkeepers at Swallowtail, are buried (on Hill Road) and easily found their grave markers alongside the road with other Fosters including Thomas' brother.

Elodie was 44 when she died because of the accident lighting the lantern at Swallowtail. Thomas lived exactly twice that time, dying when he was 88. He did remarry after Elodie's death.

The last lightkeeper at Swallowtail, Grimmer Ingersoll, is also buried in the same cemetery.