Even when the Gulf of the St. Lawrence is entered, the navigator is not free from peril. The waterway is littered with rocks and islands. Among these are Coffin Island and Anticosti, the latter being the private property of M. Henri Ménier, the French chocolate magnate. For many years the St. Lawrence was a byword to navigation, and wrecks were numerous. It was shunned by navigators and abhorred by underwriters. Even to this day the latter regard it askance, and the insurance rates are high upon vessels trading in these waters. Through the efforts of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, the Dominion Government is removing this stigma from their great marine avenue, and their engineer-in-chief. Lieutenant-Colonel William P. Anderson, to whom I am indebted for much information concerning the guardians of the Canadian coasts, has displayed commendable enterprise and ingenuity in combating the natural odds pitted against human endeavour to render the coasts of the country more friendly to navigation.
In the St. Lawrence the great foe is ice. Its onslaughts are terrific, and none but the strongest works has a chance to survive the enormous pressure exerted when the ice is on the run after the break of winter. As is well known, for some five months in the year the river is frozen so thick and solid that it will support a train. Naturally, when this armour collapses, and the floes are hurled seawards by the current, they concentrate their destructive energies upon any obstacles in their way, piling up in huge masses weighing thousands of tons. It is no uncommon circumstance for the floes to pack in a jagged heap 50 feet high, while all the time there is a continual push against the obstruction.
Under these circumstances extreme ingenuity has to be displayed in the erection of the fixed lights. The floating lights, such as buoys, escape this peril, as they are picked up when navigation ceases, to be housed in quarters on dry land, and replaced when the river is open once more. Yet it is not only the ice in itself which causes trouble. The level of the river rises when the ice is running, and this pressure alone is enormous, while the scouring action about the foundations is terrific. The type of structure adopted varies with the situation and character of the light. The beacons for the aid of navigation, in common with the practice upon American waterways, are divided into groups or ranges, and the captain picks out his channel by keeping these lights and marks in various lines. Maybe four or five lights have to be brought into line, and accordingly the height of the unit of each range varies from its fellow. Thus, the front light will be low, that behind a little higher, and so on, until the last light in the group, or “back light” of the range, as it is called, is a lofty structure.
In some places the light is placed in mid-stream, and perhaps mounted upon a massive, high, steel caisson, resting upon a concrete foundation, thereby proving immovable to the most powerful of ice-shoves. Or a large pier carried out in ferro-concrete and pyramidal in shape is used. In the case of the back light there is a skeleton tower, which structure is employed to gain the necessary height. This is carried upon a high, huge, solid plinth of concrete, even if built against the bank. The frazil ice dams the channel, causing the water to rise, and unless the foregoing precautions were adopted widespread damage would result. All the lights between the gulf and Montreal have to be protected in this manner, so that it will be seen that the adequate lighting of this waterway bristles with engineering difficulties of no light character, and is expensive.
The Canadian Government also is responsible, to a certain extent, for the lighting of the Great Lakes, which is described in another chapter, where similar difficulties prevail. It has also a long stretch of the most rugged part of the Pacific coast to patrol, aggregating about 600 miles between Victoria and Vancouver to the Portland Canal, where Canadian meets Alaskan territory. This is a wicked coast, broken and battered, as well as flanked by an outer barrier of islands, recalling the Scandinavian Peninsula in its general topographical characteristics. During the past few years the necessity of lighting this seaboard adequately has become more pronounced, owing to the creation of the new port of Prince Rupert, a few miles below Alaskan territory, where the Grand Trunk Pacific reaches down to the western sea, and the growing sea-borne traffic with Alaska. The fact that a large portion of this navigation is maintained through the inside passages, bristling with sharp turns, narrow defiles, and jagged headlands, which for the most part are wrapped generally in fog, renders the lighting problem more intricate. Probably the most important light, and certainly the loftiest on the Pacific seacoast north of the Equator, is that on the summit of Triangle Island, British Columbia. It was built in 1910, and although the lantern itself is only 46 feet in height, the elevation of the headland brings the white group-flashing light of 1,000,000 candle-power 700 feet above the sea, giving it a range of thirty-four miles. Four flashes are emitted during each ten seconds, each flash lasting 0·28 second with intervening eclipses each of 1·28 seconds, with an eclipse between each group of 5·94 seconds.
Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson has introduced a new type of reinforced concrete lighthouse with flying buttresses. The latter are not required for strength, but are utilized to give greater stiffness to the tower, as a column 100 feet or more in height, no matter how strongly it may be built, must vibrate and swing in high winds. Yet it is desirable to keep the lantern as steady as possible, and this is achieved much more completely upon the above principle. The engineer-in-chief of the lighthouse authority of the Canadian Government considers this method of construction to be the last word in lighthouse building, and has completed some notable works upon these lines. Perhaps the most important is the Estevan Point light, on the west coast of Vancouver, at a place known as Hole-in-the-Wall. The tower, of octagonal, tapering form, is 127 feet in height, and throws a white group-flashing light, comprising three flashes each of 9·3 seconds with two eclipses, each of 1·37 seconds, and a final eclipse of 6·36 seconds between each group, seventeen miles out to sea. The surroundings of this station are most romantic. Landing anywhere in its vicinity is extremely difficult and dangerous, and the engineer had to select a point about two miles distant for this purpose. From this place a road and tramway have been laid through a grand primeval forest, such as is to be found only upon Vancouver Island, wherein roams a drove of magnificent wild cattle.
While the Canadian coast cannot point to any lighthouse work comparing with the Eddystone, Skerryvore, or Heaux de Bréhat, yet its most powerful beacons are of a commanding character, representing as they do the latest and best in connection with coast lighting. There is an enormous stretch of difficult shore to patrol, along which has to be guided an immense volume of valuable shipping. In addition to the attended lights, the Government has been extremely enterprising in the adoption of unattended beacons (described in another chapter), miles of lonely, inhospitable shore being guarded in this way. Although the development in this direction is of comparatively recent date, the protection of maritime trade is being carried out in accordance with a comprehensive policy, so that within a few years the coasts of the Dominion will be rendered as safe to the shipping of the world as human ingenuity can contrive.