The Current - The fight to save a Centuries old Nova Scotia lighthouse

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

The Seal Island lighthouse sits on a remote island of the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia. The lighthouse has served as both a welcome and a warning to mariners who travel along the coastline since 1831. But now its future is uncertain, as a new steel tower is being built to replace it. Chris Mills is a former Seal Island lighthouse keeper. He talks to guest host Piya Chattopadhyay about the fight to save the Seal Island lighthouse.

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find two blocks from the White House every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. including YouTube. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. That's the sound of the foghorn from the lighthouse on Seal Island in Nova Scotia. It's a remote island near the southwestern tip of that province near the Bay of Fundy. The wooden structure is one of the oldest of its kind in North America. The lighthouse has served as both a welcome and a warning to mariners who travel along the coastline.

since 1831. But now its future is uncertain as a new steel tower is being built to replace it. Chris Mills is a former keeper of the lighthouse, and he is now in a fight to preserve the century's old structure. Chris is in Catch Harbor, Nova Scotia. Chris, good morning. Good morning, Pia. That sound does my heart good. I just love that. I worked for a year as a keeper on Seal Island, and that sound, that horn, tree blasts a minute, just, becomes part of your soul. And there's so few left now, it's just wonderful to hear it. I love that. I love that. So that's what it sounds like. Can you describe the lighthouse? And what it was like, as you say, you work there, to be inside of it?

It was incredible. I've worked five shifts month on, month off, for over the period of a year from 1989 to 1990. And I had been visiting Seal Island since the age of seven or so. We actually own a home on the island to this day. But it was my first time working as a like keeper. So here I was a 24 year old neophyte keeper thrilled to bits to be inside this amazing tower, 67 feet tall, so roughly 22, 23 meters, built of these massive hand-hewn beams, some of them more than 40 feet in length that were brought out to the island by a sailing vessel. You couldn't even wrap your arms around them inside the tower, about two feet, two feet square, hand-hune, all upright. I don't even know how they put them upright. And then more or less of a post and beam construction. And when you got to the top

of the tower underneath the lantern, which is the big enclosure that holds the light itself, there were these awesome, amazing natural growth knees basically cut from the roots of trees and they supported this deck. So you felt like you were in a sailing ship and that feeling was amplified when you were in the tower in a gale of wind because it would give and creak and groan and you'd hear that fog corn on the shore. and it was almost like being on the sea. It was amazing. So the East Coast has no shortage of lighthouses, Chris, and this one is on a remote island. As you said, your family has a place there. Tell me more about Seal Island and the origins of this lighthouse. Seal Island is 18 miles west of Clark's Harbor on Cape Sable Island. Not to be confused with Sable Island, which is another graveyard of the Atlantic.

It's remote, but it's big. It's 1,000 acres. So it did be. provide a living for the folks who moved out there in 1823 to set up a life-saving station so they could have gardens and they could have livestock and so on. But it's a strange place when you're going out by boat on a calm summer day, it's kind of unprepossessing. It's just a smudge on the horizon. It's not big and craggy and rough and rugged. It's just this low little island. But as you get closer, you realize that it's surrounded by reefs and very dangerous tides of up to 15 feet. So tides in excess of three meters and huge currents. A lightkeeper who lived on nearby Bond Portage Island described it as the wicked elbow of the Bay of Fundy.

So think of the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean funneling up around the corner in the approaches to the Bay of Fundy. And imagine the tides, the fog, the tempests. And this area claimed hundreds of ships starting in the mid-18th century right through to the present day. So it's a very dynamic and dangerous place. And so, Chris, you worked there. It was some time ago, as you say, what was it like to work there as a keeper? What's the job like? Well, the job had changed a lot, Pia, by the time I got there in 1989.

Automation actually had begun in the early 70s. So keepers had lost the hand zone. work they were doing with turning the lights on and starting up fog signal compressors and all that sort of thing. That happened a long time ago, but the stations were still staffed. So we were still keeping an eye on automated equipment. Once in a while, the fog detector didn't work too well, so I'd have to go down and switch the fog horn on manually. Obviously, we had lots of painting to do, very exposed area. I'm looking at a picture of the tower right now and seeing that it needs a good coat of paint.

So we would have been painting towers, buildings, maintaining fences, building fences, Actually, we were still helping the Mariners. We had a fellow show up one day who had a leak in his exhaust in his fishing boat and had a touch of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was okay but needed a part that we were able to supply. So even right up until 1990, we were doing useful things for the Mariners. And I should mention as well reporting the weather. So we were still providing a useful service, even though automation had started so many years before. And so you're looking at a picture, like all things that are aging and aged,

Did they have their wear and tear? What's it like? What state is this lighthouse in now, Chris? Well, the amazing thing is I'm fortunate enough to be able to get inside it once in a while. When the text are there, sometimes you can get inside the technicians from the Coast Guard. So inside, it's in really good shape, aside from a couple of major leaks. From the outside, picture a tapered 67-foot wooden tower, eight-sided with two red bands. and the red bands are barely recognizable as red, maybe kind of a rusty color, and the white is just pocked with rotten shingles and peeling paint, and the lantern has hardly has a stitch of paint on it, and it just looks abysmal.

However, it probably outlast you and me, but it needs help. And so it's been given heritage status, which of course is different in different jurisdictions, what that means. So what is your understanding of what that means? is this lighthouse not being preserved if it has that heritage status? Well, it's classified, Pia, which to my understanding, means that the Coast Guard, the federal government, cannot tear it down, not easily anyway, but they can let it fall down by neglecting it, which is what's been happening. I was just looking at some information from the National

Trust for Canada, and this kind of sums up the way the federal government is treated, not only lighthouses, but other historic sites, built heritage sites across the country. This lighthouse provides a vivid, even textbook example of the inadequacy of the government's heritage building protection policies. Only 3% of Canadian lighthouses have genuine heritage protection. And this is one of the lights that needs that protection and does not have it. And so for those who might say, well, look, it was this working lighthouse for many years, a very important part to people who live there and work there, Chris. But maybe we don't need to preserve it. Like what purpose would it serve to preserve this thing?

When you think, Pia, that this tower and so many more are tied to our development as a nation. They saved lives. They guided shipping. They aided commerce, which helped build our economy. They're part of our history. They're part of our culture. They're part of our identity, especially as coastal dwellers. They're iconic.

They're used for tourism purposes. and it's not fair for the Coast Guard and the federal government to say, well, our mandate is not to maintain this lighthouse. No, your mandate is, I believe, to work with community groups, don't provide barriers, provide avenues through which they can more easily take over structures like this. And in some cases, towers have been taken over by communities, but the Coast Guard still maintains a light at the top. I think that would be a great idea for Seal, but I'm looking at a picture right now that shows an ugly galvanized tower. 20 meters from this beautiful 1831 colonial wooden-construct a tower. And so it's, it's not looking good. That's the new steel tower you're referring to there? Correct. And so tell me more about that and how that would look, how it operates those kinds of things. Well, I don't want to use the adjectives that I'd like to use, but it's about ugly. It's really, really ugly. And these are very, very humble. I have to, you know, I call it a spade a spade. It's about a meter and a half.

square. If you're familiar with the old mechano sets that kids used to build, and adults, too, build toys with, it just looks like that. It's a square galvanized tower on a concrete pad with a chain-linked fence and gate around it, and it's going to rise something like 20 meters into the air, into the sky, so to speak, and it will be topped with either a fixed flashing or rotating LED, which the Coast Guard says is going to provide a brighter, crisper beam, which could happen from the old tower as well, but this is what's going to happen. So it's quite ugly. And we've got this situation at many other lights across Nova Scotia and beyond that are basically with gaping holes falling down and they've got these metal towers next to them. So it really is an insult, especially to the history of something

like Seal Island, which is so, so ingrained in local culture and still represents an age to navigation. It's still an operational lighthouse. You know, Chris, I'm a gal from the prairies, and listening to you reminds me a lot of when wooden grain elevators started being destroyed or falling apart over the years. And there was always a push to try and preserve them. Most of them have been replaced by concrete and steel terminals. I see a parallel to what you talk about on the East Coast. This is happening in different places in our countries in different ways, isn't it? Absolutely. And as we were talking, I was thinking about green elevators. We've made this comparison before. You have these tall, imposing iconic structures that represent, well, in much in the same way that lighthouses

represent the economic growth of our country to say nothing of everything else, culturally, and so on. Green elevators do the same thing. And, you know, in light of our really poor track record of saving built heritage in Canada, we really need to step up and save what's left. I think it's really, really important. And Seal Island embodies this idea that we really need to make something happen positive for this lighthouse. So you're in the fight to try and preserve this, Chris, along with others. How hopeful are you that you're going to win? Well, it's, I'm not directly involved. There is a society in Clark's Harbor, which is working really hard with municipal and other government levels to try to make something work. Currently, it can't be done.

divested because it's an operational lighthouse. So the question is, what happens after the new tower goes up and is operational? How many roadblocks? How many hurdles? How much bureaucracy has to be dealt with? And unfortunately, there's a lot of it. So in the meantime, this tower is slowly falling apart. It's going to stand a long time, but the longer we wait, the more expensive and time-consuming, it will be to restore it.

So the time to act is now. It's got to be done now. This is a very, very, very important site. Chris, it's been really good to listen to you and to hear just how much you love this lighthouse. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for your time, Pia. Chris Mills is a former keeper of the Seal Island Lighthouse. We reached him in Catch Harbor, Nova Scotia.

We reached out to the Canadian Coast Guard and the Department of National Defense, and they sent us a statement that reads in part, quote, as well as the importance of maintaining a reliable navigational aid at this location to ensure the continued safety of mariners. The statement added that construction of a 21-meter-tall steel tower began this week, and it should be operational by the end of August. It went on to say that no decisions have been made about the existing lighthouse structure,

but in the short term, a fence will be built around it to ensure the public safety. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.