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September 1994 WEST VANCOUVER HISTORICAL SOCIETY Paged Point Atkinson Lighthouse, Its History and Destiny By: Donald Graham In the summer of 1912 the original Point Atkinson tower, a frame structure bolted to a limestone foundation, ramshackle after four decades of battering by wind and weather, was replaced by a concrete tower of unusual design. Few places have been put on the map with as much flair and for so fine a purpose as West Vancouver was by the sculpted concrete light tower on Point Atkinson. It was almost as if its creator. Colonel WilliamPatrick Anderson, had foreseen that this station would be selected to assume its well-deserved place as one of Parks Canada’s National Historic Sites. As Chainnan of the Dominion Lighthouse Board and Chief Engineer of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, Anderson yearned to go down in history as the last of the great lighthouse builders. Point Atkinson offered the best pedestal anywhere to flaunt his genius to countless captains and crews plying the Pacific Rim. For Vancouverites, his hexagonal tower embraced by six curved buttresses quickly became an icon, its profile appearing endlessly on calendars, letterheads, brochures and TV ads. The point was named for “a particular friend” by Captain George Vancouver on his first visit to the site of the metropolis and super port to bear his name on 4 July 1792. Some eighty years later shipping lobbies in the newly formed Province of British Columbia pressed hard for a light at the mouth of Burrard Inlet, at Cape Beale on Barkley Sound and at Entrance Island off Nanaimo Hector Langevin, Minister of Public Works, made their case in Ottawa and awarded a contract to Arthur Finney for the sum of $4,250. Ottawa originally planned the light for Point Grey, then Passage Island, but changed its mind again when the Marine Agent in Victoria argued for Point Atkinson, a much superior location which “would lead directly in and out of Burrard Inlet”. This was a fortuitous choice indeed, incorporating 181 acres of old growth forest into a Crown Land Reserve as a backdrop for what would eventually be the “daymark” - - a white tower capped with a red beacon room. Future keepers would also have an “inexhaustible supply” of kindling and fuel for the steam driven fog horns. Finney’screw completed consfruction on 10Junel874. The supplier of the light. Stone Chance, sent out the wrong one from Birmingham; a replacement arrived and was “lit up” at sundown on 14 January 1875. A succession of nine keepers and assistants and their families have provided fail-safe operation of the light and hora ever since. In March 1875 Edwin Woodward and his wife Ann, the first white woman in West Vancouver, landed at the station. On 25 April 1876 Edwin delivered his third child, James Atkinson Woodward, the first white child bom in West Vancouver. When James went off his mother’s milk, a cow was brought over by tugboat. The crew tied a line to her horns and unceremoniously dumped her overboard. Woodward reeled her ashore and hacked a trail up to the house. Strange as it may seem today with its four thousand annual visitors. Point Atkinson proved too isolated for Ann Woodward; there was only a sawmill at the foot of Hastings Street and an Indian village at Kitsilano. They packed up after five years to go farming in Ontario. The Weldwoods, who succeeded them, purchased their cow for a sixpence but stayed less than a year. In the autumn of 1880 Walter Erwin took over atPoint Atkinson. For the next three decades the Erwins would become synonymous with the lighthouse in the public mind. Erwin, a Moody ville resident, had been recommended by T.R. Mclnnis, MP for New Westminster. His name appears on a list of the sixteen original homesteaders of West Vancouver. He pre-empted a large area near the lighthouse, known today as Cypress Park, one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods on the West Coast A steam fog hora was installed in 1889 at the behest of Canadian Pacific Steamships. “Should any accident occur to any of the steamers in the Narrows”, their President warned, “it would be a serious matter to a young town like Vancouver.” The arrival of a fog hora on a station entailed a revolutionary transformation of the keeper’s responsibilities. Before, the sounding of the horn was the prerogative of ships’ captains. Steaming toward the harbour through fog, the captain gave the order to sound three rapid blasts of his ship’s hora. When they heard this signal, Erwin and his fellow keepers would carry a hand-horn outside. This hora was a system of twin bellows, worked by wrenching a handle back and forth. Lightkeepers would pump away at prescribed intervals until signalled by the vessel to stop. The old hand hora is still on the station and is in working order. Once the steam plant was built, however, ships’ masters no longer initiated the signal. It was up to the keeper to shovel coal and raise steam whenever fog or smoke advanced to within four miles during squalls, heavy rain, or snowstorms. “At all times, night and day ... a careful watch on the weather is to be maintained,” Erwin was instructed, “and on no account whatever is this regulation to be broken, even during prevailing clear weather.” The horn, sitting in its lair down below, was a mechanical tyrant Once a month he had to open the boiler, crawl into its damp innards, hammer off any deposits on the walls, and hose it out When the plant was in operation he was compelled to stay inside, in that ear-splitting din of hissing steam and flapping belts, with the bellowing hora rattling tools on their racks. Erwin could be relieved “for meals &c” (sic) only by another competent hand. When thick weather finally cleared (in 1896 he logged 1450 hours of it), he had to shut the plant down, rub down all the machinery, sweep up coal dust, dump clinkers out the grates, then polish lubricators, flywheel rims, and all the other brass work before locking the doors and trudging up to the house to watch for more fog. In clear weather he packed sacks of coal and hauled water for the boiler. In February 1897 Erwin exhausted his annual coal supply and began cutting trees for fuel. All too often it was an exercise in frustration when the fog stopped by long enough to exhaust his entire supply of kindling, then capriciously moved on. Continued on Page 5