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Forgotten Lighthouse - continued of his house, the sound of his daughter playing the piano. Not the high notes, but the very low ones. In an apparent "Aha!" moment, he realized that low frequency sounds could penetrate darkness, getting around obstacles, and that this could be used to signal ships in the fog and prevent them from colliding with each other or the shoreline. (Unfortunately, he never got around to patenting his invention and died penniless. An American got the patent and the money. A lesson for all of us.) Nowhere was his invention more needed than in early 20th -century Vancouver, where businesses and homes alike happily stoked their furnaces with coal and sawdust. We were early -- if unwitting -- leaders in man-made climate change. The fall and winter smog created by this human activity kept us in a foggy haze for weeks at a time. While they didn't help us driving up 15th Street in a dense soup of fog, the foghorns at Point Atkinson and Capilano were crucial to marine navigation. And so we on solid ground learned to live with them.. .from a distance. But what would it have been like to share your few square feet of real estate with cantankerous steam engines running al night and foghorns? From all accounts, it was brutal. At Point Atkinson the keepers had an acre between themselves and horns; at Capilano they had a thin wall. From its start, life on the Capilano station, the ultimate waterfront property, was in fact characterized by isolation, hardship, illness, and heartbreak. The Capilano Fog and Light Station, formerly an unmanned light and fog bell, began operation in 1908, its keeper a Mr. Rood. He was "relieved" -- and it must have been a relief -- on May 23, 1913, by George Harris, who moved in with the light and fog engines until small living quarters were completed by the next spring, when he was joined by his wife, son Leslie, and daughter Dorothy. Life on the station was anything but ideal. To begin with, everyone in the family had to be a competent operator, since someone needed to be present at all times, minding the machines and scanning the horizon for incoming fog, day and night, every day of year. When any of them did leave the station -- weather and tide permitting -- they would row to the dock at 14th Street, to visit in West Van, or take the ferry on to Vancouver. The son, Leslie, got work in Vancouver during WWI and braved the currents of the inlet to row back and forth to Prospect Point in Stanley Park and on to town. More than once he came close to drowning trying to get home at nightin rough waters. Naturally, the kids left the station life as soon as they possibly could, Leslie to seek his fortune in Alaska (he drowned mysteriously off a ship on his way back to Vancouver), and Dorothy to marriage and life on terra firma in West Van. It is from her simply written but poignant memoir that we get some insight into family life on the station. After the death of their son in 1922, the Harrises kept on at the station hoping their situation would improve. But George was ill, worn down, no doubt, by grief and the working conditions, and continued on page 5 Capilano Fog and Light station between 1914 and 1915. The small house is nearing completion. 0032.WVA.PHO page 4