Jerseyman Island Lighthouse

Jerseyman Island is a crescent-shaped strip of land sitting athwart the entrance to Arichat Harbour. The island was named by members of the Robin family who migrated to Isle Madame some two hundred or more years ago from the island of Jersey to establish a fish processing plant. Extending in a NW/SE direction, it consists of three hump-like mounds of scrubby land connected by two rough, stone beaches. Approaching from seaward, the island forms part of the northern coastline of Chedabucto Bay at the entrance to the Strait of Canso - starboard hand all the way. The island is densely covered with stunted spruce and alder bushes. The seaward side is ringed with constantly breaking seas and fringed with treacherous reefs, ledges and shoals.

My family's days on Jerseyman Island, together with the lighthouse dwelling, part of a vanishing era, have long passed. Yet the unimposing, unattended white tower still stands on Beach Point. More alone than ever its fixed red lens still welcomes mariners to the harbour entrance, still beckoning "come in, this way please".In 1950 the lighthouse was replaced by the present tower and a new keeper's house. The light was automated and de-staffed in 1978. The keeper's house was removed from the island in 1980.

It was springtime in the year 1930 when as a boy of ten years I was introduced to the rigors of isolation and life at a lighthouse on a remote one-family island; at a time when at school I would attain the new and inspiring title: the lightkeeper's son at Jerseyman Island.