Out Of The Fog Museum

PERMANENTLY CLOSED (August 2025): The Out of the Fog Museum permanently closed in August 2025. The Keepers of the Beacon society confirmed the closure was due to an aging volunteer base, shrinking local population, and a shortage of willing volunteers. The museum's extensive collection of lighthouse artifacts — including Fresnel lenses, fog horns, and period clothing — is no longer accessible to the public. The replica lighthouse structure remains standing at the Half Island Cove site in Guysborough County.

August 2, 2003 marked an important day for the preservation of Nova Scotia’s rich lighthouse history, with the official opening of the Out of the Fog Museum, our province’s first museum dedicated to the display of lighthouse artifacts. The occasion was well-attended by local politicians, media, former lightkeepers and their families, lighthouse enthusiasts, and many local residents, including a trawler captain who has been well-served by lighthouses over the years.

There is indeed much to see at this museum! The range of items covers more than a century of lighthouse technology and includes an impressive selection of Fresnel lenses, fog horns (hand horns, large Airchimes and diaphones), fog detectors, catoptric (reflector) apparatus, DCB 10 and DCB 36 rotating beacons, and  buoy lanterns ranging from compact 150 mm models, to the massive 500 mm AGA gas lantern.

Several newer-style lenses are on display as well, giving visitors a good sense of how much technology has changed the traditional aids to navigation.The Keepers of the Beacons have given the museum a personal feel with a display of period clothing, lightkeepers’ log books, personal items donated by former lightkeepers, and my favourite – a home-made school desk used by John Curtis MacQuarrie when he lived on White Head Island with his lightkeeping parents John and Gloria. Included in this display is an audio tape of a very young John Curtis doing his lessons, with the sound of the fog horn in the background. Such was life for a lightkeeping family before total automation in the 1980s.