I’m feeling nostalgic today. It paid off too because I went through my old slides and found this one – Margaret Falls in British Columbia Canada, near a small town called Salmon Arm. I have some beautiful memories of that place. My wife and I were visiting a friend who was at the time completing her co-op term with the Salmon Arm paper. This was in 1999. We were camping nearby with her family. They liked to sleep in, but Michelle and I are both early risers. We quietly slipped out early and went canoeing along Shuswab Lake. It was a quiet wet morning and we were the only people in the water. It was absolutely enchanting.
Miscou Island lighthouse was among the last in Atlantic Canada to lose its light keeper. It still has its own keeper of the memories. Daughter of the last light keeper is a tour guide and an unofficial historian of this wooden sentinel.
The very last light keeper in Canada also lives in New Brunswick on Machais Seal Island in the Bay of Fundy. The two rocks that make up the island are also a birdwatcher’s paradise and the reason behind a diplomatic squabble between the U.S. and Canada who both claim the sovereignty over the island. The issue of sovereignty is the main reason for the Canadian presence on the island. You can read more about it here. The web site has stories on most of the New Brunswick lighthouses.
“The American Constitution also infamously guaranteed the right of its citizens to bear arms. The Second Amendment was once understood to be a provision granting militias the power to overthrow illegitimate governments through the use of force, but it has recently been recast by Attorney General John Ashcroft as the codification of the God-given right of every man, woman, and toddler to pack heat. Canada’s Constitution contained no such right, and the consequences for each country are palpable to this day. American kill themselves and each other with the use of firearms at ten times the rate Canadians do.”
Michael Adams in Fire and Ice
New Brunswick is often referred to as “Canada’s Drive-Thru Province”. Sadly, that is what most people do, and many do not even realize they are driving through New Brunswick. There are, however, plenty of reasons why they should stop. One of them may as well be the lighthouse on Miscou Island at the north-eastern tip of the province.