Volunteers ensure lighthouses get new lease on life

Local lighthouse restoration CTV London’s Scott Miller shines a light on several Southampton volunteers who are working to refurbish two century-old lighthouses.

It is a beehive of activity as members of Southampton’s Marine Heritage Society and Propeller Club work together to dry, stain, and stack thousands of cedar shingles to be installed on a century-old lighthouse later this summer.

“We’ve got 3,700 shingles here. It takes about 10 sessions to get shingles ready. We’re about one-third of the way through, and we’ve got 150 volunteer hours in, so far,” said Scott Good, one of the volunteers organizing the lighthouse shingle work.

For weeks now, as many as 25 volunteers have been spending hours arduously drying the special cedar shingles, staining them individually by hand, and then hanging them to dry.

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“We do about 500 shingles a session, and we go twice a week. Then in between days, we have to take them down to take the staples out, and then stack them, so there are other crews that come in to do that. It’s just non-stop almost every day,” said Good.

The recipient of these countless hours of staining and stacking is this century-old lighthouse, known as the Rear Light lighthouse, along the edge of the Saugeen River in Southampton.

“The lighthouse is in need of significant work. The shingles are faded and cracked. There is moisture getting into the lighthouse. We have to seal it up to prevent rot on the inside. We want that lighthouse to be standing there for another 100 years because it’s already been there for 120,” said Eric Tolton, past chair of Southampton’s Marine Heritage Society and volunteer organizing restoration of the lighthouses.

In 2022, following years of battering from Lake Huron, these same volunteers stained and installed 3,700 shingles on the Front Light lighthouse at the mouth of Southampton’s Harbour.

The two lighthouses are both still functional today as beacons for boats and ships seeking their way back to shore.

Admittedly, with the advent of GPS, fewer boats require the range lights for navigation, but there is still an important historical significance to the work being done, said Tolton.

“Ships out in the water can line those lights up from miles away and guide them right into the entrance of the harbour. In today’s day of GPS navigation, they’re not as important. But, that method of way finding has been in use for hundreds of years,” he said.

The shingle staining will continue for a few more weeks before the volunteers move onto running boat tours to Chantry Island, which also needs millions of dollars in repairs. But, first things first, shingles for the Rear Light Lighthouse will be installed later this summer by the same volunteers who painted and hung each and every shingle, by hand.

“I’m someone that, three generations ago, my great-grandfather worked on lighthouses here. I consider it an honour to be able to do this kind of work,” said Good.