She is a beauty to be sure but no stereotype: Sturdy through and through, stout at the bottom, narrow up top, decked in pure white.
The Walton Lighthouse still stands protectively atop the craggy shoreline that cradles the Bay of Fundy's Minas Basin, but her once steady glow is long gone. The gypsum, barite and pulpwood ships bound for the United States no longer steam into the harbour that once teemed with codfish and clams. The ships and seafood are gone; her services no longer required.
Her only job these days is looking good for the more than 15,000 tourists who visit each year. She has been around for 130 herself, and looks not half-bad thanks to lifelong residents Ted Burgess and Reg Clark.
The men, in their 70s, will spend the next few months before summer sprucing her up -- replacing the shingles and repairing a leaky roof.
It is work made easier by a grant from the Kaplan Fund, a New York-based trust that has awarded $70,000 to the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society (NSLPS) to distribute to 10 lighthouses across the province, provided they match the contribution.
"It's a good time for lighthouses right now," society president Barry MacDonald said. "People are paying attention to them. When a foundation in New York City discovers you, you know you're doing something right."
Jacob Merrill Kaplan, who died in 1987, established the fund in his name in the mid-1940s with profits from the sale of his Welch Grape Juice Co. Supporting environmental and historic preservation projects around the world, Kaplan's benefactors have been as high profile as Carnegie Hall and as off the beaten path as the prairie churches of the Northern Plains, including a few in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Conn Nugent, Kaplan Fund executive director, said the group is always looking for ecological and historical preservation opportunities along the New England and Maritime coasts.
"A little bit of digging revealed that [NSLPS]was the perfect prototype: local, frugal to a fault and with an immediate need that wasn't as dramatic in the States," Nugent said. "We like old structures that used to mean something."
The lighthouse society shares the Kaplan passion for heritage but not its pocketbook, and with the grant will assist the Walton light, and nine others spread across Cape Breton and the Fundy and Parrsboro shores.
"We've been able to give every applicant just about what they asked for," society vice-president Doug Bamford said. "This is a very large gift for us."
Electronic navigation has made lighthouses redundant, and for the past three or four decades, the Canadian Coast Guard has been slowly decommissioning them and divesting the structures. Lighthouses are typically put up for tender to the various levels of government or community groups, which have sprung up to save and restore them. For a while, when the Coast Guard could not find a community group to take a light over, they would topple and burn them, citing a ramshackle lighthouse as a liability.
"But they look favourably on non-profit community groups that want to care for the decommissioned lights and look for non-tacky ways to make them pay for themselves," Bamford said. "They like people who don't want to turn them into, say, an amusement park."
In 1992, Burgess and Clark, who grew up in the rays of the Walton light, persuaded town council to buy it for $2,800, thereby saving it from frightful fates, which included a Truro, N.S., motel owner who wanted to purchase it for his front lawn.
"I love this old lighthouse," Clark said. "It's been here all my life. The light used to shine on my kitchen wall. We could watch the ships coming in. There was no choice to me but to save it."
Canadians tend toward a romantic view of the quaint, strong structures, arguably the most recognizable coastal landmark after the sea itself. Yet, the movement to save them has been relatively small.
"Canadians still live with a frontier attitude," Bamford reasons. "We don't respect our built heritage. It's all about the coal and the oil and the trees for us. It's never about the buildings."
MacDonald, an Ingonish, Cape Breton, native who loves lighthouses so much he lives in one he built himself on Three Fathom Harbour near Halifax, agrees.
"People will see a lighthouse falling down and they gasp: 'Now why doesn't somebody do something about that?' "
The NSLPS was founded in 1993 by a group of lighthouse buffs visiting Sambro Island, home to a 1758 light that guards approaches to Halifax Harbour and is the oldest working lighthouse in North America. At the time, it was looking a bit shoddy, and the group was formed to raise money to maintain and preserve the province's 160 lighthouses, 68 of which are on islands.
In the mid-1940s, Nova Scotia boasted more than 300 lights, but many have rotted away, been swallowed by storms or razed by the Coast Guard.
The preservation society aids community groups such as the one in Walton in obtaining their lighthouse, preserving and restoring it and keeping the coastal land on which it sits publicly accessible.
Realizing that lighthouses are not just tourist attractions, but destinations, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have all formed proactive lighthouse preservation groups.
"Believe it or not, there are a lot of lighthouse freaks around the world," Bamford said. "They come to Nova Scotia just to see lighthouses. Buses drive up from America and that is all they're here to visit."
Sailors may be the most sentimental of all. Burgess tells the story of a Greek sailor who regularly guided his gypsum ship into Walton Harbour nearly 40 years ago, and recently returned to visit, hobbling up the hill on his cane.
The Walton Lighthouse is a marvel with its original Fresnel lens, the giant glass beehive capable of casting light 35 kilometres to the horizon, that operates on a clock-type mechanism. With just 30 hand cranks, the light glows from dusk till dawn. But because it is decommissioned, the light must stay dark or risk confusing passing ships. Still, Clark loves to show that the crank continues to work.
"It's just like winding a watch," he said proudly.
The most recognized and photographed lighthouse in Canada marks the fishing village at Peggy's Cove. Built in 1915, this octagonal tower draws more than 100,000 visitors each year and even doubles as the village post office.
"People become very attached to their lighthouses because they are symbol of the place they grew up," Bamford said. "The lights lit the way for their fathers and grandfathers. They are of tremendous importance to these communities. They kept their fishermen, their families, safe."
Rip Irwin, Canada's foremost lighthouse historian whose book Lighthouses and Lights of Nova Scotia (Nimbus) will be out in May, has been studying lighthouses for 17 years and has visited every principal lighthouse between the Florida Keys and Labrador. He says it's a shame they're being decommissioned and demolished, or left to rot.
"They are still used, especially by small boaters," Irwin said. "There's nothing like being able to take a bearing on a light. Electronics sometimes fail. But the lighthouse is always there. We hope communities make an effort and understand the value of the lighthouse. If they don't take the initiative, one day they're going to be gone."
Saved havens Lights receiving grants from the Kaplan Fund:
Boularderie Island Light, Cape Breton, 1884: Put to public tender in 1965 and purchased for $250 by a Californian named Keillor Bentley who turned it into a summer home for himself, his dog and his monkey. He donated it to Acadia University in 1999.
Walton Light, Walton, 1873: Cost $620 to build. Still has the original Fresnel lens. The Saint John Coast Guard removed it upon decommission, but later returned it to the Walton heritage group.
Five Islands, Parrsboro Shore, 1914: Saved by a local group in 1996 and moved from its eroding base to an adjacent campground where campers can pitch a tent and sleep in its shadow.
Coffin Island Lighthouse, South Shore, 1812: Close to being demolished three years ago. Threatened by the encroaching sea, a local heritage society has formed to save it.
Port George, Fundy Shore, 1888: Still operational, its fixed red light can be seen across the Bay of Fundy for 12 kilometres.
Low Point, entrance to Sydney Harbour, 1932: One of the last remaining light keeper's houses of that vintage.
Gilbert's Point, St. Mary's Bay, 1904: This Fundy Shore light has a keeper's quarters attached that now operates as a museum and tea room.
Port Bickerton, Eastern Shore near Strait of Canso, 1901: Originally accessible only by boat. A causeway was eventually built so tourists could get to it by car.
Borden Wharf, Canning, 1904: A fairly small light built on the mud of the Bay of Fundy.
Port Greville, Parrsboro Shore, 1907: In 1981 was moved from its original site to the Canadian Coast Guard College in Sydney. It was returned after a local heritage group went looking for it in 1998. Had to be cut in two for transport under bridges and was reassembled.