Lights of the Inside Passage: A History of British Columbia's Lighthouses and Their Keepers

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Human misery and super-human endurance come forward repeatedly as Graham, himself an experienced lighthouse keeper, documents the history of 21 light stations along British Columbia’s Inside Passage. The lights included stretch from the Gulf Islands to the Alaska border. The period covered is from the 1870’s to the present day.

This work is a local history rich with details, dates, local color and local characters. Graham shows us the keepers, their equipment, their homes, families, dinner tables, patched pants, and pet dogs. Direct quotes from original source documents are used generously, making the portrait vivid and involving. The style is very readable and the photographic illustrations are both numerous and excellent.

Throughout the history there is a thread of editorialization. Graham cannot suppress his raging fury at the indifference of the Canadian government, historically, to the shocking conditions under which lightkeepers lived and worked. He clearly opposes the modern trend towards automation of the light stations, not for sentimental reasons, but because he anticipates that more lives will be lost when there is no one on the stations to perform search-and-rescue work.

The book is Graham’s second. His Keepers of the Light won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional History award.