PAGE C10

CLIMBING THE STAIRS of the lighthouse, Don
Graham and Jerry Watson head for the light which has
been helping 1o keep shipping safe for 107 years at the
entrance to Burrard Inlet. For additional photo see
page CS. (Terry Peters photo)

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A _ DIFFERENT LIFE

Lighting the way

By WENDY HAYSOM
Jerry Watson

sips his

morning coffee and

watches the supertankers slide by his kitchen

window.

Surrounded by the waters
of Howe Sound and Burrard
Inlet, the Watsons, and their
neighbors the Grahams,
share one of the most prized
pieces of real estate on the
North Shore.

Their homes, perched on
rocky bluffs with com-
manding sea and city scapes,
have 180 acres of forest as a
backyard.

And they don't pay a
penny for it - in fact the
federal government pays
them to hive there.

Jerry Watson is the light-
house keeper and Don
Graham, his assistant at
Point Atkinson, the North
Shore landmark that has
steadily beaconed a safe
passage to ships in and out of
Vancouver harbour for 107
years.

Their job sounds simple.
Says Jerry: “We just have to
keep that light working and
make sure it can be seen.”
Put this involves a busy daily
schedule of maintaining
equipment. In addition to
being ‘lamp lhghters’, they
send out weather

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reports for shipping,
maintain a radio beacon and
listen in bad weather to
make sure the _ familiar
groans of the foghorn (nick-
named old wahoo) = are
bellowing across the water.

Every other day one of
them climbs up inside the

sixty-foot lighthouse, four
giddying flights of open
ladders,

to the top where
they wash the windows, oil
the machinery and change a
bulb if necessary.

Believe it or not, the bulb
responsible for beaming out
a light which can be seen for
miles is an ordinary 500 watt
bulb, about five inches long,
the kind you might expect to

see at the local hardware
store.
A simple prism effect

refracts the light to its
maximum intensity. Four of
them are set up and as soon
as one bulb burns out it is
automatically replaced by
another. Batteres take over
in case of a power failure.
Jerry, who has. been
working as a_ lighthouse
keeper for 15 years, just over
a year at Point Atkinson,

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and who loves the usually
isolated lifestyle, grew up
without a whiff of the sea.

As a youth, his family
lived in Saskatchewan and
only visited the ocean a
couple of times: “But I liked
the idea of being away from
people and I just took to the
way of life. I wouldn't want
to do anything else now.”

His wife Katheryne was
wary about it at first, but
happily she took to the life,
too, and brought up her two

boys David, 12, and
Jonathan, 10, on isolated
lighthouse stations. miles

from civilization.

She taught them herself up
to grade three by
correspondence courses and
found some advantages: “At

least I learned about the
metric system when they
did,” she said.

“T think it also made us
muich closer as a family. At
some of the stations there
was no radio or TV and we
had to make our own
amusements.”

But with the boys getting
older, she is glad of Point
Atkinson's easy access to the
community and the chance
for them to mix with other
school children, play sports

CONTINUED ON PAGE C5

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