Work to restore Southampton’s rear range light is underway.
Marine Heritage Society Chair Wayne Kaufman says it turns out, there was more damage to the rear range light than was initially visible. “We knew it was in need of a restoration and we had anticipated having to replace all the shingles. We purchased those in the spring, painted over 3,000 of them in the spring. It took 342 hours for volunteers to coat both sides of all the shingles.
“When we removed the shingles we found a number of things that maybe were patched in the past and needed addressed again. The big one we found was an infestation of a powder beetle. It’s been there for a long, long time and it had actually turned some of the wood structure into powder. Not visible at all from the outside or the inside but actually in the inside of the
timber.”
He says that’s been removed and they’re using treated wood going forward that won’t be hospitable to insects.
Kaufman says the work started about a week and a half ago. He says they’ll work their way up the range light, and some volunteers have even completed ‘at heights’ training in order to complete the work.
Kaufman says the range lights are owned by the Town and are designated heritage buildings. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans still operates the actual green range lights to bring ships in.
“They are actually still an active range light, where you line the front one up with the rear one, and it will bring you straight in the the mouth of the Saugeen River,” says Kaufman.
Meanwhile, other lighthouses and range lights in town still need work as well.
Kaufman says the McNab Point Lighthouse is in far worse condition than the rear range light, explaining, “It has been condemned. But we still haven’t made any decisions on what to do with that range.”
Kaufman says the light is obscured from view from the water by trees and brush. He notes it hasn’t been operational as a rear range light since about 1907.
“It has historic value,” says Kaufman, who notes an engineer advises no one should enter it. He worries the McNab range might have similar issues to the rear range light at the mouth of the Saugeen River. He says one option could be to completely rebuild it.
That lighthouse is tucked away beside a newly built house, off Bayview Point which is a little peninsula that juts off of Miramichi Bay Road and has a few houses and cottages on it.
Many people don’t even know it’s there.
The Chantry Island Lighthouse, which is the tall, 1850s ‘imperial tower’ many people are familiar with, also needs a lot of work. Repairs and restoration that were estimated at about $1.5 million back in April, are according to Kaufman, likely going to be a lot more expensive than that.
Past work on the Chantry Island lighthouse and the range lights included the use of latex paint. It has since been found that is not ideal because it holds moisture, especially in these unheated structures. “It accelerates the rot of the wood. That happened with the lighthouse, it happened with the front range, it happened with the rear range. I presume the same thing happened with McNab,” says Kaufman.
“We have a major project that’s going to be coming forward with the lighthouse (Chantry Island). The rock is falling off if the lighthouse because the paint is keeping the moisture in the rock,” Kaufman adds, while he doesn’t know what the cost of repair will be, he says, “It’s going to be much more than $1.5 million.”
He says the lighthouse is still owned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “We’re in negotiations with them for leases to operate our tours,” adding that in order to renew the latest lease, they hired an engineer to do an inspection and the DFO did a number of environmental, air quality and safety studies there as well.
Kaufman says they would like to extend their lease with the DFO to a five to ten year lease. They also need to have engineers come up with a five-year plan to mitigate the falling rock issue.
“The structure is still very secure. The walls are seven feet thick at the base and three feet thick at the top, and there’s actually two layers of stone, an interior and an exterior, and it’s the exterior stone that is falling.”
He adds, “There’s no danger to the public, it’s not going to fall over or anything, it’s just we’ve got to stop this falling before it gets any worse.” There is already a fence around the lighthouse to keep people out of the way of any falling stone.
It’s a lot of work, but Kaufman says the Marine Heritage Society is a dedicated group of people, noting, “We’re very, very fortunate in having over 200 volunteers, who have such a vast array of things that we look after,” says Kaufman.
He adds, “We have a great group of volunteers and they’re passionate about our marine history, and that’s our mandate is to maintain the rich rich marine histroy of Lake Huron and Saugeen Shores.”