‘YOU ARE CUT OFF, IN A LOT OF WAYS’
Could apathy spell the end for Canadian lighthouse keepers?
On a splotch of land on the outermost edges of the B.C. coast, a lighthouse keeper is at a computer in the early morning hours, checking on his Air Miles balance while keeping tabs on the fog bank lurking just beyond the window. Some fogs are fleeting, wispy events, rolling in and out on the ocean breeze. But others linger, gathering in intensity, blotting out landmarks and other navigational aids boaters and small aircraft often rely upon. It is the fog that sticks around that you need to “worry about,” said the lighthouse keeper, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggesting we use the pseudonym “Greg.” Speaking publicly about the increasingly desperate plight of B.C. lighthouse keepers, Greg said, could provoke retribution from Canadian Coast Guard supervisory staff in Victoria, or from some faraway bureaucrat in Ottawa with an axe to grind, a budget to meet and a hate-on for a position the federal government has, episodically, been trying to kill off through automation for almost 50 years. “Everybody is doing a gritty, cold job out here,” he said. “On some days, we think it is glorious. But it isn’t a job for someone who wants to stick their head in a screen all day and whine about needing a cappuccino.” Greg is in his 60s. He doesn’t mind cold or grit, and he especially enjoys puttering around in the garden beside the lighthouse. But he is part of a greying generation of keepers, a cohort that is swiftly passing into retirement and suspicious that, once they are gone, no one is going to be left or, worse, even interested in replacing them on a job that its detractors say was long ago rendered obsolete. B.C. currently has 27 staffed lighthouses, stretching from the southern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan frontier. Most are home to two keepers, and all have been buffeted in recent years by a labour crunch. Another lighthouse keeper, also speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested the B.C. contingent is short-staffed by at least 16 fulltime lighthouse keepers. (There are also 23 staffed lighthouses in Newfoundland and Labrador, and one in New Brunswick). It is a West Coast crisis in person power the Coast Guard has been looking to address by hiring new recruits, albeit via a ham-handed employment drive that has produced some interest, but no new lighthouse keepers. On the surface, there is an old school romanticism attached to being on a rock, surrounded by the sea, beaming a light into the darkness and showing some poor souls the way home. It is why lighthouse keepers — unlike, say, plumbers, estate lawyers or middle managers of middling firms in middling Canadian towns — have inspired a library’s worth of lighthouse-themed books: including The Light Between Oceans, To the Lighthouse and The Lightkeeper’s Wife, to name but a few. But in a (relatively) new age of digital interconnectedness, where smartphones serve as a tether and friends are never more than a few clicks away, it isn’t all that romantic to imagine life on an island without Wi-Fi, or even reliable cellphone service. Lighthouse keepers with MacGyver qualities are free to try to jerry-rig an internet connection, while the somewhat less handy would likely have to helicopter in a technician, at their own expense, to access Netflix. More alarming: Lighthouse keepers don’t actually turn on the lights. Instead, they issue marine weather reports, perform maintenance on outbuildings, scrub slimy lighthouse steps and keep steely watch for emergencies — and they do happen, occasionally — so they can offer/call for help. It might not be the soundest rational for keeping a profession alive, but the lighthouse keepers, long afraid that automation or an unfavourable political climate would be the death of them, aren’t dead yet. Still, they can’t help but wonder that the executioner of their livelihood will be apathy, not automation or strapped federal budgets. Put simply: What if nobody wants to do the job? Jake Etzkorn is an ex-lighthouse keeper and, at 36, a millennial belonging to that much-maligned tribe that has been scapegoated for everything from getting Chicago Cubs hitting coach Chili Davis fired to killing the sanctity of the Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five work week. Working regular hours never appealed to Etzkorn. As a teenager looking to hang out with his friends, he would pack his tent, sleeping bag, a dry change of clothes and food for three days and hike into Bamfield, some 40 kilometres away from his home on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Etzkorn didn’t consider this to be an unusual aspect of teenage social life. It was his normal, as normal as when his mother and father would warn him and his younger sister, Justine, to be on the lookout for bears and wolves while they were playing on the beach near the Carmanah Point lighthouse station, a middle-of-nowhere federal outpost where his parents worked as lighthouse keepers. “Looking back, I had a pretty interesting childhood,” he said. “Of course, I had nothing else to compare it to.” Etzkorn would tell his wife, Yvonne, stories of his life on the lights. When they started talking about having children they agreed it sounded like the life for them. Etzkorn had the necessary skills to be a lighthouse keeper: He is handy, dependable, knows his way around boats, isn’t troubled by isolation and hated the idea of being tied to a desk. So, like his parents and his younger sister, he joined the Coast Guard as a lighthouse keeper, a position he reluctantly quit last spring after five years to work in the private sector as a maintenance technician. “I really loved the lifestyle on the lights,” he said. “It was probably one of the best jobs I could ever imagine. It didn’t involve spending time away from the family or working nine to five, which wasn’t my idea of a good job. It was hard to leave it, but ...” But, unlike his childhood, lighthouse keepers with children — the Etzkorns have two — are practically excluded from living on any station more than a kilometre offshore, thus limiting their options. (The policy shift regarding transporting children to remote locations came in response to a fatal Coast Guard helicopter crash in the Arctic in 2013 that claimed three lives, but didn’t involve any children.) The kid factor, Etzkorn said, coupled with an attractive job offer elsewhere — he was making $42,000 as a lighthouse keeper and walked into a $55,000 a year gig — were his chief reasons for leaving. He had additional concerns, including the federal government’s new pay system, Phoenix, and imagines others would, too. The colossal mess of a federal employee pay system can be acutely felt by anyone on a lighthouse station where sorting out missed paycheques, over-deposits and maxed-out credit cards with nonexistent cellphone service triggers unnecessary stress headaches. “They are really not making it easy for people to work out there,” Etzkorn said. “You are cut off in a lot of ways.” There are other impediments to the job. Perhaps chief among them involves actually locating the posting for a job, which does not appear among the positions listed on the Canadian Coast Guard’s public “job opportunities” page, but does appear on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada site (the Coast Guard is a “special operating agency” within the department). The job as advertised, once you find it, is for assistant lightkeepers, with a salary range between $38,979 and $52,304. By comparison, the Seafarers’ International Union of Canada, representing Canadian sailors working on commercial ships, is hiring high school graduates at a starting wage of $60,000-plus to work “on modern ships with Wi-Fi.” The Coast Guard wants candidates who are willing to work shifts “in a 24/7 environment,” live in “isolated or semi-isolated crown-owned accommodations,” and to travel by “helicopter and/ or boat.” Preference will be given to “veterans and Canadian citizens in that order.” There is no mention anywhere of time off, whether spouses, children and/or pets are permitted, or if there is internet — which there isn’t. It is a puzzling posting for any employer hoping to attract the best and the brightest, said Jennifer Deal, a senior research scientist at the Centre for Creative Leadership in San Diego, Calif. Deal has interviewed scores of millennials. Despite the many things they are accused of ruining or not doing, she said one thing they do is research any potential jobs, just as anyone else would. A person of any age, with access to Google, is likely to unearth stories about lighthouse de-staffing, the push for automation that last ran aground in Canada around 2009, which would be a red flag for would-be applicants looking to plan long term. (Canada had 264 staffed lighthouses in 1970, a number that has been whittled down to 51). Deal had a good laugh when reviewing the job posting. “They don’t even describe the concept of the job, so I don’t even know what this job looks like,” she said. “What is the time off? It says — 24/7 — does that mean I am working weekends? I am just expected to be present and the lights are automatic, or am I expected to turn the light on and off?” Crown accommodations are provided, but Deal points out the ad doesn’t say whether that includes more than a cot, side table and night light, or whether that’s in a portable or a bungalow with room for four. Michelle Imbeau, a communications adviser for the Canadian Coast Guard, provided some clarity in an email. Lightkeepers work eight-hour days, seven days a week. In stations with two employees, there are two shifts — morning and night. They must provide local marine weather observations every three hours, between the hours of 3:40 a.m. and 9:40 p.m. Internet is not provided. Cellphone service is not guaranteed. Pets and partners are allowed and accommodation is free — although lightkeepers must provide their own furniture. She said there have been 70 applicants for the job, representing a mix of young people looking for a start and older people looking for a second career. “The core responsibility of lightkeepers is to ensure a functioning lightstation for the safety of marine vessel traffic,” Imbeau said, before signing off. “The Coast Guard has no plans to de-staff lightstations.” Meanwhile, on a splotch of land, on the outermost edge of the B.C. coast, the fog has pulled back and dark clouds are gathering on the distant horizon. After a run of good weather, grittier days loom, a reality that doesn’t trouble Greg. “I grew up in a very isolated, rural spot,” he said. “I knew I was going to love this life.” The deadline to apply is Dec. 31.
Everybody is doing a gritty, cold job out here. On some days, we think it is glorious. But it isn’t a job for someone who wants to stick their head in a screen all day and whine about needing a cappuccino.