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Now that Canada’s Nine Mile Point Lighthouse on Simcoe Island in Ontario is one of the nearly 1,000 Canadian lighthouses declared excess, retired school teacher Yelda Miedema wants to have a group formed to take over the lighthouse. He’d like to see it turned into a museum or opened to the public.
However, the lighthouse is now surrounded by private property, an obstacle that will be one of the many problems faced throughout Canada as preservationists and local communities scramble to try to save their lighthouses that the government wants to get rid of.
The beautiful Nine Mile Lighthouse was a manned station from 1833 until it was automated in 1978.
In 1991 the government silenced the fog horn, and instead of offering the keeper’s house to a local group or community for public use, they sold the house to a private owner.
Signs posted at the property clearly indicate the land by the lighthouse is private property and to please respect their privacy.
Although there would be a right of way for the Coast Guard, it is highly unlikely that the owner of the keeper’s house would want people on his or her property visiting the lighthouse.
Again, government bureaucrats have created a nightmare that will ultimately and inevitably put more Canadian lighthouses into private ownership while others will be allowed to crumble away and eventually be lost, leaving an eventual dwindling number of beacons open and available to the general public.
This story appeared in the
September 2010 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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