Out at the far end of a treeless point on Saturna Island, looking down at the shore where killer whales rub against the rocks, sits a lonely, windswept, red-roofed building.
This is, of course, Mike Duffy’s summer house.
No, no, this unremarkable little wooden structure is a testament to another senator — or at least a retired senator, Pat Carney, whose passion for coastal B.C. continues unabated.
Thanks to the efforts of Carney and other Saturna volunteers, the once-derelict structure known as the Fog Alarm Building, part of the East Point lighthouse property, has been converted into a community asset known as the Saturna Heritage Centre.
On Sunday, Carney will announce that East Point and Victoria’s Fisgard light are the first two lighthouses being protected under a law she helped drive through Parliament.
It’s a big deal on Saturna. So is this weekend’s somewhat-related symposium on orca research, bringing together scientists to look at the capture of Moby Doll, the first live orca to be shown and studied in captivity.
That’s a fascinating story on its own: In July 1964 a Vancouver Aquarium team set up a harpoon on the East Point cliffs, their goal being to kill a passing killer whale for use as a full-scale model for a sculpture in the aquarium’s lobby.
But Sam Burich’s harpoon shot only wounded the whale, whose shrill cries could be heard 100 metres away as it thrashed and struggled to free itself for the next two hours. Rushing to the site on a float plane, aquarium director Murray Newman decided the orca should be saved and taken to Vancouver for study — a decision said to have permanently altered the relationship between man and orca.
A small group of scientists dispelled the prevailing belief that orcas were over-abundant killers, a threat to the commercial fishery. “We now know that these magnificent mammals are highly intelligent, they depend on an extremely fragile food chain, their numbers are sparse that they have a highly complex social structure,” reads a backgrounder from the symposium organizers.
This weekend’s sold-out event, held mostly at the community hall but also including some East Point activities, will be attended by 200 people on an island with a permanent population of just 308. It’s the kind of event the Saturna volunteers had in mind when they combined with Parks Canada and the CRD in converting the Fog Alarm Building into a community facility. The whale tale, Saturna’s Spanish roots, the Pig War… people love learning about this stuff.
“Heritage tourism is the fastest-growing tourism in B.C.,” Carney said Friday. The island badly needs such a magnet to draw back the visitors who disappeared after the economy went south and ferry fares went north.
Carney sees potential for the same story being told up and down the B.C. coast, where residents have petitioned for the preservation of 40 lights. “All these lighthouses are treasure chests of history and community identity.”
For the Mulroney-era cabinet minister, it’s a fight that began with Ottawa’s attempts to de-staff B.C. lighthouses in the 1990s and continued as the feds destroyed old lights or allowed them to die of neglect.
It took her seven attempts over a decade, but just before leaving the Senate in 2008 she managed to push through the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, which prevents historic lighthouses from being destroyed without the public first being consulted. In Victoria’s case, designation means the 153-year-old Fisgard Lighthouse off Fort Rodd Hill, already named a national historic site, must be maintained.
On Saturna, Carney has been relentless in securing support for the Fog Alarm Building project. Last month, island residents passed along a story about the former senator coaxing Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon to the site, only to have their path blocked by a fallen tree. Undeterred, the two women — both good farm girls unfazed by such barriers — clambered through the downed branches, where somebody piled them into a pickup truck and completed their journey to East Point. Guichon’s official car (no longer flying the viceregal standard, as she wasn’t in the vehicle) followed behind once someone came along with a chainsaw.
It shows what can come of determination, even when you’re about to turn 78, as Carney will on Sunday. “Other communities can do this,” she says.
