Suzanne Stewart's "Down Lighthouse Road"

Illustration by Dave Cutler, from Suzanee Stewart's "Down Lighthouse Road"

One of the most enjoyable pieces I’ve read this fall is Suzanne Stewart’s "Down Lighthouse Road" (Literary Review of Canada, October, 2026). It’s an account of Stewart’s two-week stay at Port Bickerton Lighthouse on Nova Scotia’s rugged Eastern Shore.  Stewart writes,

As the artist-in-residence at the Port Bickerton light station, I would stay for two weeks in this sequestered setting: the home of an old illustrious lighthouse (now a museum), a modern automated one at its side, the former lightkeeper’s residence near the two structures, and twenty hectares of forest, bog, beach, and unspoiled shoreline in Guysborough County, on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore. In the spirit of the keepers and their families, I would anchor myself in isolation, at a formidable elevation over the Atlantic Ocean, at Barachois Head, the narrow entrance to the harbour.

As she points out, the Port Bickerton site is unique in hosting two lighthouses: one built in 1930 that’s been converted into a museum; and one built in the 1960s that still functions. Stewart says,

Miraculously, on the brightest mornings, both towers appear to be lit: the old historic building, which lacks a lantern now, receiving and reflecting light from the sun on its east-facing square tower windows and white wooden walls, as if a wick has been kindled. The natural light is more brilliant, somehow, than the intermittent flash from the functioning lamp, which dims automatically as the day begins.

Stewart is drawn to the older of the two lighthouses. She says,

The 1930 lighthouse is certainly the star, exuding a personality and a character of its own, not only in its radiance, when sunlight glimmers on the glass in its tower, but also in its elegant design. One of the few remaining structures of its kind in Nova Scotia, it features a combined dwelling for living and maintaining the beacon: that is, a home in one space for both the keepers and their labours. Not the familiar “pepper pot” model, the square design is classic for its era. The building resembles, some say, a white country church, with the lantern gallery standing in for a sacred bell tower.

She describes its interior:

When stepping inside, a visitor envisions a family inhabiting and working within the simple but functional interior: a former living room, kitchen, and porch for wood and handwashed laundry on the main floor; three modest bedrooms on the second level; two steep vertical ladders with railings — twelve rungs, then a turn, then seven steps more — that lead to the third-floor lantern room; and, finally, a magnificent view from the top, with the Atlantic Ocean in three directions and woodlands in the fourth. Additional windows on the lower floors, most of them facing east, from where the harshest weather arrives, offer a thin barrier between the intricate domestic and operational interior space and the wild, elemental conditions around it.

She also sees beauty in the other lighthouse:

While not the star of the Port Bickerton light station, the modern functioning lighthouse — self-driving like a clock and never inhabited — has a beauty of its own, with the lantern gallery as its prettiest feature. A slender tower, equally metal and glass, sparkles in darkness or at twilight or in fog. Like a diamond, I thought, some days. Or a crystal. Or a star. Or the moon. Not overbearing but reassuring. I would rise in the middle of the night to watch it rotate, spinning and spinning — what could rival a flash in the gloom? — as I intuited its musicality: an instrument finely tuned and impeccably designed.

I love her “doubled vision of the doubled towers” - 

the first leaning on the second, so to speak, not only in the mornings when one reflects the rays from the rising sun, while the other revolves unreservedly regardless of weather, but also in the evenings, when the setting sun is aligned horizontally with the two structures, the elegant shape of the elder casting its shadow on the younger.

“Down Lighthouse Road” is a vivid, lyrical meditation on the meaning and beauty of the Port Bickerton Lighthouse. Highly recommended.