It wasn't so long ago that Kincardine's picturesque lighthouse was more than a beacon of light leading boaters to safe harbour.
The lighthouse was a home, with the laughter of children and the smells of dinner cooking, and one of the last children to grow up in that home was Darryl Burley.
Burley moved into the lighthouse at the age of four with his parents Jean and Alonzo (Lon) when his father was the lighthouse keeper and wharfinger or dockmaster. He lived there for 28 years, growing up in the landmark with his four sisters as well as a niece and two nephews.
Burley was the youngest in the family, and worked alongside his father in his duties, learning the skills he would later put to use when he followed in his father's footsteps.
He shared one of the four bedrooms in the lighthouse with the other two boys living with the family. Their room was at the base of the tower, and Burley remembers how he could feel the tower move when there was a high wind. He said as they lay in bed at night, you could hear the tower creaking with the strain.
He also remembers seeing the Penetangore River running by in a variety of colours from time to time. He said the knitting mill would clean their dye vats and allow the coloured water to run into the river. It would run red, blue and various other colours, he said, and often was full of soap suds as well.
"It could turn any colour," he said, adding he didn't think the dyes were particularly environmentally safe.
Among the duties he helped his father perform was the annual whitewashing of the lighthouse walls.
"It took about a week and a half," Burley said, adding he performed the chore unenthusiastically, to say the least.
"I got more on me than on the walls," he admitted with a laugh.
By the time Burley turned 15 his father was transferred to different lighthouses and his position was contracted out.
"They were automating, closing, or putting to contract" many of the lighthouses on the lake, he said, and he applied for the position left vacant by his father.
"They didn't ask age in the tendering process," he said, but asked for experience, something he had plenty of. He said he had always helped his father, had lived there and was familiar with the people he would be working with. He got the contract and became the lighthouse keeper and wharfinger at the early age of 15.
Day to day duties included cleaning, painting, upkeep of the grounds, sounding the foghorn during the shipping season, upkeep of the house and minor repairs. As dock keeper he would look after the harbour, report damage and collect dockage fees, which at the time were two cents a foot. Burley remembers that most of the pleasure boaters were American business men and wanted receipts for their dockage fees. He said many of these people would plan their vacations in Kincardine, docking and staying for one or two weeks, and he always looked forward to seeing them again.
One of the least pleasant duties Burley recalls was re-opening the tower each spring. He said the light would run until the second week of January, the heat it provided in the steel structure of the tower drawing plenty of flies. These flies would die when the light was turned off, and in the spring Burley said the tower would be covered with "two inches of flies on the floor like a carpet."
He said they would crunch underfoot and had to be taken out in buckets.
Burley said there were no sinkings while he was there, but does remember various incidents of near misses. He recalls one storm in the mid 1960's, before the wave baffles were built, in which a private sail boat was blown off course. It came up on the end of the dock, taking a fair bit of damage. He remembers another incident in which two people were killed when they sped out of the harbour in the dark and hit the breakwall.
"We heard them go out and they were going quite briskly," he said. An inquest afterwards determined the boaters had been drinking, Burley said.
Burley left the lighthouse position in 1983, although his mother continued to live in the lighthouse for another year. The contract was taken over first by Hartley Watson, then the Yacht Club.
"What I miss the most is the hustle and bustle of the harbour," he said.
He took the activity and contact with the boaters for granted and missed it when it was gone. One of his fonder memories is of simply watching the sunsets each night, and he said he and his wife Robin still go down to the shore most nights in the summer to watch the sunsets and the boats coming and going in the harbour.
"It's just now I have to make a special effort," he said with a smile.
