We were visiting family who were camping at Sandbanks provincial park in Prince Edward County recently, so I brought the kayaks in case the weather was nice, and it turned out to be calm and sunny and warm — perfect weather for a nice long paddle! So I took the 14-foot Perception Carolina out and decided to paddle out to the very end of the spit of land to the south east of the Sandbanks main beach. At the end is an abandoned lighthouse that was built in 1871. I’ve paddled out there before but that time the waves on the point were too high for me to get close to the rocks so I couldn’t get out and look around.
The point is officially called Salmon Point, but apparently schooners and freighters used to call it Wicked Point, because there’s a shoal that sticks out that led to almost a dozen shipwrecks, including one in which all the crew and passengers died. After that wreck, the province decided to build a lighthouse equipped with a lifeboat and a keeper, one of the earliest such lighthouses on the Great Lakes.
On All Hallows eve, in 1870, the schooner Jessie bound Toronto for Kingston with a load of wheat, sought shelter from a gale while sailing past the peninsula and snuck into Athol Bay in the lee of Wicked Point. By morning, he said, the storm had veered to the west and the Jessie was unable to tack out of the bay.
via
“Capt. Shevlin tried to set his anchors to avoid being blown ashore, but the anchors would not hold on the sandy bottom. In all, nine persons died that day and the public outcry that followed led to the construction of the Salmon Point lighthouse to warn mariners away from this dangerous shore.” The tragedy led to the establishment of Canada’s first inland life-saving station on the Great Lakes at Salmon Point.
Here’s what the lighthouse used to look like when it was relatively new
It was so calm the day I visited Sandbanks that I was able to get close to the lighthouse with no problem. Here’s what it looks like now. After I took this one I pulled the kayak up on the large flat rocks in front and then hiked up and around the lighthouse.
And here’s one from up close
As you can tell, it’s pretty dilapidated. It was decommissioned in 1917, and was owned — along with a fairly large plot of land around it — by a private owner for a number of years, and at one point was a kind of family summer camp with cabins that could be rented. I saw a couple of them falling into the ground in the overgrown woods that cover the property now, and there was one shack right on the shore that is also in rough shape
According to a couple of local news reports, there have been multiple attempts to get the lighthouse designated a historic site, but the county has balked at doing so because that would impose significant costs on the family that owns the land. From what I can gather the owner is a member of the Thomson family, one of Canada’s wealthiest families. David Thomson, the scion of the family and the third Baron Thomson of Fleet, owns the Globe and Mail and is worth about $70 billion. According to one local resident, the owner of the property is David’s sister Taylor Thomson.
You’d think they might have enough money to restore a historic lighthouse, but apparently not. Maybe they are hoping it will fall down and then they can build waterfront condos on the property, who knows. Anyway, it is kind of sad — at this point the building is probably beyond saving. It and the property would make a great setting for a horror movie. They have a real Blair Witch kind of vibe, even in the middle of a sunny afternoon. But it makes for a beautiful paddle!
