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Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse
In 1993, Caroline Woodward, with her partner Jeff George, renovated a circa-1900 building on the main street of New Denver, B.C., population 700, and opened the Motherlode Bookstore.
Also an author of three books, Woodward later worked as a publishers' sales representative for Kate Walker & Company, based in Comox, starting in 2001.
But the literary life can be a hard slog.
At the outset of her new book, Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper, she describes how a pivotal meeting with a middle-aged man on the Alert Bay ferry changed her life. He was on his way to a new job as a relief lightkeeper, enabling him to escape from a dull civil service career in B.C.'s interior.
Woodward was struck by "how his face lit up when he said how he felt truly, deeply alive upon arriving in Port Hardy... And wasn't that exactly how I missed feeling?
"And wasn't that even more the case for my husband, who had dutifully worked at all kinds of low-paying, part-time jobs with awful hours for years on end?
"Here we were, in our late middle-aged phase of life when most people are at the pinnacle of their chosen careers. We, on the other hand, were feeling trapped and powerless.";
After Jeff George first gave lighthouse keeping a try, and liked it, Caroline Woodward packed in her job as a publishers' sales rep and joined her partner on hard-to-approach Lennard Island, offshore from Tofino, where she subsequently gained her credentials as a keeper of the light.
Here Sheila Peters outlines how Woodward's irrepressible curiosity and enthusiasm turned a chance encounter on a B.C. Ferry into a life line.
***
Like any good storyteller, Caroline Woodward runs many threads through her rich storybook quilt of history and memoir.
On the personal side, she takes us back to her childhood on a farm in B.C.'s northeast and her breakthrough writing year at David Thompson University where she met her husband, Jeff George.
On the historical side, we travel back to the early days of lighthouse keeping in B.C. and forward to the heated battle to keep at least some of those lighthouses staffed.
As these storylines are connected, Woodward's determination to reclaim her and her partner's creative life amounts to a powerful story.
"The lightkeeping life was going to be our next Great Adventure,"; she writes. "...It was time for me to climb the rope ladder, get on the ship and head out to the lighthouse.";
Woodward's narrative mentions the dozens of jobs she had previously, from her childhood on her parent's homestead in remote Cecil Lake, B.C. in the North Peace River region to her teenage days writing for Ma Murray's Alaska Highway News to planting rice in Sri Lanka and running a bookstore (to mention only a few). As well as providing fodder for her writing, she says, these varied experiences made her a good fit for the varied tasks of a relief lighthouse keeper.
Although she does admit the lawnmower once backed her into the blackberry thorns, the sixty-something, five-foot-two Woodward stands tall for female equality. "...when anyone has the colossal nerve, as one lightkeeper's prissy wife did, to tell me that lightkeeping is really Man's Work-well, I've been far too polite to such presumptuous, sexist individuals to date. But I will state here that I had likely done more hours of hard labour by the time I reached fourteen years of age than most contemporary adult Canadian males have done in their lives.";
Woodward sticks up for B.C.'s always-endangered lighthouses just as strongly as she sticks up for herself. Light Years is full of stories of lives saved, disasters averted and comfort brought to people caught out by wind and waves. Excerpts from keepers' letters reveal some of the challenges they faced as tsunamis destroyed their homes or supply ships couldn't get to increasingly hungry families.
And if you've ever wondered exactly how visibility, the height of the waves, or the wind speed are determined, Woodward reveals the tricks used to compile the weather reports keepers file daily, beginning at 4:40 a.m. and finishing at 10:30 p.m.
The lighthouse keeper's life can be a hard slog...
Along the way, Woodward rarely misses an opportunity to throw in arcane facts. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's engineering father who invented the Stevenson screen, a slatted box still used to house maximum/minimum thermometers.
"The Stevensons and their crews of skilled tradesmen,"; writes Woodward, "achieved feats of engineering in North Sea conditions that would be utterly forbidding, even today, using no cordless DEWALT power tools whatsoever.";
As exuberant as any wild coastal landscape, Light Years has sections on gardening that include how-to cope with extreme coastal climates or soil contaminated with diesel spills, babying seedlings shared with other keepers and pruning a beloved David Austin tea rose.
In spite of the complications of shipping food to such remote locations, celebrations of good eating are epic (if Woodward ever invites you to dinner, accept!). Best of all, she slips her sense of wonder into every chapter. Photos are by Jeff George. And, yes, some of the romanticism most of us automatically associate with lighthouses is in evidence.
"I slept and slept on Egg Island,"; she writes, describing one of her numerous relief stints at other lighthouses, "with only the sounds of the wind in the evergreens, the cries of the sea birds and the comforting push and pull of the ocean swells.
"One night humpback whales circled the island, singing their eerie whale songs, some basso profundo, others swooping up into the heldentenor range. I had to pinch myself. Imagine falling asleep to whales singing deep sea lullabies.";
Woodward's need for solitude combined with her powerful sense of connection to people and place has stood her well in her work on the lights and as a writer. Light Years is a passionate and generous celebration of both endeavours and the people who do them.
And any writer looking for ways to re-start a stalled career would do well to consider her example: Light Years is Caroline Woodward's fourth book since moving to keeping the lights in 2008.
978-1-55017-727-5
Sheila Peters writes and publishes from Smithers.
Also an author of three books, Woodward later worked as a publishers' sales representative for Kate Walker & Company, based in Comox, starting in 2001.
But the literary life can be a hard slog.
At the outset of her new book, Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper, she describes how a pivotal meeting with a middle-aged man on the Alert Bay ferry changed her life. He was on his way to a new job as a relief lightkeeper, enabling him to escape from a dull civil service career in B.C.'s interior.
Woodward was struck by "how his face lit up when he said how he felt truly, deeply alive upon arriving in Port Hardy... And wasn't that exactly how I missed feeling?
"And wasn't that even more the case for my husband, who had dutifully worked at all kinds of low-paying, part-time jobs with awful hours for years on end?
"Here we were, in our late middle-aged phase of life when most people are at the pinnacle of their chosen careers. We, on the other hand, were feeling trapped and powerless.";
After Jeff George first gave lighthouse keeping a try, and liked it, Caroline Woodward packed in her job as a publishers' sales rep and joined her partner on hard-to-approach Lennard Island, offshore from Tofino, where she subsequently gained her credentials as a keeper of the light.
Here Sheila Peters outlines how Woodward's irrepressible curiosity and enthusiasm turned a chance encounter on a B.C. Ferry into a life line.
***
Like any good storyteller, Caroline Woodward runs many threads through her rich storybook quilt of history and memoir.
On the personal side, she takes us back to her childhood on a farm in B.C.'s northeast and her breakthrough writing year at David Thompson University where she met her husband, Jeff George.
On the historical side, we travel back to the early days of lighthouse keeping in B.C. and forward to the heated battle to keep at least some of those lighthouses staffed.
As these storylines are connected, Woodward's determination to reclaim her and her partner's creative life amounts to a powerful story.
"The lightkeeping life was going to be our next Great Adventure,"; she writes. "...It was time for me to climb the rope ladder, get on the ship and head out to the lighthouse.";
Woodward's narrative mentions the dozens of jobs she had previously, from her childhood on her parent's homestead in remote Cecil Lake, B.C. in the North Peace River region to her teenage days writing for Ma Murray's Alaska Highway News to planting rice in Sri Lanka and running a bookstore (to mention only a few). As well as providing fodder for her writing, she says, these varied experiences made her a good fit for the varied tasks of a relief lighthouse keeper.
Although she does admit the lawnmower once backed her into the blackberry thorns, the sixty-something, five-foot-two Woodward stands tall for female equality. "...when anyone has the colossal nerve, as one lightkeeper's prissy wife did, to tell me that lightkeeping is really Man's Work-well, I've been far too polite to such presumptuous, sexist individuals to date. But I will state here that I had likely done more hours of hard labour by the time I reached fourteen years of age than most contemporary adult Canadian males have done in their lives.";
Woodward sticks up for B.C.'s always-endangered lighthouses just as strongly as she sticks up for herself. Light Years is full of stories of lives saved, disasters averted and comfort brought to people caught out by wind and waves. Excerpts from keepers' letters reveal some of the challenges they faced as tsunamis destroyed their homes or supply ships couldn't get to increasingly hungry families.
And if you've ever wondered exactly how visibility, the height of the waves, or the wind speed are determined, Woodward reveals the tricks used to compile the weather reports keepers file daily, beginning at 4:40 a.m. and finishing at 10:30 p.m.
The lighthouse keeper's life can be a hard slog...
Along the way, Woodward rarely misses an opportunity to throw in arcane facts. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's engineering father who invented the Stevenson screen, a slatted box still used to house maximum/minimum thermometers.
"The Stevensons and their crews of skilled tradesmen,"; writes Woodward, "achieved feats of engineering in North Sea conditions that would be utterly forbidding, even today, using no cordless DEWALT power tools whatsoever.";
As exuberant as any wild coastal landscape, Light Years has sections on gardening that include how-to cope with extreme coastal climates or soil contaminated with diesel spills, babying seedlings shared with other keepers and pruning a beloved David Austin tea rose.
In spite of the complications of shipping food to such remote locations, celebrations of good eating are epic (if Woodward ever invites you to dinner, accept!). Best of all, she slips her sense of wonder into every chapter. Photos are by Jeff George. And, yes, some of the romanticism most of us automatically associate with lighthouses is in evidence.
"I slept and slept on Egg Island,"; she writes, describing one of her numerous relief stints at other lighthouses, "with only the sounds of the wind in the evergreens, the cries of the sea birds and the comforting push and pull of the ocean swells.
"One night humpback whales circled the island, singing their eerie whale songs, some basso profundo, others swooping up into the heldentenor range. I had to pinch myself. Imagine falling asleep to whales singing deep sea lullabies.";
Woodward's need for solitude combined with her powerful sense of connection to people and place has stood her well in her work on the lights and as a writer. Light Years is a passionate and generous celebration of both endeavours and the people who do them.
And any writer looking for ways to re-start a stalled career would do well to consider her example: Light Years is Caroline Woodward's fourth book since moving to keeping the lights in 2008.
978-1-55017-727-5
Sheila Peters writes and publishes from Smithers.
Submitted on September 17, 2015 in By David.
