August 3, 2025 • 30 mins
Jim and Evelyn Bruton, courtesy of Elanie Bruton.
This is an edited version of a conversation with a lighthouse keeper’s daughter in British Columbia, Canada, first heard in episode 104 of Light Hearted. Jim Bruton was born in Wales in 1926, but his family relocated to British Columbia in Canada when he was just one year old. He started working in the logging industry as a boy. In a light keeping career spanning several decades, he served at light stations around Vancouver Island: Lennard Island, Discovery Island, and Chrome Island.
Sheringham Point Lighthouse, BC. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont.
iThe Brutons eventually had four children, three girls and a boy. The family moved to Sheringham Point, a mainland lightstation in Shirley on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, in 1968. They lived there for nearly two decades, until 1986, when Jim Bruton retired. Our guest today, Elanie Bruton, lived at the light stations with her family until she was 18. She remains an active volunteer of the Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society, which now owns the lighthouse and surrounding land.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
You are listening to Lighthearted, the official podcast
of the United States Lighthouse Society.
My name is Jeremy Donchermont.
Welcome.
Today is 08/03/2025,
and this is another episode of Lighthearted
Light. That's lighthearted, l I t e.
Today, we're going to listen to an edited
(00:30):
version of a conversation
with a lighthouse keeper's daughter in British Columbia,
Canada.
It was first heard in episode one zero
four in early twenty twenty one. So let's,
get right into it.
Jim Bruton
was born in Wales in 1926,
but his family relocated to British Columbia in
Canada when he was just one year old.
He started working in the logging industry as
(00:52):
a boy after serving as a merchant seaman
during World War two. In 1945,
he became an assistant keeper or junior keeper
at Leonard Island Light Station off the West
Coast Of Vancouver Island, near Tofino.
After working in the logging industry again for
a few years, he returned to light keeping
in 1958
as a junior keeper at Discovery Island. After
(01:14):
a year and a half there, he became
the principal keeper at Chrome Island off the
East Coast Of Vancouver Island for four years.
He then returned to Leonard Island from 1964
to '68.
The Brutens eventually had four children, three girls
and a boy. The family moved to Sheringham
Point, a mainland light station in Shirley on
the Southwest Coast Of Vancouver Island in 1968.
(01:37):
They lived there for nearly two decades until
1986
when Jim Bruton retired.
Our guest today, Alani Bruton, lived at the
light stations with her family until she was
18. She remains an active volunteer for the
Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society,
which now owns the lighthouse and surrounding land.
By the way, in this conversation,
(01:58):
a man named Fred Mountain is mentioned
in relation to the ghost stories at Sheringham
Point. To set the stage, Fred was the
next to last keeper at the station, and
he died there suddenly.
You'll see the, that information will be useful
when you hear that part of the discussion.
So let's listen to my conversation with Alani
Bruton now.
(02:22):
What's the first light station you can remember?
I can remember Discovery.
I was, two when we went there or
it had just turned two. And,
I can remember
quite a number of things at Discovery Island,
including climbing the water tower when I was
four, which I wasn't really supposed to do.
Mhmm.
Probably my first big spanking.
(02:43):
That's pretty good at four? Wow. I was
a little bit independent.
My mom was teaching my two older siblings
and she had the baby
and so I had a tendency to
wander and make my own entertainment and,
you know, follow dad or the dogs or
whatever I could get into.
What else do you remember about those early
(03:05):
stations, Discovery Island and Chrome Island?
Island, it was a little lonely for my
mom, I think.
There was a senior keeper there, Sheltow Fox,
who we stayed in touch with
right up until he passed away.
Sheltow
was a bachelor
and so
we were the only other people there except
for, there was property on part of the
(03:26):
island that was owned by a fella named
Captain Beaumont
and he would come over and stay in
a house he had there,
but there was no sort of social contact
for my mom, no female contact.
So that was that was her first experience
to lighthouses. She told my dad she would
give it six months and at the end
(03:47):
of six months she was starting to enjoy
it so they decided to stay.
Well, I'm glad she enjoyed it because
the family ended up having quite a few
years at the lighthouses.
We sure did. Yeah. Just about thirty years
and all, right? Yes. Yeah. So what about
Chrome Island? What do you remember about that?
Chrome Island, when we went there, was a
one man station. So again, fairly lonely.
(04:10):
It's not a very big island,
but it was it was close to the
South End of Denman Island and we got
to know an old bachelor,
who lived over there with a multitude of
cats.
You could go over and he had a
a a shack
and we would go over in the boat
and he would say, oh, here kids, look
(04:31):
at this. And he'd pull a box of
kittens out from under the bed or out
from under the stove and
there were cats everywhere.
So,
that was entertaining for us as as little
kids. But the water there was quite warm
too, so it's where we all learned to
swim, including my
mom. And our house was very old. It
(04:51):
was in pretty bad shape, so they decided
to build
another house.
But what they decided to do first was
build a junior keeper's house because the first
summer we were there, we logged
more hours of fog, I think, than had
ever been logged, and it was really too
much for one person
to look after everything.
(05:12):
That particular light at that time still had
to be wound at night. The weights had
to be wound up twice a night. Okay.
So you've got a keeper who's gotta be
up twice during the night plus up and
turning on the fog alarm engine off and
on all night long and all day long.
So it was a little bit too much
for one person. Sure. So after,
Discovery in Crome Island,
(05:34):
the family went to Leonard Island.
Back out to Leonard. Yeah. A much larger
station, a three man station. So
there was dad and two junior keepers
and,
sometimes there were keepers with other kids. So
one family, Joan and Ian McNeil,
they had five kids. At least then we
had some kids that were our own age
(05:56):
and, you know, fun to play with. I
think growing up in that situation as a
kid when you don't know anything else, you're
not lonely. You make your own entertainment. But
nevertheless, when someone came along and we had
other playmates, it was it was, enjoyable. That's
for sure. One of the things, I think
it was in the, interview you did with
Rebecca Quinn that I I saw on on
(06:17):
YouTube, talked about the, large lens, a Leonard
Island. It was a first order Fresnel lens,
right? Yes, it was. And,
you could get right inside it and stand
up.
It was quite,
they're when you see those big lenses, they're
they're quite a thing of beauty. Sure are.
Back to, life at Leonard Island, you were
(06:38):
homeschooled
there. Is that right? We were homeschooled right
from the get go.
The correspondence
division of the, Suks School Board
would send out packages, you know, okay, you're
in this grade, this is your package, and
it was sequenced throughout the year. So when
you got your package,
we didn't take holiday vacations like at Christmas
(07:00):
or Easter or anything like that or long
weekends.
If we wanted to do our schoolwork during
that time, we did our schoolwork,
which resulted inand
we set our own hoursso that resulted in
us often
having our schoolwork finished in May and we
would head out on vacation off of the
island. Dad had built a trailer we towed
(07:21):
behind the car, and we would go and
visit family and friends whose kids were still
in school because they were in the regular
school system.
It also meant that if we were having
a day where the weather was good and
as children we were having difficulties concentrating
on our studies,
mom would get fed up with us.
She'd say, here's your lunch. Go to the
(07:41):
beach. And I don't want to see you
guys back here for two hours, but you're
working till 06:00 tonight.
And we'd be like, Woo hoo. And off
we'd go for a two hour lunch break.
We'll move on to to Sheringham Point. Now,
you were, what, about 12 years old when
the family moved there? Yes.
I had just turned 12. Okay.
Life obviously was was quite different at Sheringham
(08:02):
Point being on the Mainland compared to the
offshore stations where the family lived. Would you
say it was was better overall?
I think it was much better for my
parents.
Mom finally got to have a bit of
a social life. Neighbours could come and go
and
people popped in to visit on a fairly
regular basis.
And and I think that she she no
longer had to teach us. She continued her
(08:25):
studies to the end of the school year
and then we were enrolled in the local
school.
And so
she finally
got to have that break. She had been
teaching us for many years at that point
and getting into the higher grades and newer
math and newer things coming along. She would
have to stay up until all hours of
the morning
(08:45):
to study our lessons for the next day
in order to teach us. So that was
a huge break for my mom. How about
you? Did you,
take to it quickly? Did you like life
better at Cherry Hill Point than the earlier
places?
You lost a lot of freedom as a
kid. So you're moving to this place that
now you you can't
just go around willy nilly and have two
(09:06):
hour lunch breaks. You've got to get up
in the morning, get on a bus, go
to school, and you're stuck there all day.
Yeah. So that loss of freedom
was I think it was really felt by
all of us. Yeah. I can see that
would be, take a lot of, adapting. On
the other hand, it was nice to have
neighbors and have people pop in and be
able to drop off at a neighbor's and
(09:27):
have a visit. So that was that was
good too. Sure.
It sounds like,
a lot of people visited the lighthouse at
Sheringham Point,
as I did, five years ago. I I
got to visit there, but there were no
people there. Of course, now. A lot of
people visited. Yeah.
It was, in featured in some magazine.
(09:47):
I don't even know what magazine, but in
The US. And so we had people who
came out because they saw that article, so
they came from The States to visit. Mhmm.
And then we had,
it was featured on the cover of the
telephone book in the Victoria area,
and that brought a lot of visitors out.
I read that there were 4,000 visitors one
year, which might not sound like a lot
(10:08):
compared to some of the, you know, leading,
tourist attraction type lighthouses. But for a fairly
remote place like that, 4,000 is a is
a lot of people. And I'm just wondering
Yeah. When they, when visitors
showed up there,
what did they expect? Did they expect, maybe
somebody in the family to give them a
tour of the place or what would put
it, you know, what were they hoping to
(10:29):
get out of it? Some people
expected it to be a place where they
could just come and hang out. They wanted
to picnic there and, you know, practically set
up camp, I think,
not realizing or not understanding that it was
not that sort of a sight.
I remember
(10:50):
on occasion with people who said it's public
property and you're a civil servant
and because it's public property we can come
and do what we want here. But it
was not that accessible.
Most people I think a lot of people
wanted to go up in the lighthouse,
but that was closed to the public.
And some people you
(11:12):
you would take up on a tour and
that, but but we weren't tour guides. We
were there to do the work of the
coast guard. Well, I've heard similar stories. I've
heard about, like lighthouses in Maine where, you
know, visitors would just walk in the front
door and sit at the kitchen table and
expect service and that kind of thing. So
Yeah. They had to start locking the doors,
I think.
(11:32):
So, I have a book here, Sheringham, a
Canadian Heritage Story that was
written by Rebecca Quinn with
help from various people. I know you were
quite involved in it yourself.
But
one of the We'll talk more maybe talk
more about the book in a little while.
But, one of the things that's mentioned in
the book is that
teen deer are very common around Sheringham Point.
(11:54):
The book tells about Yeah.
There's one deer especially, I think, that meant
something to your family.
Yeah. There were deer there when we went
and they had been fed by the mountains.
Fred and Nellie had been
hand feeding these deer so of course as
kids we were delighted.
They would come up and you could pet
them to scratch their ears. You know, they
(12:16):
ate out of your hand. They were very,
very tame. But people came down one day.
I happened to be over visiting mom and
dad that day, and it was early in
the morning. And these people drove in the
gate, came up, knocked on the door.
They had been driving down from Up Island,
from Port Renfrew,
and had seen this little deer on the
side of the road. So they stopped to
(12:36):
investigate,
and it was alive, but it had just
been born. It was and it was very
tiny even for a newborn.
The deer here often have twins or triplets
and we suspect it was probably a triplet.
It was quite small.
My parents had
toy Pomeranian dogs and it was no bigger
than the the little Pomeranian dog.
(12:58):
So we got a hold of the local
veterinarian
and the Game and Wildlife people knew that
we had tamed deer and
we
were able to raise this deer. Our mom
and dad were able to raise this deer.
And she named him Don,
because he was found at at sunrise.
And,
he one of his favorite foods was graham
(13:18):
crackers. And he would come and walk in
in the house even when he had horns
and look for his graham cracker.
Very very tame, very friendly. I guess so.
Besides the deer, I imagine there's other wildlife
around there. How about, bears and cougars? Any
of that?
Yes.
Bears, cougars, raccoons, otters, you name it. It's
it's there.
(13:39):
We had,
chickens
in a chicken coop and they would come
out during the day and you know wander
around the yard and stuff. But one little
bear decided that he wanted to eat the
chicken feed. So dad looked out and here
this bear had stuck his head through the
little door that the chickens would come out.
And so dad picked up a grass rake
(14:00):
that he had there and went up to
the chicken coop and walked it across the
ramp with this,
grass rake. And the poor little Barry just
about fit through that little square door. He
he came out huffing and puffing, and it
scared the heck out of him. And off
he ran. And I don't think he ever
came back.
He learned his lesson.
(14:20):
He was just yeah. That was that was
a good fright for him.
Cougars, we did have cougars in the area.
Unfortunately,
one of our junior keepers
shot one of them one day from his
kitchen window. And,
we didn't really do that sort of thing.
We like to have them around.
And, when you've got a lot of deer,
(14:40):
you can expect that, yeah, you're gonna have
a cougar in the area. And there was
no reason for him to have shot it.
It wasn't doing anything. You mentioned chickens,
a minute ago. First of all, were there
chickens for for eggs pretty much?
Yes, they were for eggs. We also had
somebody in the area who had some ducks
and wanted to get rid of their ducks
And so we took the ducks and had
(15:01):
those for a while and ate their eggs
as well. And at one point,
mum and a neighbor decided they wanted to
raise some geese. And we got some eggs
and incubated them. I think we only ended
up with one goose out of it, and
he became such a pet. We never would
have been able to eat them. So
so, you know, that sort of thing. I
(15:22):
had a horse for a while, and,
my dad twice had,
bought a young steer or heifer and raised
it there for meat and then, you know,
took it off and had it had it
processed so that they could have the meat
from it. So where else did you get
your food? Was there a store you could
actually drive to from there?
(15:42):
Yeah. There was a store in Souk. It
was only,
12 miles from the lighthouse so we could
go and get supplies there into to the
city, into Victoria.
And when you live on the more remote
stations, the lighthouse tenders, the ships brought your
supplies, and,
you ordered them, for two months at a
time
so that you could,
(16:04):
if the light house tender came up once
a month. But if the weather was bad,
they couldn't offload.
And so they would wait for a short
period of time, twenty four hours, I think
it was. And then they would call and
say they had to keep going because they
had all of the other stations
on their line. They had all of their
supplies and their perishables,
so they had to continue on their way.
(16:24):
So you always ordered your supplies to last
two months at a time. It wasn't unusual
at Leonard
for the families, the wife and kids, to
not get off for six months at a
time. But at Sheringham, you
bought your own food.
We bought our own. We,
just went to the local store like everybody
else in the neighborhood.
Almost everything you read on on the Internet
(16:47):
about, Sheringham Point, and the the book also
talks about it, there's a there's a ghost
story connected to it. What can you tell
me about the the ghost at the Sheringham
Point Light Station?
We believe my family believes that it was
Fred Mountain.
And we
it it it's interesting because this book came
out and, my brother's five years older than
(17:08):
I am, and
he's one of the people who saw him
in our house.
I was down just the other day to
visit my brother a few days ago, and
he said that book he gave me, he
said, when I opened it up and I
was going through it, he says, I came
to this picture of a man, and he
said, I thought to myself,
that's the guy. Holy cow. My eye saw
(17:29):
in mom's and dad's house. Wow. So he
says, I'll find the picture
for you. So he opened it up and
he showed me the picture and I said,
Yeah, that's Fred. And he said, That's the
guy. He said, I was sitting there in
mom's rocking chair which stays down the hallway
and the door opened to mom's and dad's
or to one of the bedrooms down the
hall and this guy walked
(17:50):
up the hallway and went into moms and
dads bedrooms. So my my brother looked around
and everybody was there and he said, I
just saw a guy going in the bedroom
and and dad said, what are you talking
about?
He described the cello and dad said, oh,
that's Fred Mountain.
And my brother said, who's Fred Mountain?
And so he said to my parents, can
I go in your bedroom? And they said,
(18:12):
well, sure. So he opened the door and
went in. There was no one there. Mhmm.
And so, you know,
you know, and Fred certainly we we felt
that he had come in through the basement
door one evening when my sister and I
had gone to bed down in my room.
We had company
staying in her room
and we heard
somebody come through the locked double locked basement
(18:33):
door
and walk across the basement. The basement light
was on and so you could see light
out from under my my bedroom door Yeah.
But it didn't there was no shadow that
went past the end of our door.
And if somebody normally was walking by, there
would be a shadow.
They went up the stairs. They stopped at
the top,
and two of the stairs creaked. And when
(18:56):
this whatever it was, went up the stairs,
we heard them go up the stairs, but
the stairs didn't creak.
And they stopped at the top, didn't open
the door, turned around, came back down,
went out the door, and we're like, holy
smokes. So we've gone up because we'd we'd
checked the door when we went to bed
and it was locked. And it was the
only other door in there open from the
(19:16):
outside.
The door was still double locked and we
went upstairs and everybody was accounted for.
We don't know
what that was but we assumed it was
Fred.
Was it scary when you're hearing those things?
No. No. We we were not
raised to be,
afraid or fearful of of things we didn't
(19:37):
understand. Right. And so when we first encountered,
you know, the the first strange thing that
occurred,
we just said, oh well it must be
Fred Mountain or to get somebody and then
it became well it must be Fred Mountain
and certainly after he was seen by my
brother and also a neighbor lady saw him,
(19:57):
in the same hallway,
and she knew him very well, and she
saw his image as well. Wow. And, they
used to visit quite often, and and they
knew Fred Neli really well.
Yeah. And so we were like, well, from
everything we'd ever heard, he was a very,
kind and gentle man, and we had no
reason to fear him. Yeah. So we were
like a a little disconcerting, you know, when
(20:19):
it's late at night and and you hear
somebody going past your bedroom door, nobody's supposed
to be there. But, yeah, it was just
one of those things. Well, it kind of
fits into the there's a lot of, stories
of, you know, similar stories of lighthouses, light
stations,
possibly
being, I don't know I don't like the
word haunted, but visited by, you know, lightkeepers
(20:40):
of the past. And to me, it's
these people are so attached to their their
stations,
so devoted that it makes sense to me
that even, you know, after they've left this
plane of existence or whatever, that they might
still be hanging around in some form. So,
you know. I may go hang out there
myself. Yeah.
I wouldn't blame you. I wouldn't blame you
(21:00):
at all.
Did you and your siblings learn to operate
the,
the equipment? The light and the foghorn?
We did. All of us did.
It's certainly at Chrome Island from a very
early age, we all knew
how
to put the light on,
or to start the foghorn.
(21:21):
Foghorns
are under pressurized air. There's usually a big
tank that's involved
for the compressed air. And
it was important for for that tank to
always have some sort of charge in it
because we might need to use it if
something had happened to our parents to use
it as a signal. And the same at
Sheringham,
you know, although there we we did after
(21:43):
a couple years get a telephone and so
we had another method of calling out
and getting some assistance. But when we were
on remote stations where we were the only
ones there
and as kids we might need to sort
of find a way to alert
boats or whatever that we were having a
difficulty
and to get some assistance for ourselves.
I understand you you didn't have a boat
(22:04):
at Sheringham Point. The station didn't have a
boat, which is kind of amazing to me.
Did that create any problems?
We had a situation
where there was,
dad and,
a neighbor had gone fishing. They had gotten
a small,
maybe a 12 foot aluminum boat. It was
quite a small boat
and they had managed to get it in
the water at Sheringham, which is as you
(22:26):
you know is just a rocky point.
But they got it launched and they went
out and they were just right off the
point doing some salmon fishing
and they looked up and
a squall was coming down the streets of
Juan De Fuca
and it was it was black and looked
nasty and there was one other small boat
about the same size out there
and so dad yelled at the fellas and
(22:46):
he motioned them in and they sort of
waved and he yelled again and he pointed
to this
weather cell coming down on them and they
just sort of waved them off whatever sort
of a wave
and carried on there was nothing dad could
do. They carried on heading towards Sooke and
dad and the neighbor came into the station
(23:06):
and they saw this weather cell catch up
to this little boat and it disappeared into
it because it was just a thick nasty
little storm coming down the streets. And they
were never seen alive again. That was the
end. Wow. They they discounted dad's warning
and they really shouldn't have. Both bodies were
recovered later at a later time.
(23:27):
So that sort of thing. Had he had
a better boat, he could have possibly have
zipped down to them and said, no, you
guys need to get off the water now.
But without a station boat, we couldn't do
that. Yeah. You weren't actually living there, towards
the end of the the family stay there.
Is that is that correct? That's correct. I
was had been away from home for some
years at that point. Yeah. But I'm wondering
(23:49):
if if your father or the family had
any feelings about, the station being automated and
being the last family there, as far as,
you know, just a big transition.
We weren't in agreement with automation. I can't
say that even today that I'm in agreement
with all of the stations being automated. I
know some are still manned, and I think
(24:10):
that that's a good thing. Certainly seeing search
and rescue out there today
looking for someone or something
just says to me that somebody should be
there looking out a little more closely for
our local people and for people who get
themselves into difficulties out there. It's easy enough
to do. But as for leaving the station,
my dad was ready. It was time
(24:31):
to go. Here's a a sad part of
the story here. The local fire department there
burned down the keeper's houses and other buildings
at Sheringham Point except for the lighthouse.
How did you and your family feel about
that?
I don't like to see what I consider
to be historical
buildings
burnt to the ground. I really was not
happy with it. My family wasn't happy with
(24:51):
it. You know, it's it's because once it's
gone, it's you can't bring it back. It's
it's unfortunate.
I read in one article that your family
planted daffodils
at Sheringham Point, and, I think the article
is from 2013, and it said they were
still blooming.
Is that is that true? And are there
daffodils still blooming there today?
That is true. There were a few clumps,
(25:15):
daffodils that were doing very poorly because they
hadn't been tended to in years. So we
dug them up and separated these big clumps
and moved them all over the place and
and replanted them. And it's quite spectacular to
go down there in the spring and see
them blooming. They're they're quite lovely. They're doing
very well.
I have two more questions for you for
(25:36):
bonus points. Okay? So
get ready.
And this will go on your permanent record,
so There you go. Okay.
First, why do you think the lighthouse should
be preserved? Why is that important?
We have such an extensive maritime history
in this country.
When we
(25:56):
close-up
and stop acknowledging
these
areas
or places
that were linked to that maritime history, we
lose a portion of it. We lose a
portion of the history and I don't think
we should be doing that. I think our
history should be preserved
and keep it as intact as possible.
Couldn't agree with you more.
(26:17):
So my final question again for bonus points,
what was your favorite thing about being a
lighthouse keeper's daughter?
Wow.
I think
being given the opportunity
to have the independence
that only children in remote locations have, that
remote location
gives kids,
(26:38):
a huge opportunity to connect with nature, and
I think that that was
probably one of the best things for us
kids growing up on the lighthouses was to
have that connection to nature.
I'm going to throw back at you,
bonus points. Okay.
When
people are talking about lighthouses,
maybe not as much these days, but hit
(27:01):
the historical information about lighthouses is we forget
the sacrifices
that
the lighthouse keepers' wives made. Right. They went
to remote locations
and stayed. And when I talk about lighthouse
keepers,
I talk about my mother and my father
being the lighthouse keepers
(27:21):
as I do with others and certainly these
days there are more and more women who
are lighthouse keepers but the women who went
to lighthouses
some of them didn't have children some of
them had children that they had to raise
and teach as my mom did and
it it's not something that should be forgotten
that it was a partnership
(27:42):
with those women as well I remember my
mother
operating the winch in days when only she
only wore skirts and having the skirt pulled
up and tucked up between her legs to
be safe so that she didn't get her
skirt caught into the equipment as it was
running.
It takes a very special kind of people
to go out there and make that commitment
(28:04):
to lighthouses.
I'm so glad you brought that up. It's
it's a very important part of lighthouse history.
I really appreciate you spending this time with
me today. Thank you so much, Elani Bruton.
Thank you, Jeremy. It was wonderful having a
chat with you.
You can learn more about Sheringham Point Lighthouse
(28:25):
at sheringhamlighthouse.ca.
On the website, you can purchase the book,
Sheringham, a Canadian Heritage Story by Rebecca Quinn,
which is the best source on this light
station. You can also get a book called
To the Lighthouse,
an explorer's guide to the island lighthouses
of South Western BC
by Peter Johnson and John Walls
(28:47):
with photography by Richard Paddle.
Both Rebecca Quinn and John Walls have been
on this podcast.
Sheringham Point is a beautiful place. And in
general, I recommend that if you can make
a trip to British Columbia, do it. I
promise you won't be disappointed.
Be sure to check out uslhs.org
to find out about preservation grants, tours, the
(29:07):
passport program, and all the things the US
Lighthouse Society offers.
Please also check out the YouTube channel at
youtube.com/@uslighthousesociety.
I just posted a video I put together
of our recent tour in France.
We will be back with a new episode
of Lighthearted next Sunday. Until then, to all
our regular listeners and our new ones, keep
a good light.
You are listening to Lighthearted, the official podcast
of the United States Lighthouse Society.
My name is Jeremy Donchermont.
Welcome.
Today is 08/03/2025,
and this is another episode of Lighthearted
Light. That's lighthearted, l I t e.
Today, we're going to listen to an edited
(00:30):
version of a conversation
with a lighthouse keeper's daughter in British Columbia,
Canada.
It was first heard in episode one zero
four in early twenty twenty one. So let's,
get right into it.
Jim Bruton
was born in Wales in 1926,
but his family relocated to British Columbia in
Canada when he was just one year old.
He started working in the logging industry as
(00:52):
a boy after serving as a merchant seaman
during World War two. In 1945,
he became an assistant keeper or junior keeper
at Leonard Island Light Station off the West
Coast Of Vancouver Island, near Tofino.
After working in the logging industry again for
a few years, he returned to light keeping
in 1958
as a junior keeper at Discovery Island. After
(01:14):
a year and a half there, he became
the principal keeper at Chrome Island off the
East Coast Of Vancouver Island for four years.
He then returned to Leonard Island from 1964
to '68.
The Brutens eventually had four children, three girls
and a boy. The family moved to Sheringham
Point, a mainland light station in Shirley on
the Southwest Coast Of Vancouver Island in 1968.
(01:37):
They lived there for nearly two decades until
1986
when Jim Bruton retired.
Our guest today, Alani Bruton, lived at the
light stations with her family until she was
18. She remains an active volunteer for the
Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society,
which now owns the lighthouse and surrounding land.
By the way, in this conversation,
(01:58):
a man named Fred Mountain is mentioned
in relation to the ghost stories at Sheringham
Point. To set the stage, Fred was the
next to last keeper at the station, and
he died there suddenly.
You'll see the, that information will be useful
when you hear that part of the discussion.
So let's listen to my conversation with Alani
Bruton now.
(02:22):
What's the first light station you can remember?
I can remember Discovery.
I was, two when we went there or
it had just turned two. And,
I can remember
quite a number of things at Discovery Island,
including climbing the water tower when I was
four, which I wasn't really supposed to do.
Mhmm.
Probably my first big spanking.
(02:43):
That's pretty good at four? Wow. I was
a little bit independent.
My mom was teaching my two older siblings
and she had the baby
and so I had a tendency to
wander and make my own entertainment and,
you know, follow dad or the dogs or
whatever I could get into.
What else do you remember about those early
(03:05):
stations, Discovery Island and Chrome Island?
Island, it was a little lonely for my
mom, I think.
There was a senior keeper there, Sheltow Fox,
who we stayed in touch with
right up until he passed away.
Sheltow
was a bachelor
and so
we were the only other people there except
for, there was property on part of the
(03:26):
island that was owned by a fella named
Captain Beaumont
and he would come over and stay in
a house he had there,
but there was no sort of social contact
for my mom, no female contact.
So that was that was her first experience
to lighthouses. She told my dad she would
give it six months and at the end
(03:47):
of six months she was starting to enjoy
it so they decided to stay.
Well, I'm glad she enjoyed it because
the family ended up having quite a few
years at the lighthouses.
We sure did. Yeah. Just about thirty years
and all, right? Yes. Yeah. So what about
Chrome Island? What do you remember about that?
Chrome Island, when we went there, was a
one man station. So again, fairly lonely.
(04:10):
It's not a very big island,
but it was it was close to the
South End of Denman Island and we got
to know an old bachelor,
who lived over there with a multitude of
cats.
You could go over and he had a
a a shack
and we would go over in the boat
and he would say, oh, here kids, look
(04:31):
at this. And he'd pull a box of
kittens out from under the bed or out
from under the stove and
there were cats everywhere.
So,
that was entertaining for us as as little
kids. But the water there was quite warm
too, so it's where we all learned to
swim, including my
mom. And our house was very old. It
(04:51):
was in pretty bad shape, so they decided
to build
another house.
But what they decided to do first was
build a junior keeper's house because the first
summer we were there, we logged
more hours of fog, I think, than had
ever been logged, and it was really too
much for one person
to look after everything.
(05:12):
That particular light at that time still had
to be wound at night. The weights had
to be wound up twice a night. Okay.
So you've got a keeper who's gotta be
up twice during the night plus up and
turning on the fog alarm engine off and
on all night long and all day long.
So it was a little bit too much
for one person. Sure. So after,
Discovery in Crome Island,
(05:34):
the family went to Leonard Island.
Back out to Leonard. Yeah. A much larger
station, a three man station. So
there was dad and two junior keepers
and,
sometimes there were keepers with other kids. So
one family, Joan and Ian McNeil,
they had five kids. At least then we
had some kids that were our own age
(05:56):
and, you know, fun to play with. I
think growing up in that situation as a
kid when you don't know anything else, you're
not lonely. You make your own entertainment. But
nevertheless, when someone came along and we had
other playmates, it was it was, enjoyable. That's
for sure. One of the things, I think
it was in the, interview you did with
Rebecca Quinn that I I saw on on
(06:17):
YouTube, talked about the, large lens, a Leonard
Island. It was a first order Fresnel lens,
right? Yes, it was. And,
you could get right inside it and stand
up.
It was quite,
they're when you see those big lenses, they're
they're quite a thing of beauty. Sure are.
Back to, life at Leonard Island, you were
(06:38):
homeschooled
there. Is that right? We were homeschooled right
from the get go.
The correspondence
division of the, Suks School Board
would send out packages, you know, okay, you're
in this grade, this is your package, and
it was sequenced throughout the year. So when
you got your package,
we didn't take holiday vacations like at Christmas
(07:00):
or Easter or anything like that or long
weekends.
If we wanted to do our schoolwork during
that time, we did our schoolwork,
which resulted inand
we set our own hoursso that resulted in
us often
having our schoolwork finished in May and we
would head out on vacation off of the
island. Dad had built a trailer we towed
(07:21):
behind the car, and we would go and
visit family and friends whose kids were still
in school because they were in the regular
school system.
It also meant that if we were having
a day where the weather was good and
as children we were having difficulties concentrating
on our studies,
mom would get fed up with us.
She'd say, here's your lunch. Go to the
(07:41):
beach. And I don't want to see you
guys back here for two hours, but you're
working till 06:00 tonight.
And we'd be like, Woo hoo. And off
we'd go for a two hour lunch break.
We'll move on to to Sheringham Point. Now,
you were, what, about 12 years old when
the family moved there? Yes.
I had just turned 12. Okay.
Life obviously was was quite different at Sheringham
(08:02):
Point being on the Mainland compared to the
offshore stations where the family lived. Would you
say it was was better overall?
I think it was much better for my
parents.
Mom finally got to have a bit of
a social life. Neighbours could come and go
and
people popped in to visit on a fairly
regular basis.
And and I think that she she no
longer had to teach us. She continued her
(08:25):
studies to the end of the school year
and then we were enrolled in the local
school.
And so
she finally
got to have that break. She had been
teaching us for many years at that point
and getting into the higher grades and newer
math and newer things coming along. She would
have to stay up until all hours of
the morning
(08:45):
to study our lessons for the next day
in order to teach us. So that was
a huge break for my mom. How about
you? Did you,
take to it quickly? Did you like life
better at Cherry Hill Point than the earlier
places?
You lost a lot of freedom as a
kid. So you're moving to this place that
now you you can't
just go around willy nilly and have two
(09:06):
hour lunch breaks. You've got to get up
in the morning, get on a bus, go
to school, and you're stuck there all day.
Yeah. So that loss of freedom
was I think it was really felt by
all of us. Yeah. I can see that
would be, take a lot of, adapting. On
the other hand, it was nice to have
neighbors and have people pop in and be
able to drop off at a neighbor's and
(09:27):
have a visit. So that was that was
good too. Sure.
It sounds like,
a lot of people visited the lighthouse at
Sheringham Point,
as I did, five years ago. I I
got to visit there, but there were no
people there. Of course, now. A lot of
people visited. Yeah.
It was, in featured in some magazine.
(09:47):
I don't even know what magazine, but in
The US. And so we had people who
came out because they saw that article, so
they came from The States to visit. Mhmm.
And then we had,
it was featured on the cover of the
telephone book in the Victoria area,
and that brought a lot of visitors out.
I read that there were 4,000 visitors one
year, which might not sound like a lot
(10:08):
compared to some of the, you know, leading,
tourist attraction type lighthouses. But for a fairly
remote place like that, 4,000 is a is
a lot of people. And I'm just wondering
Yeah. When they, when visitors
showed up there,
what did they expect? Did they expect, maybe
somebody in the family to give them a
tour of the place or what would put
it, you know, what were they hoping to
(10:29):
get out of it? Some people
expected it to be a place where they
could just come and hang out. They wanted
to picnic there and, you know, practically set
up camp, I think,
not realizing or not understanding that it was
not that sort of a sight.
I remember
(10:50):
on occasion with people who said it's public
property and you're a civil servant
and because it's public property we can come
and do what we want here. But it
was not that accessible.
Most people I think a lot of people
wanted to go up in the lighthouse,
but that was closed to the public.
And some people you
(11:12):
you would take up on a tour and
that, but but we weren't tour guides. We
were there to do the work of the
coast guard. Well, I've heard similar stories. I've
heard about, like lighthouses in Maine where, you
know, visitors would just walk in the front
door and sit at the kitchen table and
expect service and that kind of thing. So
Yeah. They had to start locking the doors,
I think.
(11:32):
So, I have a book here, Sheringham, a
Canadian Heritage Story that was
written by Rebecca Quinn with
help from various people. I know you were
quite involved in it yourself.
But
one of the We'll talk more maybe talk
more about the book in a little while.
But, one of the things that's mentioned in
the book is that
teen deer are very common around Sheringham Point.
(11:54):
The book tells about Yeah.
There's one deer especially, I think, that meant
something to your family.
Yeah. There were deer there when we went
and they had been fed by the mountains.
Fred and Nellie had been
hand feeding these deer so of course as
kids we were delighted.
They would come up and you could pet
them to scratch their ears. You know, they
(12:16):
ate out of your hand. They were very,
very tame. But people came down one day.
I happened to be over visiting mom and
dad that day, and it was early in
the morning. And these people drove in the
gate, came up, knocked on the door.
They had been driving down from Up Island,
from Port Renfrew,
and had seen this little deer on the
side of the road. So they stopped to
(12:36):
investigate,
and it was alive, but it had just
been born. It was and it was very
tiny even for a newborn.
The deer here often have twins or triplets
and we suspect it was probably a triplet.
It was quite small.
My parents had
toy Pomeranian dogs and it was no bigger
than the the little Pomeranian dog.
(12:58):
So we got a hold of the local
veterinarian
and the Game and Wildlife people knew that
we had tamed deer and
we
were able to raise this deer. Our mom
and dad were able to raise this deer.
And she named him Don,
because he was found at at sunrise.
And,
he one of his favorite foods was graham
(13:18):
crackers. And he would come and walk in
in the house even when he had horns
and look for his graham cracker.
Very very tame, very friendly. I guess so.
Besides the deer, I imagine there's other wildlife
around there. How about, bears and cougars? Any
of that?
Yes.
Bears, cougars, raccoons, otters, you name it. It's
it's there.
(13:39):
We had,
chickens
in a chicken coop and they would come
out during the day and you know wander
around the yard and stuff. But one little
bear decided that he wanted to eat the
chicken feed. So dad looked out and here
this bear had stuck his head through the
little door that the chickens would come out.
And so dad picked up a grass rake
(14:00):
that he had there and went up to
the chicken coop and walked it across the
ramp with this,
grass rake. And the poor little Barry just
about fit through that little square door. He
he came out huffing and puffing, and it
scared the heck out of him. And off
he ran. And I don't think he ever
came back.
He learned his lesson.
(14:20):
He was just yeah. That was that was
a good fright for him.
Cougars, we did have cougars in the area.
Unfortunately,
one of our junior keepers
shot one of them one day from his
kitchen window. And,
we didn't really do that sort of thing.
We like to have them around.
And, when you've got a lot of deer,
(14:40):
you can expect that, yeah, you're gonna have
a cougar in the area. And there was
no reason for him to have shot it.
It wasn't doing anything. You mentioned chickens,
a minute ago. First of all, were there
chickens for for eggs pretty much?
Yes, they were for eggs. We also had
somebody in the area who had some ducks
and wanted to get rid of their ducks
And so we took the ducks and had
(15:01):
those for a while and ate their eggs
as well. And at one point,
mum and a neighbor decided they wanted to
raise some geese. And we got some eggs
and incubated them. I think we only ended
up with one goose out of it, and
he became such a pet. We never would
have been able to eat them. So
so, you know, that sort of thing. I
(15:22):
had a horse for a while, and,
my dad twice had,
bought a young steer or heifer and raised
it there for meat and then, you know,
took it off and had it had it
processed so that they could have the meat
from it. So where else did you get
your food? Was there a store you could
actually drive to from there?
(15:42):
Yeah. There was a store in Souk. It
was only,
12 miles from the lighthouse so we could
go and get supplies there into to the
city, into Victoria.
And when you live on the more remote
stations, the lighthouse tenders, the ships brought your
supplies, and,
you ordered them, for two months at a
time
so that you could,
(16:04):
if the light house tender came up once
a month. But if the weather was bad,
they couldn't offload.
And so they would wait for a short
period of time, twenty four hours, I think
it was. And then they would call and
say they had to keep going because they
had all of the other stations
on their line. They had all of their
supplies and their perishables,
so they had to continue on their way.
(16:24):
So you always ordered your supplies to last
two months at a time. It wasn't unusual
at Leonard
for the families, the wife and kids, to
not get off for six months at a
time. But at Sheringham, you
bought your own food.
We bought our own. We,
just went to the local store like everybody
else in the neighborhood.
Almost everything you read on on the Internet
(16:47):
about, Sheringham Point, and the the book also
talks about it, there's a there's a ghost
story connected to it. What can you tell
me about the the ghost at the Sheringham
Point Light Station?
We believe my family believes that it was
Fred Mountain.
And we
it it it's interesting because this book came
out and, my brother's five years older than
(17:08):
I am, and
he's one of the people who saw him
in our house.
I was down just the other day to
visit my brother a few days ago, and
he said that book he gave me, he
said, when I opened it up and I
was going through it, he says, I came
to this picture of a man, and he
said, I thought to myself,
that's the guy. Holy cow. My eye saw
(17:29):
in mom's and dad's house. Wow. So he
says, I'll find the picture
for you. So he opened it up and
he showed me the picture and I said,
Yeah, that's Fred. And he said, That's the
guy. He said, I was sitting there in
mom's rocking chair which stays down the hallway
and the door opened to mom's and dad's
or to one of the bedrooms down the
hall and this guy walked
(17:50):
up the hallway and went into moms and
dads bedrooms. So my my brother looked around
and everybody was there and he said, I
just saw a guy going in the bedroom
and and dad said, what are you talking
about?
He described the cello and dad said, oh,
that's Fred Mountain.
And my brother said, who's Fred Mountain?
And so he said to my parents, can
I go in your bedroom? And they said,
(18:12):
well, sure. So he opened the door and
went in. There was no one there. Mhmm.
And so, you know,
you know, and Fred certainly we we felt
that he had come in through the basement
door one evening when my sister and I
had gone to bed down in my room.
We had company
staying in her room
and we heard
somebody come through the locked double locked basement
(18:33):
door
and walk across the basement. The basement light
was on and so you could see light
out from under my my bedroom door Yeah.
But it didn't there was no shadow that
went past the end of our door.
And if somebody normally was walking by, there
would be a shadow.
They went up the stairs. They stopped at
the top,
and two of the stairs creaked. And when
(18:56):
this whatever it was, went up the stairs,
we heard them go up the stairs, but
the stairs didn't creak.
And they stopped at the top, didn't open
the door, turned around, came back down,
went out the door, and we're like, holy
smokes. So we've gone up because we'd we'd
checked the door when we went to bed
and it was locked. And it was the
only other door in there open from the
(19:16):
outside.
The door was still double locked and we
went upstairs and everybody was accounted for.
We don't know
what that was but we assumed it was
Fred.
Was it scary when you're hearing those things?
No. No. We we were not
raised to be,
afraid or fearful of of things we didn't
(19:37):
understand. Right. And so when we first encountered,
you know, the the first strange thing that
occurred,
we just said, oh well it must be
Fred Mountain or to get somebody and then
it became well it must be Fred Mountain
and certainly after he was seen by my
brother and also a neighbor lady saw him,
(19:57):
in the same hallway,
and she knew him very well, and she
saw his image as well. Wow. And, they
used to visit quite often, and and they
knew Fred Neli really well.
Yeah. And so we were like, well, from
everything we'd ever heard, he was a very,
kind and gentle man, and we had no
reason to fear him. Yeah. So we were
like a a little disconcerting, you know, when
(20:19):
it's late at night and and you hear
somebody going past your bedroom door, nobody's supposed
to be there. But, yeah, it was just
one of those things. Well, it kind of
fits into the there's a lot of, stories
of, you know, similar stories of lighthouses, light
stations,
possibly
being, I don't know I don't like the
word haunted, but visited by, you know, lightkeepers
(20:40):
of the past. And to me, it's
these people are so attached to their their
stations,
so devoted that it makes sense to me
that even, you know, after they've left this
plane of existence or whatever, that they might
still be hanging around in some form. So,
you know. I may go hang out there
myself. Yeah.
I wouldn't blame you. I wouldn't blame you
(21:00):
at all.
Did you and your siblings learn to operate
the,
the equipment? The light and the foghorn?
We did. All of us did.
It's certainly at Chrome Island from a very
early age, we all knew
how
to put the light on,
or to start the foghorn.
(21:21):
Foghorns
are under pressurized air. There's usually a big
tank that's involved
for the compressed air. And
it was important for for that tank to
always have some sort of charge in it
because we might need to use it if
something had happened to our parents to use
it as a signal. And the same at
Sheringham,
you know, although there we we did after
(21:43):
a couple years get a telephone and so
we had another method of calling out
and getting some assistance. But when we were
on remote stations where we were the only
ones there
and as kids we might need to sort
of find a way to alert
boats or whatever that we were having a
difficulty
and to get some assistance for ourselves.
I understand you you didn't have a boat
(22:04):
at Sheringham Point. The station didn't have a
boat, which is kind of amazing to me.
Did that create any problems?
We had a situation
where there was,
dad and,
a neighbor had gone fishing. They had gotten
a small,
maybe a 12 foot aluminum boat. It was
quite a small boat
and they had managed to get it in
the water at Sheringham, which is as you
(22:26):
you know is just a rocky point.
But they got it launched and they went
out and they were just right off the
point doing some salmon fishing
and they looked up and
a squall was coming down the streets of
Juan De Fuca
and it was it was black and looked
nasty and there was one other small boat
about the same size out there
and so dad yelled at the fellas and
(22:46):
he motioned them in and they sort of
waved and he yelled again and he pointed
to this
weather cell coming down on them and they
just sort of waved them off whatever sort
of a wave
and carried on there was nothing dad could
do. They carried on heading towards Sooke and
dad and the neighbor came into the station
(23:06):
and they saw this weather cell catch up
to this little boat and it disappeared into
it because it was just a thick nasty
little storm coming down the streets. And they
were never seen alive again. That was the
end. Wow. They they discounted dad's warning
and they really shouldn't have. Both bodies were
recovered later at a later time.
(23:27):
So that sort of thing. Had he had
a better boat, he could have possibly have
zipped down to them and said, no, you
guys need to get off the water now.
But without a station boat, we couldn't do
that. Yeah. You weren't actually living there, towards
the end of the the family stay there.
Is that is that correct? That's correct. I
was had been away from home for some
years at that point. Yeah. But I'm wondering
(23:49):
if if your father or the family had
any feelings about, the station being automated and
being the last family there, as far as,
you know, just a big transition.
We weren't in agreement with automation. I can't
say that even today that I'm in agreement
with all of the stations being automated. I
know some are still manned, and I think
(24:10):
that that's a good thing. Certainly seeing search
and rescue out there today
looking for someone or something
just says to me that somebody should be
there looking out a little more closely for
our local people and for people who get
themselves into difficulties out there. It's easy enough
to do. But as for leaving the station,
my dad was ready. It was time
(24:31):
to go. Here's a a sad part of
the story here. The local fire department there
burned down the keeper's houses and other buildings
at Sheringham Point except for the lighthouse.
How did you and your family feel about
that?
I don't like to see what I consider
to be historical
buildings
burnt to the ground. I really was not
happy with it. My family wasn't happy with
(24:51):
it. You know, it's it's because once it's
gone, it's you can't bring it back. It's
it's unfortunate.
I read in one article that your family
planted daffodils
at Sheringham Point, and, I think the article
is from 2013, and it said they were
still blooming.
Is that is that true? And are there
daffodils still blooming there today?
That is true. There were a few clumps,
(25:15):
daffodils that were doing very poorly because they
hadn't been tended to in years. So we
dug them up and separated these big clumps
and moved them all over the place and
and replanted them. And it's quite spectacular to
go down there in the spring and see
them blooming. They're they're quite lovely. They're doing
very well.
I have two more questions for you for
(25:36):
bonus points. Okay? So
get ready.
And this will go on your permanent record,
so There you go. Okay.
First, why do you think the lighthouse should
be preserved? Why is that important?
We have such an extensive maritime history
in this country.
When we
(25:56):
close-up
and stop acknowledging
these
areas
or places
that were linked to that maritime history, we
lose a portion of it. We lose a
portion of the history and I don't think
we should be doing that. I think our
history should be preserved
and keep it as intact as possible.
Couldn't agree with you more.
(26:17):
So my final question again for bonus points,
what was your favorite thing about being a
lighthouse keeper's daughter?
Wow.
I think
being given the opportunity
to have the independence
that only children in remote locations have, that
remote location
gives kids,
(26:38):
a huge opportunity to connect with nature, and
I think that that was
probably one of the best things for us
kids growing up on the lighthouses was to
have that connection to nature.
I'm going to throw back at you,
bonus points. Okay.
When
people are talking about lighthouses,
maybe not as much these days, but hit
(27:01):
the historical information about lighthouses is we forget
the sacrifices
that
the lighthouse keepers' wives made. Right. They went
to remote locations
and stayed. And when I talk about lighthouse
keepers,
I talk about my mother and my father
being the lighthouse keepers
(27:21):
as I do with others and certainly these
days there are more and more women who
are lighthouse keepers but the women who went
to lighthouses
some of them didn't have children some of
them had children that they had to raise
and teach as my mom did and
it it's not something that should be forgotten
that it was a partnership
(27:42):
with those women as well I remember my
mother
operating the winch in days when only she
only wore skirts and having the skirt pulled
up and tucked up between her legs to
be safe so that she didn't get her
skirt caught into the equipment as it was
running.
It takes a very special kind of people
to go out there and make that commitment
(28:04):
to lighthouses.
I'm so glad you brought that up. It's
it's a very important part of lighthouse history.
I really appreciate you spending this time with
me today. Thank you so much, Elani Bruton.
Thank you, Jeremy. It was wonderful having a
chat with you.
You can learn more about Sheringham Point Lighthouse
(28:25):
at sheringhamlighthouse.ca.
On the website, you can purchase the book,
Sheringham, a Canadian Heritage Story by Rebecca Quinn,
which is the best source on this light
station. You can also get a book called
To the Lighthouse,
an explorer's guide to the island lighthouses
of South Western BC
by Peter Johnson and John Walls
(28:47):
with photography by Richard Paddle.
Both Rebecca Quinn and John Walls have been
on this podcast.
Sheringham Point is a beautiful place. And in
general, I recommend that if you can make
a trip to British Columbia, do it. I
promise you won't be disappointed.
Be sure to check out uslhs.org
to find out about preservation grants, tours, the
(29:07):
passport program, and all the things the US
Lighthouse Society offers.
Please also check out the YouTube channel at
youtube.com/@uslighthousesociety.
I just posted a video I put together
of our recent tour in France.
We will be back with a new episode
of Lighthearted next Sunday. Until then, to all
our regular listeners and our new ones, keep
a good light.
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