A Heritage Treasure

(continued)

A Fresnel Lens creates exquisite patterns on the wall of the Musuem

(L) Curator Director Barb Ribey & Vicki Cooper admire lens

Lighthouses around the world have become some of the most revered and treasured artifacts of history that have, not only served a valuable service, but have become entrenched in the eons of time as part of various cultures.

Thanks to negotiations between the Bruce County Museum, the First Nations People of Nawash and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Coast Guard, an original light, or lens, from one of Lake Huron's lighthouses has been saved and brought to a new home today.

Originally housed in Cape Croker Lighthouse on the Bruce Peninsula, the exquisite amber coloured glass of a Fresnel lens was saved from possible destruction or extinction approximately three years ago by the Canadian Coast Guard. Today, February 25th, it found a new home where it will be treasured as part of the Great Lakes history and heritage in the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre in Southampton, Saugeen Shores.

Augustin Fresnel, a French physicist, invented the lens in 1822. Light that was once lost or dissipated could now be concentrated or captured and sent out into the night like a thousand full moons. The lens, meticulously made from crystal clear glass, acted like a thousand prisms that could take the light from a small flame or bulb and turn it into a beacon of extraordinary brilliance that would flash a beam of light as far as 20 miles over open water.

Fresnel developed seven 'orders' of the lens for varying degrees of reach. The first three orders, the largest, were designed for sea coast lights while others, four through six were smaller for harbor or bay lights. The lights of the Great Lakes were primarily 3.5 order lenses with some second order.  Each piece of glass in the lights being saved, as a part of history, is almost irreplaceable.

The first lighthouse at Cape Croker was a wooden structure built in 1898 along with a five-bedroom house for the keeper and his family. Located at the northern entrance to Colpoy's Bay, approximately two miles from Cape Croker, the last light keeper signed the log book for the last time in 1986. The lighthouse after that joined the ranks of the many unmanned lighthouses around the world where automation became the keeper. No more, would a dedicated keeper tend the light and polish the lens glass until it gleamed.

Eventually, abandoned and almost forgotten, the light fell into disrepair until today when it was painstakingly moved and re-built by the Canadian Coast Guard.

Now, it can be seen at the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre, where it will be a featured focal point in the 'Year of the Lighthouse' 2009 exhibit expected to open this summer.

(next column)

26/02/2009 01:55 PM

Working inside the lens

Inside a over 100 year-old Fresnel Lens

Coast Guard personnel painstakingly re-construct the Fresnel Lens

^{for world news, books, sports, movies ...}