Vol. 1, No. 4
Headline Back Issues Fall 1997
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One of Gulf's last "wickies" makes music in island solitude Machias Seal Island -- Isolation and bleak, rugged tedium broken only by frighteningly foul weather. Think this describes an offshore lighthouse keeper's life? Not so for Paul Cranford, a Toronto native who says his occupation allows him to pursue music and writing with an intensity most people can't afford. Cranford is part of a small rotating crew that runs the Machias Seal Island light the last remaining manned lighthouse in the Canadian maritimes. The US and Canadian Coast Guards have automated most of their countries' lighthouses, but Cranford and his colleagues remain a human link to weather conditions for Maine and Canadian fishermen at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. During more than two decades as a "wickie," Cranford has witnessed ferocious north Atlantic weather from a lighthouse window. But while these stalwart little structures somehow continue to weather ocean storms in the Gulf of Maine, eroded budgets are wearing away the occupation of lighthouse keeper to a maritime history relic. About equidistant from Cutler, Maine, and Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick (the US and Canada both claim ownership of the island), tiny Machias Seal Island is Cranford's home for 28 days at a stretch. On shore, he resides in a small village in St. Ann's Bay on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Shuttling between mainland and island life requires continual adjustment, says Cranford. "I am, in general, not ready to come back to the lighthouse but I'm not ready to leave it either." Human population on Machias Seal doubles in the summer when a Canadian Wildlife Service warden and a researcher arrive along with the many seabirds that nest there, including a large Atlantic puffin colony. Day-tripping bird watchers visit on chartered boats during the summer. But most of the year, the island is home only to a two-man shift of lighthouse keepers, linked to the outside world only by radio and cellular phone. This solitude gives Cranford plenty of time to play the fiddle and to write books about fiddle music, one of which includes a compact disk recording of his own tunes. After immersing himself in Toronto's music scene during college and a brief career in social work, Cranford manned his first lighthouse in 1975 at age 21, and calls the experience "quite a social transition," but worthwhile. "I was looking for that space to be by myself to work on music. It was what I needed at the time. I don't know that it's what I need indefinitely, but I'm making good use of it." |
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Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine