Chris Mills

Cross Island, one of the many islands which dot the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, is located at the entrance to the fishing village of Lunenburg and about 60 miles southwest of Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia. Historically Lunenburg has been a prosperous fishing village. Its protected harbor is home to a fleet of lobster boats, draggers and long liners. At the turn of the twentieth century a large number of schooners sailed out of Lunenburg to fish cod off the Nova Scotia coast.

It's a long way from Gannet Rock to Dryad Point- about 3,043 miles as the crow flies. Gannet sits south of New Brunswick's Grand Manan Island in the turbulent Bay of Fundy. Its black and white vertically striped tower warns of the treacherous Murr ledges to the west. Across the continent, Dryad Point marks the junction of Seaforth Channel and Lama Passage on British Columbia's winding Inside Passage. Protected from the swells of the open Pacific, the keepers' houses are surrounded by lush lawns and gardens.

Each morning at 0300 hours, every day of the year, another workday begins for the keepers of British Columbia's 35 staffed lightstations. From the tide-ripped waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca north to the wind battered Alaska Panhandle, and along 500 miles of tortuous coast in between, 70 keepers and their families continue a tradition of lifesaving, weather reporting and environmental monitoring that began almost a century and a half ago.