It just makes my heart sick:’
citizens in support of lighthouse
Katie Smith | Oct 03, 2017
ROCKY POINT – To some, it’s a decaying lighthouse but to Marie Stretch, it’s home.
When she was just a toddler, Stretch’s father, Stanley Taylor, took a job at the Blockhouse Point Lighthouse in Rocky Point as lighthouse keeper (1936-1963), and moved his wife and five children into the iconic structure.
“To us, it was just our home,” Stretch said in an interview Monday.
Stretch remembers family coming to visit and staying for weeks on end because of the beauty and uniqueness of the property.
Built in 1876, the lighthouse was declared surplus in 2010, and while the light remains in operation, the future of the structure itself is unknown.
Aside from peeling paint, there are rotting boards and holes in the building big enough to let in rodents and wildlife. There is also a hole in the cellar door outside that leads to the basement, and the padlock used to keep it shut is broken and the door remains unlocked.
To see the state of the lighthouse today is upsetting to Stretch.
“It just makes my heart sick,” she said. “Everybody came here to see it. We had so much extended family then that remember it as home. We’re all just so upset about it.”
As an effort to save and restore the lighthouse, Stretch, along with other members of her community, formed the Blockhouse Lighthouse Preservation Society in 2011 and submitted a petition for ownership of the lighthouse once it is divested. In 2015, the Mi’kmaq Confederacy also filed a claim for the lighthouse.
Nearby resident Carol Carragher, also a member of the preservation society, says her group is not giving up on the historic structure...
From the Summerside Journal-Pioneer