In August of 2020, I found myself right next to the incredibly beautiful West Coast Trail which runs through Pacific Rim National Park—and I was getting paid for being there! I was out on Pachena Point Lighthouse station, working as a relief assistant light keeper. The Canadian Coast Guard service maintains a pool of relief keepers to stand in for staff who wish to get off the lights for a family visit, medical appointment, or holiday. It has been one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had, giving me the wonderful opportunity to work up and down the BC coast at a number of the 27 lighthouses still being manned. But what particularly resonated with me about this particular posting was that I was the third member of my family to have stayed at the Pachena station.
I bunked down in the large crew house situated high up on a steep cliff looking over the surf breaking over the rocky shelves below. I had a stupendous view over the wide-open Pacific to the south and west, and I could see the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait and the outside of the Olympic Peninsula far off in the distance to the east. We could look to the distant horizon and just make out the outlines of massive freighters and cargo ships coming and going across the Pacific. I was out on the light with Norbie Brand, retired permanent keeper of Cape Beale light station, who was standing in as principal keeper.
My mother’s
