THUNDER BAY — Over the past ten years, Paul Morralee along with the Canadian Lighthouses of Lake Superior put weekly articles in a local newspaper during the summer, trying to engage people in a story about how transportation happens on the lake.
Those articles were compiled into a book, Lighthouse Dispatchs: Ramblings of a Modern-Day Lightkeeper, which was launched at the Thunder Bay Museum on Saturday.
“We were able to write each week in the newspaper and share the story of being at lighthouses on isolated places in Lake Superior,” Morralee said.
“(The book is) about 350 pages in length and it covers ten years of activity by the lighthouse group.”
Morralee said he didn’t plan for all of these articles to become a book.
“I never knew that the book was going to come together because I was just writing each week during the summer to the local newspaper.
“As time went on, we accumulated somewhere around 120 different articles, all about the experience of being on Lake Superior. We thought maybe it would be a good idea to bind it and share it with the rest of the community,” Morralee said.
Over that ten-year span, the government had leased the properties to Canadian Lighthouses of Lake Superior.
“We gave people an opportunity to go do something while creating economic development. The changes that occurred were more amenities, more docks, more tents, more, more, more.
“Now we see about 1,000 people come to visit the lighthouse each year,” he said.
The intent of the book was to connect people to Lake Superior, Morralee said.
“Here we are now, with a book of 120 articles, 350 pages.
“When you look into the index of this book, you see all kinds of different community groups connected together, you see people coming together. I think that the bottom line is what we've done as a community group, is we’ve built social capital in this community. We've given things for people to do.”
Canadian lighthouses of Lake Superior have three lighthouse operations, Trowbridge Island Lighthouse, Shaganash Lighthouse, and Point Porphyry light station, Morralee said.
The room at Thunder Bay Museum was full, but when asked about the turnout for the book launch, Morralee had a different way of thinking about it.
“It’s not necessarily the number of people that show up, but it's also the qualitative, it's the quality.
“I'm really happy at the quality of people here, there's sailors, there's boaters, there's people that have come from around the different areas of the community. It's really wonderful to see us continue to build connections.
“I'm very happy with the turnout today,” he said.
Lighthouse Dispatches: Ramblings of a Modern-Day Lightkeeper is available for purchase at Entershine Bookshop, 196 Algoma St S.
