I have a confession.

I have never understood the appeal of lighthouses. Apparently they are romantic, or picturesque. Or something. People come from miles inland to look at them, take pictures of them, and buy souvenirs of them. The image of the lonely lighthouse-keeper is, I suppose, evocative of a maritime past in the same way as is a tall-masted ship. The heartbeat-like pulse of light shining through the darkness to guide sailors to safety does have a certain symbolic power. And of course there are those who obsess over lenses and lights the same way others are drawn to engines and trains. For my part, I’ve never been moved by any of these things, so when I caught the bus out to Lighthouse Park to see the Point Atkinson Lighthouse, it was more to look at the forest than the light.

If the point had a name in the Squamish or Mamquam languages, it has been lost to history. It’s current name, Atkinson, was given to it by the British explorer Captain George Vancouver, who apparently liked to name things after his friends. Point Atkinson, Point Grey, and Burrard Inlet, all named by Vancouver, are marked on an early map of his explorations in 1792. But the point remained empty and uninhabited until 1875, when the first lighthouse was constructed.

Moodyville (now part of North Van) and Granville were the nearest towns, both reachable only by water. The first lighthouse keeper and his family lived a lonely and isolated existence, as did those who followed them. (Part of the romance of lighthouses, I suppose.) It would be over twenty-five years before the lighthouse was connected to the wider world by land, via a trail carved through the rocky forest by the lighthouse-keeper himself. Over the years keepers came and went, equipment was upgraded, and even the lighthouse itself was replaced. What remained constant was the forest.

As the settlements around Burrard Inlet grew, they devoured the thick stands of timber along the water to feed the busy sawmills and make room for even larger settlements. To ensure the lighthouse would remain distinct and recognizable from these cluttering sources of light, the land of Atkinson Point was set aside in 1881, creating a Lower Mainland rarity: a wide swath of uncut, virgin temperate rainforest.

Five hundred year-old trees shelter an amazing diversity of plants and animals. In the wetter areas of the point, Western hemlock dominates, with it’s long, lacy needles and elegantly drooping branches. In drier areas, the pricklier Douglas-fir takes the lead. Where neither tree can survive—along the windswept shoreline or on rocky bluffs—shore pine and arbutus thrive. Their branches, trunks, and roots play host to a crowd of birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and smaller plants that have lived as a close-knit, if quarrelsome, family since the glaciers receded.

In a region that has been extensively logged, farmed, mined, and developed, finding forest like this so close to the city—so close you can reach it by city bus!—is a bit like finding a unicorn in your backyard. But the point’s isolation from other forests, encroaching invasive species, and large numbers of visitors means it’s suffering. Amphibians and a large number of plants have disappeared from the park, and many other species, like deer, grouse, and owls, have become rare. The forest, which has survived for so long, is fading.

But the lighthouse is still there.

 

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Armitage, Doreen. Burrard Inlet: A History. Harbour Publishing, 2001.

City of West Vancouver. Lighthouse Park Management Plan. By Catherine Berris Associates Inc. 2004. Web. 24 Feb 2019.