Wednesday, 3 April—We have arrived as a family this season, Lil, Peter, and I. We traveled aboard the tug the James Whalen to Porphyry Island. The light is in immaculate condition, but the dwellings and gardens are in a state of disrepair. Albert Shaw, the former lightkeeper, has retired to Fort William with his daughter. I have been told he is seventy-three years of age. His daughter was serving as assistant for all these many years. Unlike Battle Island, the light tower here is attached to the dwelling, one home shared between the assistant and keeper. The lantern has a catoptric lens, nine feet in diameter, and contains four circular no. 1 lamps with twenty-inch reflectors. The tower itself is thirty-six feet tall, and with it set as it is on the west point of the island on a bit of a cliff, the elevation is fifty-six feet from the Lake. In clear weather, the light can be seen for sixteen to eighteen miles. All the buildings require painting. I have sent a requisition for replacement pine boards for the floor, which I hope will arrive on the James Whalen with other supplies. Lil and Peter are settling in.
Tuesday, 23 April—Spotted a caribou cow and her calf swimming between Porphyry and Edward Island while fishing in Walker’s Channel. I will return with my rifle. There is a harbor here about halfway down the northwest side of the island, just before the entrance to the channel. It makes Porphyry the envy of other stations, with the shelter it allows for getting supplies or people on and off the island in any weather. It is a bit of a jaunt up to the station through the bog, but the path is well worn. Usually supplies are delivered to the beach near the light and a boathouse has been built on the shore, but it is good to know that there are options when the weather is uncooperative. Assistant George Grayson arrived the week last. He has been discharged not six months from the Canadian Expeditionary Force, where he saw action in the third battle of Ypres, Passchendaele. He bears the wounds of the trenches on his body, his face and arms scarred by the blistering caused by the enemy’s mustard gas, which settled like hot kerosene, but burned without flame or means to extinguish it. It is difficult to even look at him. The gas seeped into his lungs as well, his voice raspy and hoarse. He has been placed here as much for the good clean air to heal his lungs as to provide him with constructive occupation. We are splitting the shifts twelve on, twelve off, and are settling into routine. Grayson is a single chap and has set up in his room in the east wing, as I like to call it. We share the common areas. If the family grows any larger, we will need to request the construction of an assistant’s house, as space is tight.
Tuesday, 14 May—Repairs to the building mostly complete. Had a visit yesterday from Bob Richardson on the Margueritte from Silver Islet. Bob works as a land agent for the government and moves his family into one of the old miner’s homes every summer, commuting into town for work. Richardson is fixing up his place so that they can use it in winter as well. There are few who live there year-round, he tells me, just the Cross family, who serve as caretakers, and a handful of others. He brought newspapers with reports from the front in Europe. Grayson has woken in the night several times now in fits of screaming, startling the lot of us. Lil and Peter are both frightened of him. I fear his mind, too, bears the wounds of his ordeal as much as he carries the marks of battle on his body. He sleeps very little, wandering the shores with naught but the moonlight to guide his path.
Friday, 24 May—A toast to the late and most great Queen Victoria was made today by our feeble assemblage amid pouring rain. While April showers may bring May flowers, it is the May rain that will bring the vegetables. We have planted a potato patch by Walker’s old cabin and have constructed raised gardens on top of the solid rock ground near the lighthouse, filling the wooden frames with soil and seeding with tomatoes, peas, and beans. We have had no visitors of late, although the up-and downbound shipping lanes into Thunder Bay have been busy with both cargo and passenger ships.
Monday, 19 August—The Red Fox arrived with provisions of flour and pork, enough to last us until the close of season, sometime mid-December, when the James Whalen is due to return. My concern for Grayson continues, as he has now been disappearing for days at a time. Lil is just as happy not to have him around. His fits only intensify the horror of his disfigured face and tormented eyes. For my part, I find him to be a tortured soul more than he is incompetent, but sometimes he sets off in the little tender and we are left with no vessel should an emergency arise. I have drafted a letter to the Department of Marine and Fisheries, and they inform me that a replacement cannot be found this late in the season. They also advise that positions such as these are to be assigned to veterans and victims of the Great War, and that I am to find ways to work cooperatively, but I find little cause to furnish a portion of the light’s budget for an assistant who is absent more than he is present. Lil has been taking on more responsibilities, spelling me on shifts in his absence. We are managing quite well without him, as we must. We have little choice.
Thursday, 10 October—Newspapers are reporting that the Allied forces are gaining ground in Belgium over the Germans. The end of the war is in sight. It has been a war to end all wars. Soldiers are trickling home, some wounded, although there are many who have been left behind, buried beneath the fields of Flanders or lost, their final resting places unknown and unmarked. Our little post has grown quiet, with fewer ships and even fewer visitors, and the gap between the battlefields of Europe and the monotonous routine of filling fuel, lighting mantles, and polishing lenses yawns greater than ever. I have asked Grayson about his time in service, but he shares very little, speaking only of his training in England, of his comrades and dances on the base. When I ask of the battles, his eyes cloud, and I can see the torment the memories bring. I have heard he was one of only a few in his unit to survive the mustard gas, that several of his fellow soldiers died days—even weeks—after the attack, screaming in agony from the burns that blistered their skin and lungs, stealing even their breath while medics and nurses stood helpless. I have heard, too, that there is a scourge crossing the Atlantic, taking passage with the same young men who willingly offered their lives to defend freedom, only to fall ill with a sickness they are calling the Spanish flu. It is spreading wild and has already reached the shores of this great Lake.