[PHOTO] St. Peter's Island from above, July 2016

[rfmcdonald]

As the Westjet plane passed over Hillsborough Bay, I saw an island below. I thought, as I was snapping photos, that it might be Governor's Island, but after a moment's reflection on the geography of the area I realized it was St. Peter's Island.







The shape of St. Peter's Island, see above, is immediately recognizable in this Google Maps image.



St. Peter's Island is a low-lying island, its highest point reaching 9.1 metres. The waters of Hillsborough Bay around it are shallow, as seen particularly in the second photo in the series above. Apparently at low tide, it's possible to walk to St. Peter's Island on the exposed sands between it and Rice Point. At high tide, it can be reached by boat, one kayakers' website recommending a visit at St. Peter's Island as something that can fill an afternoon or an evening.

The main point of human interest on St. Peter's Island is its lighthouse, with a history going back to the mid-19th century. The island itself is currently uninhabited, though as the blog Sailstrait observed in a 2013 post it was once inhabited, by fishers and lighthouse operators.

St. Peter’s does not have the colonies of seals and cormorant, blue heron and eagle rookeries and is, for the most part thickly wooded. But St. Peters may have more human history for unlike Governor’s it had a long history of a resident population. In fact up to the middle of the 20th century there were homes and farms on the Island and the inhabitants numbered in excess of thirty in the 19th century. Most of these were members of the Taylor and Lund families. The Taylors, especially were associated with the marine history of the area. They operated a lobster cannery on the Island and served for three generations as keepers of the St. Peter’s Island light.

There was a light on the island from at least 1866 with the current building dating from 1881. The tower stands 38 feet with the light 48 feet above high water. The lighthouse originally stood at the western tip of the island marking the long reef extending into Northumberland Strait but in the winter of 1883-1884 it was re-located to its present site on the south side of the Island. The light required a keeper until October of 1947 when it was replaced by an unwatched electric light. Like other lighthouses on the Island it faces an uncertain future as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is determined to get rid of as many lights as possible as St. Peter’s does not have a community or organization to take over responsibility for the light.

Sailstrait's post also includes photos from the author's own visit to the island. In these, St. Peter's Island is a place largely untouched, with forests reclaiming old fields and the lighthouse's approach unmarred by human detritus.

I can't help but marvel at this, an entire world so close to my childhood home but effectively unreachable. Our universe is vast.