Harry Harris was Lighthouse keeper at East Point lighthouse for at least 30 years. The Lighthouse itself was built in 1867. Harry Harris lives in East Point, P.E.I. His uncle Stewart worked in the lighthouse and Harry hung around with him from the time he was 11.

Later when Stewart retired, he felt that Harry was trained enough to become the head lighthouse keeper. That is how he became lighthouse keeper.

Harry was responsible for seeing that the station and all navigational aids were operating , such as the light, radio station, and fog horn. If necessary, he did maintenance on this equipment, and any painting and cleaning. Painting the lighthouse would take three men and about a week. If there is good weather, it would take less time. Harry had helped out with painting the beacon also. The Beacon is the building with all the radio equipment and is now gift shop. In the summer the gift shop would be open and ice cream would be for sale to tourists from across the world with tours of the Lighthouse and guides explaining every use of the detailed projects and radio systems in the rooms.

There was a constant watch kept on the vapor light. The temperature of the kerosene oil had to be kept constant because if it decreased it would cause a malfunction and blaze up and go afire which was always dreaded. This would also mean that the lantern room located at the top of the lighthouse would become smoked up and sooty. At night the light was serviced every three hours which meant going out to wind it up like a clock, which kept the light rotating for the next three hours. The purpose of the vapor light was to flash light in a particular sequence which identified each light house. The East Point lighthouse had a flash of light every 5 seconds and was the only light house with that sequence. This was really the purpose of the light house- to tell fishermen at sea where exactly they were. The vapor light burned at about 450 watts. Today the light on top of the light house is only 50 watts. Harry had to phone the weather conditions to Charlottetown thorough out the day. They had wind caps which rotated which told them the wind speed.

These were radioed into the airport to every lighthouse across the island. This helped Charlottetown to give a weather forecast and track storms and give storm warnings by knowing where the storm currently was and knowing the speed it was traveling.

These included ice reports, sea conditions, ferry operations, he phoned in the weather conditions twice a day and ice reports generally were called in once a day.

The fog horn in the building that is now the gift shop, worked by compressed air. There were semi-formal diesel engines that compressed air all the time when it was operating and a big receiver tank holding about 50-60 pounds of air. It had blown twice every minute. There was one on the minute and another blow nine seconds after. It did this every minute and that is the characteristics of the fog horn. That particular interval of blows every minute and nine seconds apart identified it as being East Point. In foggy weather it would allow the fishermen to know the distance they were from the shore. The buoy located of East Point was in 66 feet of water, which was considered a safe depth of water.

The lighthouse was moved twice. It was back about 2,200 feet, and moved out to the cape area after the Phoenix grounded of East Point, and then in 1908 it had to be moved to the outer fringes of the cape to allow the fog alarm to be erected.

This was done in the days before hydraulics or big tractors, so the lighthouse was moved with a capstan. It would be similar to a spool of thread standing up right. You pull a thread out and wind it back-up it would be a pulling force. Turning this "spool of thread" were big long rods and there were horses attached to those walking around in circles, winding up the spools of thread. So the lighthouse was jacked-up and put on what they call "weighs" and it ended up to be nothing short of a railroad track sort of thing. But these weighs were about a foot and a half square, about 14 inch square timbers and they were laid out like a railroad track and the building was set on that and then on this capson slid it along the weigh. When they would run out of track they would take the back part of it and put it in front all the time.

Harry says that he doesn’t really have a problem with the lighthouse being run by computers today, but he says the biggest problem would be the care of the property as it is becoming dilapidated as far as the building is concerned. The lighthouse is quite different, the fog horn is gone, the radio beacon is gone. " I think we were running at 30,000 candlepower light and we now have a 50 watt bulb doing it, more or less a Christmas tree flasher," say’s Harry (about the light.) But to see the buildings being in dilapidated state is kind of a depressing look.

Harry Harris is now retired from being a Lighthouse keeper at East Point, but enjoyed his many years as the "keeper".

Written by Catherine Young and Freda Fraser