Lighthouse Distress
Date Posted: 27/10/2016
Cape Bear Lighthouse in 2014 before it was moved.
When we meet as a staff, we like to meet where the heart of Theatre Orangeville beats strongest, in the theatre itself. Last week, we pulled chairs around a folding table in the theatre lobby, to talk about the day-to- day that preoccupies employees of a professional theatre company: ticket sales, marketing promotions, construction deadlines, volunteer opportunities. Marsha Grant, our office manager of more than a decade, paused a moment before sitting down to take in the artwork on the lobby walls. “It looks like home,” she commented.
Indeed, at least one of the finely detailed paintings of lighthouses on the lobby walls is sited in Marsha’s home province of PEI. Cape Bear Lighthouse, located on the southeast tip of the Island, received the first distress signals from the Titanic as it sank off the coast of Newfoundland on the night of April 14, 1912. One hundred years later the 40-foot high wooden tower itself was in distress, at risk of falling into the sea because of coastal erosion. In 2015 the lighthouse was moved. Fitting that the light that surely saved so many (although not the Titanic) was relocated a safe distance from the shore, where it sits today.
- Bernadette
87 Broadway, Orangeville ON, L9W 1K1