Large bodies of water tend to have lighthouses on their shores. A couple of weeks ago, I considered Lake Huron, which is a large body of water (a Great Lake), and discovered unsurprisingly that there are several lighthouses on the shores of Lake Huron.
So I cast about for other large non-oceanic bodies of water that I had not considered very much to this point, and I came up with the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And it was again not surprising to find out that there are many lighthouses scattered around the Gulf of St. Lawrence and also a few on the islands in the Gulf.
It didn't take long to find one to feature this week -- this one is the Pointe à la Renommée lighthouse.
When I looked for it on Google Maps, the first map didn't give me a good idea of where it was located on the Gulf -- so I zoomed out until I got to this point (click to see where it was), and found that the lighthouse is on the Gaspé Peninsula.
But it turns out, this lighthouse wasn't always there. After it was decommissioned in 1975, it was moved to Quebec City, and spent twenty years there (after being rebuilt). But the people of the Gaspé Peninsula wanted it back, so they bought it back and brought it back in 1997, and it's been there ever since. There's a working light nearby, on one of those boring steel towers.
The tower next to the new lighthouse tower is the old lighthouse tower. And there's also a historic communications connection: it was the site of the first marine "Marconi" (i.e. radio) relay station.
And on top of all that, it's a fantastic location. I couldn't find any views of it from the ocean, so the pictures below will have to suffice.
The tower is 49 feet high, and it even has it's own Fresnel lens (as you can see in the pictures).
Some other Web sites about this place:
Pointe à la Renommée Historic Site
POINTE-À-LA-RENOMMÉE LIGHTHOUSE: A JEWEL ON THE NORTH GASPÉ COAST
Historical site of Pointe-à-la-Renommée (Fame Point) [Official Web site]
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