By Jill Ellsworth
SPECIAL TO SALTWIRE NETWORK
The Rose Blanche Lighthouse has officially become the first lighthouse in Newfoundland to be registered with the United States Lighthouse Society (USLHS) passport program, and volunteer board member Phyllis Horwood says she’s thrilled about the new attention it will bring to the site.
“Rose Blanche is a small community, especially after losing the fish plant in 1992,” explains Horwood. “There wasn’t too much left to keep the community going, but the lighthouse has done that and brought people to our town.”
The USLHS is an American non-profit society dedicated to educating, informing, and entertaining those who are interested in lighthouses, past and present.
The passport program offers enthusiasts the chance to help preserve lighthouses, generating thousands of dollars through their frequent visits to sites around the world. Members receive a small lighthouse passport, which looks similar to a traditional passport book, filled with pages of empty blocks. Participating lighthouses work with USLHS to design their own unique stamp, which can then be preserved in the passport of each visitor.
Lighthouses are also featured on the USLHS website, and often become destinations for organized international tours.
Horwood discovered the program when a tourist mentioned it in an online review and was eager to learn more. One particular quote on the USLHS website caught her attention. It read: “Lighthouse hunting is an addicting hobby, one shared by hundreds of thousands of people around the globe.”
Horwood says this statement gives her hope for the future of the Rose Blanche Lighthouse and the town as a whole. She got in touch with a representative from the USLHS and began the process of registering the local lighthouse as a participating site.
Horwood believes attracting members of the USLHS through the passport program will be the perfect way to increase annual visitors.
Waiting for visitors
After receiving the stamp in the mail recently, Horwood and other members of the Rose Blanche Lighthouse Board were thrilled. The location was added to the USLHS website, and all that was left to do was wait for visitors to come.
On July 18, Horwood got the call she had been waiting for.
“The site manager phoned me and said ‘guess what, there’s a car in the parking lot with a USLHS licence plate’ and I was so excited,” says Horwood. “They were on the way up to the lighthouse, so I took a short cut and met them at the door.”
The visitors were lighthouse enthusiast Linda Weatherup from New Hartford, N.Y., and her sister Nancy from Aurora, Ill. The Weatherups were delighted to find out that Linda would be the first member to obtain the Rose Blanche Lighthouse stamp.
Linda, who has visited more than 370 lighthouses, proudly posed for a photograph with her freshly-stamped book and thanked Horwood for the lovely welcome.
Horwood says the board is so excited to be able to share the news of their new designation, now that they’ve officially had their first visitor.
“We’re the first lighthouse in Newfoundland to be part of the society, so we were trying to keep it a little secret until everything was finalized,” she says laughing.
Horwood hopes to see more members of the passport program on site, as she and the rest of the board continue to work toward improving the lighthouse and increasing visitation for the rest of the season and into the future.
In addition to the lighthouse itself, the site is currently home to a gift shop, a bed and breakfast, and a take-out food kiosk.
Go online: If you’d like to learn more about this oceanside paradise for yourself, check out roseblanchelighthouse.ca
Fast facts about the Rose Blanche Lighthouse:
Height – 95 feet (29 metres) above sea level
Age – 146 years.
First lit - 1873
Location – 75 Water Bottom Rd., Rose Blanche, Newfoundland, A0M1P0
Last keeper – Philip Hatcher, from 1938 until the mid-1940s
Fun fact – The Rose Blanche lighthouse is believed to be the only granite lighthouse in Atlantic Canada
