Elida Peers | Contributed
Many of us took note when the news came of the passing of Pat Carney last week.
Indeed she was one of the most colourful personalities to chronicle our west coast history and Canada’s champion of lighthouses.
Today’s photo, courtesy of Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society, was taken by Ian Fawcett when our lighthouse was awarded Heritage designation on March 30, 2016.
Pat Carney was born in Shanghai in 1935 to the Canadian missionary Carney family serving in China.
In 1939 her parents returned to the Kootenay region, where Pat grew up, attending the University of B.C., where she graduated with a degree in economics in 1960.
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She went to work as a journalist, writing for both the Vancouver Sun and the Province.
My first awareness of Pat Carney came in 1980, when my husband and I were fascinated to read a book by her mother, Dora Sanders Carney, about the family’s time in China.
The book’s title caught one’s attention: Foreign Devils Had Light Eyes.
This book was a colourful account of the family’s time in 1930s Shanghai, where she wrote that the population they met described them with those words.
In 1980, Pat Carney was elected M.P. for Vancouver Centre, and she did not hesitate to make her voice heard in Ottawa. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed her to his cabinet, the first female cabinet minister from British Columbia.
In 1990, she was appointed to Canada’s Senate and moved her home base to her beloved Saturna Island. Working from her coastal home, she continued her campaign to save Canada’s lighthouses.
The Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society enlisted her help in achieving heritage status for our lighthouse. On March 30, 2016, the dedication occurred on a cold and rainy day in Shirley.
Elani Bruton, a daughter of Sheringham lightkeeper Jim Bruton, remembers the event this way: “Pat Carney was very kind; it was remarkable that though she had been working to get heritage status for Saturna’s lighthouse, she went to bat for Sheringham and our designation was proclaimed first.“
While Pat was the featured speaker at the ceremony, there was no shortage of dignitaries: MLA John Horgan, regional director Mike Hicks, T’Sou-ke Nation elders Jack Planes and Shirley Alphonse.
I must confess that I was pleased when Pat asked me to send her a copy of my historical address.
On a later occasion, society president John Walls and regional director Mike Hicks attended a ceremony at the Maritime Museum of B.C. where Pat Carney announced a financial gift of benefit to heritage lighthouses.
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Elida Peers is the historian of the Sooke Region Museum. Email historian@sookeregionmuseum.com.
Senator Pat Carney unveils a plaque announcing heritage status for the Sheringham Point Lighthouse on March 30, 2016. (Contributed - Sheringham Point Lighthouse Preservation Society)