Historique du phare du Pilier de Pierre

Stone Pillar Island, a rocky islet measuring 546 m by 61 m and lying 4.9 km from the coast, was identified on early British charts as South Pilar. It was one of the first sites on the St. Lawrence, along with Île Verte, where a lighthouse was built to aid navigation. Before the present structure, an earlier wooden lighthouse stood southeast of the current tower; by 1843 it had been partially carried away by the sea, and its exact origins were already unknown, though its keepers were said to have been Scottish or Irish. On June 5, 1827, Jean-Baptiste Bernier of L'Islet applied for the keeper's post for the lighthouse to be built on South Pilar, confirming the wooden lighthouse's existence, and before 1843 Hall, Ross, and Smith were associated with that earlier light. The current stone lighthouse was erected in 1843 under the authority of the Corporation of the House of the Trinity of Quebec, created in 1805 to govern navigation on the river. Designed by engineer Charles Atherton in the English tradition, the circular tower was built of carefully cut gray stone brought from England and is noted for its simplicity, rigor, and elegance. The tower is 18.3 m high, 4.57 m wide at the base, 3.66 m wide at the top of its masonry, rises four stories, and reaches 38.1 m above sea level. Its rotating reflector light first shone on September 28, 1843. The keepers first lived in the tower from 1843 to 1862, then in a brick house from 1862 to 1870, followed by successive wooden houses that burned in 1911, 1913, and 1955; from 1955 to 1960 Antonio Bourgault lived in a small shed, and in 1960 lighthouse keeping ended. The keepers of the stone lighthouse were Charles Julyan, Thomas Roche, Henry Harding, D. Vaughan, Damase Babin, Louis-Damase Babin, Georges-Octave Leclerc, Eugène Leclerc, Joseph-Francis Giasson, and Antonio Bourgault, the last keeper. A figurehead found on the island's shore was said to have been installed there by Damase Babin after a foreign boat sank on the reefs of Aux Oies Island.

Quebec · Canada