Triangle Island Lighthouse, British Columbia Canada at Lighthousefriends.com

	Triangle Island, BC

Description: Situated at the southern side of the entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound, twenty-nine miles offshore from the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, Triangle Island seemed like a natural place for a lighthouse, and in 1909 a roadway was blasted from the shore to the island’s lofty peak, where a reinforced concrete lighthouse and a wireless telegraph station were built over the course of the next year. The forty-six-foot tower was surmounted by a circular lantern room that housed a powerful first-order Fresnel lens.
James W. Davies, who had previously served at Scarlett Point and Egg Island, landed on Triangle Island in 1910 with his wife and three daughters to take charge of the light. It was soon evident that the island’s 700-foot summit was a poor location for a lighthouse as during one year, the keepers recorded 240 days when fog, mist or low cloud cover obscured the light.
In 1919 the Department of Marine finally acknowledged its folly. The lightkeepers were removed from Triangle Island, and the tower’s lantern room and lens were dismantled and transferred to Estevan Point. The radio station, unimpaired by the fog, lasted two more years, but its operators were finally freed from the inhospitable outpost in 1921, and the seabirds once again had free rein over Triangle Island.
In early 2004, the Sooke Region Historical Society approached the Canadian Coast guard about acquiring the lantern room and first-order Fresnel lens used first on Triangle Island and then at Estevan Point. The Coast Guard agreed to donate the items, and that August the lantern room was trucked from the Coast Guard base in Victoria. The lens followed in March of 2005, and on June 26, 2005, a short concrete tower, topped by the massive lantern and lens, was dedicated on the grounds of the Sooke Region Museum.
Keepers: James W. Davies (1910 – 1913), Thomas Watkins (1913 – 1916), Michael O’Brien (1916), Daniel O’Brien (1916 – 1919), Alex Dingwell (1919).
References

Annual Report of the Department of Marine, various years.
Keepers of the Light, Donald Graham, 1985.

Location: The lantern and lens from the Triangle Island Lighthouse are on display at the Sooke Region Museum in Sooke.
Latitude: 48.384124
Longitude: -123.706092

For a larger map of Triangle Island Lighthouse, click the lighthouse in the above map or get a map from: Mapquest.

Travel Instructions: From downtown Victoria, take Highway 1 west for 12.3 km (7.7 miles), and then take Exit 14 and proceed south on Highway 14 (Veterans Memorial Highway) for 3.4 km (2.1 miles). From Veterans Memorial Highway, turn right onto Sooke Road (also Highway 14) and drive west for 20.4 km (12.8 miles), and you will see the lighthouse on your right at the intersection of Sooke Road and Phillips Road. Please note that a curtain is drawn around the lens outside of museum hours and that it is necessary to call the Sooke Region Museum in advance if you would like to go inside the tower.

The replica lighthouse is owned by the Sooke Region Museum. Grounds open, tower open by appointment.

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