English Bay is situated on the northern shore of St. Lawrence River, just east of Baie-Comeau and between St. Pancras Point and St. Giles Point. In 1909, a Notice to Mariners announced the establishment of a lighthouse on St. Pancras Point:

A lighthouse has been established by the Government of Canada on the extremity of St. Pancras Point, east side of English Bay, north shore of the river St. Lawrence.

The lighthouse stands on land 50 feet above high water mark and 120 feet back from the water’s edge. It consists of a square wooden dwelling, with an octagonal wooden lantern rising from the middle of its hip roof. It is painted white, with the roods red, and is 37 feet high from its base to the top of the ventilator on the lantern.

The light is a fixed white light, elevated 82 feet above high water mark, and should be visible 14 miles. The illuminating apparatus is dioptric of the fifth order, and the illuminant petroleum vapour, burned under an incandescent mantle.

Day labour was used to construct the lighthouse, a storehouse, and landing wharf at a cost of $6,139.30. The following year a boathouse was added at a cost of $390.50.

P. Gravel was hired as the first keeper of the lighthouse. Keeper Gravel served as keeper for just four years until the light was discontinued at the opening of the 1914 navigation season. In 1925, St. Pancras Point Lighthouse was re-established as an unwatched light using an uwatched light of the AGA system. The wooden lighthouse remained standing through at least 1970, but by 1977, it had been replaced by a skeletal tower. In 2021, the light on St. Pancras Point, now listed as Pointe St. Pancrace, was a flashing white light displayed from a square, skeletal tower with orange daymarks on two faces.

Keepers: P. Gravel (1909 – 1913).

References

1. Annual Report of the Department of Marine, various years.

A modern light is exhibited at Pointe St. Pancrace today.

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