2023-09-11 22:14:56
The decaying buildings located on Corossol Island, on the North Shore, will disappear over the coming weeks, and only the lighthouse will be spared from the demolition work, undertaken in 2020.
In a few weeks, there will no longer be any trace of the keeper’s house and the mist screamer’s shelter on Corossol Island. The owner of the premises, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations of Canada, judges that they are dilapidated and at risk of collapsing.
They will be demolished as were four other buildings on the island deemed dangerous, at a cost of more than $1 million in 2020 and 2021.
“It doesn’t make any sense. All that money being spent. And no money to keep. It’s completely beyond me.” Louis Galienne, great-grandson and son of a lighthouse keeper on Corossol Island, deplores the lack of value and attention paid to these remains.
“I lived there from the age of 17 days until I was 5.” He is saddened to see the last traces of a not-so-distant past disappear, year after year.
“The buildings are cut into pieces and put in bags which are transported by helicopter. Hence the hefty bill,” he said.
“Personally, I have the impression that our family history is crumbling into bags under a helicopter and no one is reacting to preserve any of it.”
The Ministry of Crown-Indigenous Relations does not currently plan to demolish the lighthouse, but it is not subject to any maintenance program, so when it threatens to collapse, it risks being subjected to the same fate as the other buildings on the island, which disappeared in 2020 and 2021.
“We have a story behind that,” underlined Louis Galienne. Not just me and my family, but the region too. The lighthouse has been there for moons. What’s up with that? What is Canadian Heritage doing with that?” he asked.
Following a review, no building on the island received a heritage designation. However, in order to preserve at least some traces of the presence of lighthouse keepers, the federal government had a three-dimensional photographic survey of the buildings carried out before their demolition.
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