Mind the Light: Stories From the Edge of History

Who kept the lights burning when storms raged, men died, and the sea threatened everything? More often than we realize, it was women—forgotten in the records, but essential to history.

In a riveting and deeply human episode, Shauna MacDonald—professor, performer, and cultural excavator—uncovers the overlooked stories of women lighthouse keepers. 

Featured on PBS, NPR, and National Geographic, Shauna brings their silence into focus, revealing persistence without applause, labor without spotlight, and strength that endured whether or not anyone noticed.

It’s a story of women who lit the way when history turned its back- and of the scholars, writers, and keepers today who refuse to let their stories disappear. For Shauna, it’s about making sure their stories aren’t just remembered, but reimagined as part of the history we carry forward.

These women lit the coastlines. Shauna helps us see why their light still matters.

Today's episode is brought to you by the Joan of Arc Scroll Medal, a beautiful brass alloy medal, designed by award-winning artist, Pat Benincasa. This uniquely shaped medal is ideal for holiday or as a special occasion gift!    Visit www.patbenincasa-art.com

Please Note: The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcaster.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Fill Two Capacity
• 1:34 Meeting Shauna McDonald: Lighthouse Researcher
• 3:35 Discovering Women Lighthouse Keepers
• 6:39 Overlooked Women's Stories in History
• 15:40 Character and Qualities of Women Keepers
• 24:12 Performance as Historical Embodiment
• 33:08 Public Memory and Women's Legacy
• 40:20 Book on Cultural Meaning of Lighthouses
• 47:48 Legacy and Ongoing Relevance of Lighthouses

Transcript

Pat:

Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat:

Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill To Capacity. Okay. Listeners, Episode # 117, "Mind the Lights: Stories From The Edge of History." Meet Shauna MacDonald, professor, performer, and cultural excavator as associate professor at Cape Brenton University. She brings to light the forgotten stories of women, lighthouse keepers, working class women who stood watch over coastlines and history featured on PBS and NPR and National Geographic. Shauna blends performance research and public memory to reframe how we see resilience, labor, and legacy one lighthouse at a time. Well, welcome, Shauna. I am so thrilled to have you here.

Shauna:

I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pat:

Shauna. Will you walk us through your work? What do you do?

Shauna:

Well, I am a communication researcher by training, and specifically within the field of communication, I focus on, or was trained in performance studies. So I like to explain it as if anthropology, English, literature and communication all got together and had some kind of offspring. That's what we do in performance studies. Um, we try to use performance and our whole bodies and communicative beings to tell stories. And often the kinds of stories we tell are a little bit more DIY than say the theater scene might bring to us. And so that's where I come from. That's what I do. I'm also literally from Nova Scotia, Canada, and we have a lot of lighthouses in Nova Scotia. And so through a long and winding road, I came to realize that lighthouses could be studied and that lighthouses could be a really interesting place where culture and history combine and communication. And so I dove in and I've been thrilled to learn about so many different people and their stories throughout history, people who kept lighthouses, people who are invested in the heritage and lighthouses. And I have just finished writing a book that is in the review stages now about lighthouses and their communication through history.

Pat:

So you're talking a little bit about this. What exactly are you researching about lighthouses and the women who kept them, and what are you hoping people see differently because of it?

Shauna:

Great question. So first of all, most people, myself included, don't realize right away that women even did this kind of labor when I was first getting interested in doing lighthouse work in a deeper way. And I was based in the US at the time, and I was researching lighthouses in New Jersey, which of course has beautiful lights. And I just kept hearing about these women. People would be interested and they would say, have you heard about Kate? And I'd be like, uh, no, don't know who Kate is. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that there were lots of Kates. There were these women who had kept these lighthouses. And I was a bit ashamed at first because I am avowed feminist, and I thought Uh oh, it hadn't even occurred to me that women had done this. But turns out several hundred women in particular in the United States were hired, or by some sort of circumstance, ended up keeping lighthouses in the United States all across the country, everywhere where there were lighthouses, there are incidences of women doing the work.

Shauna:

And I just became utterly fascinated with who, who were these women? What were their lives like? How did they end up doing this? You know, how was it allowed and was it encouraged? You know, I just became very curious and started asking lots of questions. And through the process came to realize that these stories have not been told. For the most part. There are a few famous women who were famous at the time and famous to this day in certain circles, but beyond that, we don't know the stories of these people. And so what I hope happens is that we get to know some of these stories because the stories we tell are really how we make the world that we live in. And so if we can learn more about these women and men, but in particular for, in my case, the women, then maybe we can learn more possibilities for the future even.

Pat:

Yeah. And I wanna go there and here's what I wanna ask. You're touching on the fact that here, you've been looking at lighthouses and all of a sudden you find out all these women, and of course you ask yourself, why didn't I know this? Now, this resonates deeply for me as an artist. My industrial sheet metal paintings about American industry. I couldn't help but look at automotive history. Also, I'm from Detroit. Okay? I couldn't help but look at automotive history and what I found out, and I was shocked that the reason we have brake lights, windshield wipers, why interior design became important, all women. And so what I did, I was so shocked by that. I did a series "Women At The Wheel," and I painted 13 women with artifacts from their time embedded in the painting. And I wanted to honor those women. They transformed the auto industry, designers, inventors, racers, you name it. But their stories were overlooked and tucked away in the margins. And that brings me full circle to our moment meeting each other today. What do you think it says about our culture, our memory, that we keep having to rediscover women who never should have been forgotten?

Shauna:

Whew, big question. I mean, on the one hand, I think it's simple. Unfortunately, I think the simple answer is we have never, you know, whether we're talking about North American culture, western culture, um, most cultures in the world, not all, but most, we have never really paid attention to women's stories. And, and that has to do with patriarchy. It has to do with who has power in our societies. And in particular, in terms of the historical stories, I think it has to do with the way history gets told and has gotten told in the past, has always been, for the most part, written by men. And I don't think it's a secret that academic historians have had these conversations themselves, right? That why is it that the women's stories often don't get told until a woman historian decides to tell them? I think that's true for a lot of these stories.

Shauna:

So I think that's sort of the more simple answer in some ways. But the more complicated answer, I think has to do with just how deeply we have all bought into that larger master narrative that only men do the important things of history. And so in the case of the women that I study in lighthouses, you know, one of the, I guess it's sort of insidious, but one of the reasons why we don't know their stories is because it's not like the lighthouse services of the time were advertising for women to become lighthouse keepers. This was not something, I mean, we can't go back and ask them, but this is not something that I, I would imagine they were proud of. We do know that many of the women in the United States who kept lighthouses ended up doing so because someone, a male relative who was the official keeper, got sick or died.

Shauna:

And as you can imagine, some of these were remote. And so it's not as if you could just move away and have someone else do the work. It's just not how it worked. And the people in charge of lighthouses understood pretty quickly that if you hired a keeper who had a wife and children, that you were getting multiple laborers for the price of one. And so the women, uh, in this case, in most cases, the wives knew how to do the labor, so did the daughters and sons. And so if something would befall the keeper, then the rest of the family just took over. And in the case where that was widows, often the lighthouse service would say, okay, well, they know how to do it, and it's easier than training someone else. Maybe we can even pay them a little bit less. And so there was a real practical reason why they were kept in the office.

Shauna:

Stephen Pleasonton, who was one of the, he was the fifth auditor, I believe at the time. He was known to be a penny pincher and also really cared about efficiency, but competence. And he, I don't know the exact quote, but he said something to the effect of, I have even resorted to accepting women as lighthouse keepers because the men we keep hiring are so incompetent, essentially. So, and it's an interesting thing, right? Yeah. It's, it's not as if any of these folks were actually interested in hiring women for progressive reason. Um, it just was practical in many cases. And, and the women themselves, most of them didn't think they were doing anything extraordinary. They just, this was their job.

Pat:

I think I was reading in one of your interviews that you mentioned that there were over 200 women lighthouse keepers, but for what you've just beautifully outlined the fact that when the husband passed or whoever was the main keeper, they just stepped in. So the people who were keeping track really didn't acknowledge many of these women because they just kept keeping on, if you will.

Shauna:

Exactly. And in some cases, you know, women became official keepers, and they are recorded as such. But in other cases, you know, it was a, a short illness or the, you know, luckily, or the, uh, keeper was away for supplies. And that would also often happen, right? So you can imagine it wouldn't, wasn't as simple as going to the grocery store. And so, the keepers would, you know, be gone for a few days and sometimes a storm would happen, or perhaps something would befall them, uh, while they were gone. And so in those cases, the women often took over as well. And so, again, sometimes we certainly know that there are women in the past who did the work alongside their husbands or worked for three or four days at a time, and they certainly aren't listed in the records. And then there are others who did it for a longer amount of time who were never granted official keeper status.

Shauna:

There's a woman, I would love to to share a bit about her. Her name was Laura Hedges, and she was the wife of a keeper at Hereford Inlet Lighthouse in New Jersey, which is this beautiful little cottage style, Victorian styled lighthouse in Anglesea, New Jersey. And, uh, her husband had a, a stroke and was therefore not capable of doing all of the work. And so she began doing the work, and I was actually able to see the log books in the national archives, and you can see where the handwriting changes, where she's doing the logs and the work, but he's still listed as the keeper. And then you can see in the margin when she simply says Keeper died and then inserts herself as keeper pro tem, but she was only able to stay on for a few months before they were replaced her. So even though she asked for assistance and she asked to stay on for a little bit longer to get her affairs in order, they didn't really follow her request, they hired somebody else. It's fascinating.

Pat:

I was struck by that story that she acknowledges that the keeper has died, and then the next thing is about the weather conditions, and she's giving us data. And that made me wonder, Shauna, you're talking about these women, what qualities show up again and again in them?

Shauna:

Definitely strength. And it's tricky because I don't want to romanticize it. I'm sure they were frequently frustrated, annoyed, sad, all of the things that we would experience in any of our jobs, but definitely strength, both physical, but I think more importantly, mental strength to be able to, to do the work. And sometimes in isolation, there's also a myth that all lighthouses were like completely isolated with a single keeper, and that's not really the case, right? So some were, but many lighthouses had multiple families that lived there, or they were closer to a community. And depending on the situation, some women probably had vibrant social lives to go along with what they were doing. Maybe not vibrant, but they certainly had other things to keep them occupied. So strength would be the number one. I would say also humility. And this has also been fascinating to me, that very few, if any of the women boasted about what they had done, even the ones who had made multiple rescues and had done, you know, amazing things like Ida Lewis in Rhode Island, who she was on magazine covers and visited by president.

Shauna:

She was small in stature, and she didn't love the attention. She just said, this was my duty and I did it. So humility, I think is another one. And I always wonder what's going on there, right? Or these women being humble because that's what's expected of them as women. Are they humble because they truly feel like it is simply their duty? And I don't know that we'll ever know, but it's a fascinating sort of thought experiment. So yeah, strength, humility, and yeah, I guess just a sense of duty and obligation, right? They, they knew that what they were doing was essential and important, even if it wasn't something that they felt they needed to be aggrandized for, they knew how important it was to keep their waterways safe. And, you know, there's some colorful characters in there who might be exceptions to some of those. But I think resilience, humility, dedication, those would, those would be the ones that I would, that I would say

Pat:

I couldn't help but think about the fact in terms of point counterpoint today with social media, people record everything about their lives. They go to restaurants, they photograph their food, they go to event, they'll photograph the event, not participate, but photograph our, you know, with their phones, everything is recorded. And I was trying to imagine social media at the time of women, lighthouse keepers. Oh, you guys aren't gonna believe what a night I had last night. The storm, the gale force wind. Oh my God. And I didn't have time for laundry. Oh, I mean, when you think about it, they were often making really perilous decisions about, you know, saving ships or guiding ships, and in a sense, the isolation of having to make decision, it's almost like a captain at the helm.

Shauna:

That's a good analogy. Because even if they weren't isolated completely, they would not have had other many others to turn to. And until communication technology improved, they wouldn't have any instantaneous way to issue something like a mayday that we might think of. And so they certainly had some systems, and of course they wrote letters, and, you know, we have things like that. But in terms of instantaneous communication, they wouldn't have had much. And so the decision would have fallen on their shoulders. Absolutely. And at least in terms of the stories that we know, there was very little hesitation. It seems we have stories of, of women rowing out, like Ida Lewis rowing out to rescue folks. There is the young Abby Burgess who her father had gone ashore for supplies, and of course, a huge storm hit and lasted a very long time. The weather was awful, uh, for weeks, in fact.

Shauna:

And she was 14, I believe, when, when this happened, or maybe a little bit older. And she kept her whole family going, right? Her mother, her sister, she rescued the hens from one of the towers because it was sort of swept, or one of the buildings was swept away by the waves. And then she definitely recounted that in various ways, uh, in her later days. We also have a letter, I'm not gonna remember the specifics, but a letter from Abby that she wrote to a friend where she, you know, she talks about sort of the, the light in the dark. She, she really is not super thrilled to be living at a lighthouse as a young girl. And, you know, sort of talks about the, the boredom, um, of some of the days. But then she stayed as a keeper for a long time, and then she married as a keeper's son. So the life seems to have taken hold of some of them. Of course, some of them quit, but many of them stayed on or found ways to keep doing the work even after they no longer technically had to. So it's that's fascinating as well.

Pat:

Now, I wanna fast forward, and I've been dying to jump into this. You've written and performed a full length solo show Yes. In several shorter pieces. Now, I gotta say, Shauna, that's a little bit unusual terrain for an academic and a researcher. And I'm fascinated by how performance lives in your work, not just as a method, but as a way of embodying history. How does stepping into character help you step into the lives of these amazing women? And what does performance allow you to express that the research and archiving can't?

Shauna:

Yeah, thank you for asking. I I'm gonna take them in reverse if that's okay. So I think part of why I love performance in various forms my own, but also others, is that anyone can enjoy and learn from something performed in a live setting or, or even recorded. But of course, I'm partial to the live, uh, experience. And, you know, I think you put flesh on the bones of the stories in a way that people might never encounter, but also allows us to go deeper. And so, you know, there's folks who would come to a performance who might never pick up the academic book, and why should they, right? Academic books are expensive, and I hope people buy mine, but you know, it, you're going to reach a lot more people with something like performance. And so that's one of the reasons why I think it's really powerful, is you reach different audiences and it's a different kind of experience than reading.

Shauna:

Of course I write too. So both, both are valuable in terms of stepping into the character. I, I think I would talk about it in relation to persona. So we engage in something in performance studies. Uh, one of the forms is persona performance. It's not quite the same as acting, or at least the goal is not to disappear into the characters. So we would critique, you know, a Hollywood movie actress, if, uh, every movie they were in, we were like, well, there she is again, same person, not, not really adopting the character. And we want them to disappear. We wanna see the character with performance studies. And with the kind of work I do, I want it to be a relationship between me, Shauna, the performer, the person, the storyteller, and whoever it is that I am attempting to step into the shoes of. Because it is always a tension, right?

Shauna:

And so I certainly would never claim to be a good actress, that is not my goal, but it's also not necessarily in my repertoire, but to be able to embody some of the experience, some of the movements, the vocal choices, even just reading a letter that was written in, you know, the 1920s versus how we might speak now or right now, a hundred years later, actually speaking the words aloud and putting them into my body feels like I'm getting a little bit closer to what those experiences must have been like. Now, obviously, I can't get real close, right? There's no way I could know what it was fully like to live in Laura's shoes, for instance, or anybody else who had done this kind of work. But like I said, I put flesh on the bones. It allows us to feel into some of the stories in a way that just reading about them, I just don't think can, and that's part of why going to the archives has been so exciting for me, because that's also tactile, right?

Shauna:

It's physical. I am able to, with the proper precautions and gloves and all of those good things, but able to touch letters to and from major figures in US history, and to see correspondence that refers to Alexander Hamilton or Benjamin Franklin, and learn about lighthouses in those ways. It's, it's fascinating because that's the other thing I think a lot of folks don't know is that in the early years of any nation, but in particular in the budding US administration, lighthouses, first of all, there weren't that many, and they were under the direct control of the president. So they're, you know, George Washington personally approved of certain lighthouses being constructed, and then Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, and on and on. And so, just to be able to touch and to be able to be transported through history in that way, I've always been a bit of a nerd when it comes to that kind of thing.

Shauna:

I love history. I've had the opportunity to travel to Greece, which is, the listeners won't be able to see this, but my, Zoom background is a lighthouse in Knossos in Greece, just to be able to walk in Athens. I mean, come on, <laugh>. Yeah, that's like the experience of a lifetime, right? To put your body in that historical place, even though of course there's layers upon layers above that ancient world, it's still, it's still, um, an amazing experience. And I, I did that actually through a summer teaching program that I got to be a part of for a few years. So teaching about communication in the Western birthplace of communication is quite, quite a fascinating experience.

Pat:

Oh my God, what an experience. Yeah. I'm curious, when you immerse yourself into the lives of these women keepers and then research and touch documents from the 17 hundreds, 1800, whatever, has that changed you? Has that affected you? And the reason I asked that, when I did the 13 paintings of women at the Wheel, they're on my studio wall. So every day when I would go in, I would see these incredibly brave, gutsy women, and I'd think, Hmm, they're not gonna stay quiet on the wall. They sure, sure as hell weren't quiet in their lives. And it caused me to make a video about their lives, because I felt like the story wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to paint them. I wanted to honor them. I wanted to say, you matter. So they did affect me. Every day I look at them, they affect me. How has your work and these women affected you?

Shauna:

I have never been asked that before, so thank you for asking. It absolutely has. First of all, I mean, there's no question that doing the work has impacted me. I have always been fascinated by women's stories and ev storytelling across a gender spectrum, certainly. But, um, but I've always been interested in how women as a group and individually have just made our way through the world. But I guess, and these women in particular strike me as creative as making their mark on history without necessarily needing to be famous for it. And of course, they weren't good. I'm sure some of them were not very good at their job. I'm sure some of them were cantankerous, right? Or probably many of them were considered difficult women, because as we know, well behaved women never really make history. And so I think all of those elements have inspired me to live my life more in that kind of a way.

Shauna:

Obviously I'm not doing the physical labor that they're doing, but to, to notice things is one of the things that I, I haven't about yet. But it strikes me that many of these women, and probably many of the men as well, doing this work, whether in isolation or not, it involved a lot of watching, and it involved a lot of noticing. And so, while the log books are mostly boring, they mostly just the weather every single day for the comings and goings of ships. Some of the women cataloged the wildlife around their lighthouse. Some of them were asked to, but some of them did just on their own. Some of them collected little treasures from the sea, whether that be sea shells and rocks and other life forms, or the remnants of life forms. And even had like little mini, maybe not museums, but little exhibits that they would put together.

Shauna:

At least one woman spent some of her time car duck decoys, you know, like that you would use if you were a duck hunter. Not sure why that was the thing, but she became quite good at it. And so all of these women in particular, I think, became very good at watching, noticing what needed to be done, but also relishing in the beautiful moments. And I just really want to be more in my own life. And of course, I'm drawn to those who wrote more because I love writing and I love words. And there are a few who were more loquacious in their documents and who, who left more for us to read. But all of them have amazing stories to tell. And, and it's interesting what you said about your, your artwork and your series that you refer to seeing on the wall. That's actually kind of what started me down the path of women and keepers.

Shauna:

In addition to hearing of these women at Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, when I first started doing the work in the 2010s, they had no picture of Laura Hedges. And so they had all these images of past keepers in the exhibit, one of the exhibit rooms and above her name was just a drawing of like the cap that lighthouse keepers would wear. So it was a, a line drawing of a keeper's hat. And I, I mean, I basically built my whole one woman show around that, that hat in some ways, because it just struck me, this woman was real. She had a life, she lived, she did things. And all we have is this hat. Now imagine my thrill when one of the folks who I've worked with, Steve Murray, found a picture or someone sent him a picture of Laura. So we do have one now, and I'm hoping to maybe be able to include it in the book, but still, I just had this notion that she was a cipher, right? She was just this like placeholder in a, in a frame. And it just launched me into like how many other women have in history in general, but, but especially in terms of the lighthouse world have left their mark, but those pages have disappeared, or we just haven't bothered to save them, or we don't tell their stories. And so I've made it my mission to keep trying to tell lighthouse stories, but also women's lighthouse stories in the process.

Pat:

Oh, that was beautiful. Thank you. And it just reinforces that legacy is powerful and what people leave behind will form mold and guide that next generation or someone down the road a hundred years from now that come across their history. And, and you say that so eloquently, I wanna go in a different direction. And I too am I have that nerdulent kind of thing where I will follow things and research. And when I think of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and their use in interpretation, I came out of the women's project, the 13 Women, and I kept thinking about history, history, his story, his story. And I can't remember the writer who called it "herstory". And I've never forgotten that because, oh, like you were saying earlier, we just assume these things, you know, the men were just doing all the important things because it was his story.

Pat:

And so I'm very mindful when I refer to women, I will say herstory. And that leads me to my next question for you, public memory. You see how I just segued from how it's been formed, and now we're gonna go here right now. Okay. Public memory isn't just history, it's the stories we choose to carry forward. It's what gets taught, what gets built into plaques, textbooks, movies, and what gets left out. How do you see public memory shaping what we remember about women lighthouse keepers and what we're still blind to? And what role does your work play in challenging that?

Shauna:

Um, great question. Yeah. So I think there's a bit of a dichotomy that happens in relation to these women in particular, and public memory, because on the one hand, I have not found a single person who I've spoken with, who I've encountered at a lighthouse who is not fascinated when we talk about women lighthouse keepers. So clearly it is something that is of interest. Everyone wants to hear about it. People are fascinated by the women. Now, I think some of that fascination comes from the juxtaposition. People don't expect to hear it. And so when they do, they go, Ooh, that's interesting. Right? So I do think that people are interested. So that's not the problem. The problem is not a lack of interest. On the other hand, the other side of the dichotomy, I guess, is that we tend to communicate and tell stories within the frames of reference that we've been trained within, right?

Shauna:

And so if all we have heard are stories of a particular kind of person, then we are not likely to then tell different stories ourselves. So I think public memory being the vernacular, the way that the general public, whatever that is, but the way that the general public remembers and tells stories and celebrates, right? Who do we have holidays around? Who do we have monuments to? Who do we put in a museum? Who do we steal from to put in a museum? Right? All of those questions, some of them have to do with history kind of writ large, but a lot of them also have to do with public memory. And what communities want to believe about ourselves in the things that I teach my students when I'm teaching about public memory is that it's as much about the present as it is about the past.

Shauna:

Because we want to tell stories about our past that reinforce how we think about ourselves today, or at least that maybe explain something about ourselves today. And so I think in North America, we have been on a roller coaster ride over the past, I would say really a few decades of wrestling with and thinking about these questions, right? Which monuments do we keep? Which ones do we tear down? What does that mean if we tear them down, where do we put them? These questions are, we think about them as history or as memory, but really I think it's about the story we want to tell about ourselves now. And I have gone so far afield from your question that I do not remember what it was, but public memory is really all about that, right? It's what stories are we telling? Which stories are we willing to forget?

Shauna:

Which stories do by default? And I think if we look at public memory, we can understand why there might be a discrepancy sometimes between what a specific community believes, remembers, tells about their past, and what quote unquote experts tell about them. Because these public memories are the ones that communities themselves, and there's complicated reasons for them, right? I mean, I myself have connections to a specific lighthouse in Nova Scotia that is linked to not only my own memories of childhood and my family's memory and history, but also to the public memory of this particular space. And so, as I find documents in archives about this lighthouse, sometimes I'm surprised because I think, oh, well, that's definitely not how we told that story, or, I don't remember anything about this in, in my family's lore, or my family's lore maybe didn't happen, actually. And so there's, there's some interesting tensions there.

Shauna:

But I think ultimately, of course, facts matter in terms of how particular events happen and how they have influenced people. But ultimately, what matters most right now is how we tell those stories and what that means for how we move forward. Because those women in the past, whatever you believe about any kind of afterlife, they're no longer here to tell us. They're also no longer here to be angry about it. But if we don't tell them now than we are leaving out a huge channel, I guess of or a huge swath of what life can and, and has been like for certain people, one of the things that I am hoping to research more in the future is, and I certainly haven't discovered any of these people, so I wanna make sure people are clear that others have come before me and found a lot of this.

Shauna:

So I'm not the only one. But there were a group of nuns in, in Ireland in the Middle Ages, who for 350 odd years, depending on which source you look to, obviously not the same women, but their order kept a lighthouse in Mule Ireland and not been there yet. It's on my bucket list. I mean, I've been doing this work for years before I came across any mention of them. And then Shona Riddell's book "Guiding Lights" came out, and it's beautiful, and I bought it. And, you know, I'm flipping through and reading, and she mentions them and I thought, what ?

Shauna:

Who are these women? And became fascinated with their story as well. They're illustrative because they weren't doing it because they were women and they weren't doing it even because they were nuns. And some ways, and obviously they didn't have a lot of agency in this process. They were probably assigned to this particular role, but clearly they could, women could do this work in 1200 in Ireland. And there's complicated reasons for that, that I'm still trying to puzzle out. But that religious connection is also something that we still see today between lighthouses and religion particularly. But not only Christianity, this notion of light representing. So it makes some sense that it was a group of nuns, but still, like, what must their lives have been like? Like forget the 18 hundreds. Like what, how were these women in the 12 hundreds, a little stone lighthouse, and in their, their various abbeys and, and cloistered ways of living? Like, how, what was their life like? Who were they? Where'd they come from? And I really hope I can find some more information about that.

Pat:

I think it's interesting that you bring up the role of light in spirituality and the fact that here they are Christian nuns, and when you think of the role in light in Catholicism, 'cause that would've been their belief system. And here they are keepers of the light . I mean, yes. Wow. Talk about spiritual cosmic gift. . So I came across that in, in researching you that story, I, I too thought, whoa, who are these women? What was that order? What did they have to do with lighthouses? How did they get assigned? You know, millions of questions. That was just unbelievable. Okay. Now

Shauna:

They're lovely.

Pat:

Oh, yeah. So you've mentioned that you're working on a book, and I believe it's about the cultural meaning of lighthouses. And boy, that's such a rich, rich terrain full of symbolism, solitude, gender, grit. Now I'm curious, what stories are anchoring this manuscript for you, and what are you most determined to hold onto as you shape it?

Shauna:

Hmm. So I started out thinking, I need to write a book because I've been doing this for a long time. And short form is not going to allow me to tell the stories I want to tell. So let's write a book and ,as I got going, my main question or guiding, it's not quite an argument, but guiding thought is, why, why, why as humans are we so fascinated by lighthouses? Like, what is it about lighthouses? And I don't know that I've fully answered that question in the manuscript because I don't, it's kind of like answering what is the meaning of life. But what I realized is in order to sort of tackle this question in the present, I needed to look to the past. And I, I am not a trained historian. That is not what I thought the direction I thought my life would go, but I do love it.

Shauna:

And so it occurred to me that I had to start at the beginning, um, or as close to the beginning as I could get. And so the book traces how different groups of humans have made sense of lighthouses or light structures or light as a guiding principle and communication technology throughout history. So I begin with prehistory, not that we know very much obviously, but I begin with prehistory. And then the ancients, uh, the first known lighthouse, certainly it could not have been the first use of a signaling beacon, but the first known lighthouse proper is the Pharaohs of Alexandria. And so it plays a significant role, and I use some of my performance chops, as it were, to engage in some creative nonfiction writing to sort of try to put us into the Pharos and its heyday and then move through history to ask these questions.

Shauna:

So lots of key learnings, I guess the notion that communication by fire is one of our most original forms of communication, mass media or just media. And so fire figures into the book, of course, which is interesting because we are currently in a time when we don't think about fire. I think most of us, if you hear fire, we think wildfires, we think, um, natural disasters. Whereas for all of human history, fire has been a tool and a technology and one of our most important ones. And so definitely do some deep diving into that. And then religion figures pretty highly in terms of the middle Ages. And then we move more into the kind of realm of, of science and technology and, and the role that lighthouses have played, but also how people have made sense of them. And some of the associations that, I think one of the things that's fascinated me the most is we still have some of the same, you know, not that we can know for sure what the ancients thought, but we still have some of the same associations with lighthouses and light, right?

Shauna:

We still associate them with religion often, but not only Christianity, we still associate them with safety and not exactly comfort, but steadfastness and warning sometimes. Although we have tended, and this is I guess one of the other major threads is we have tended to tell the story of lighthouses as a positive one, and it is a positive one, but there are shadows in every, every story, right? And lighthouses have played a role in colonization and exploitation. And there are stories like the women, uh, of the women that we haven't told. There are stories of, in particular in the United States, for instance, African American keepers, if we know a little bit about women, we know even less about African American keepers and even less about anyone who, uh, in Canada, we would call First Nations in the United States, native American. There are stories where there are connections, but we just know so very little. And again, that has to do with how we want to talk about history, right? We want to tell the happy story, the progressive story, the story that fits the narrative. But part of what I wrestle with in the book is like, how do we hold space for some of the other parts of the stories?

Pat:

Well, I have to say, I can't wait to read your book and thank you.

Shauna:

And it's 2026, we hope.

Pat:

Great.

Shauna:

So soon.

Pat:

Yes, it is. And I'll keep my eyes open for it. This is a discussion about light, and I can't help think about Rumi when he says: "The lamps are different, but the light is the same."

Shauna:

Oh,

Pat:

I love that guy. I just gotta say!

Shauna:

Beautiful. Right?

Pat:

So you've been featured on PPBS, NPR, and National Geographic. Your stories have really traveled far, far. I'm curious, with all that attention, what keeps your feet on the ground and your compass pointed towards your work?

Shauna:

Um, love those metaphors. Well, I mean, I come from sort of regular old folk, you know, like that's part of it is, um, I'm from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, which if your listeners want to visit a beautiful place, uh, I'm not getting paid to say this, but Cape Breton is beautiful. It is frequently voted one of the top islands in North America. And so all that said, uh, it's a fairly working class place, um, industrial, uh, at least the parts that I grew up in. And, you know, I just really believe that there is nothing about me or academia, or I don't know, being known as an author, nothing that makes me have more power or be better or have any kind of leg up on anyone else who I work with, uh, or who lives around me. And, you know, and I love people.

Shauna:

I've always loved people. I love people and I love words. And so, so I do my best to try to kind of bring those together in as many ways as I can. And I think just knowing that there are many, many, many more stories to tell is what keeps me doing the work, and that I still enjoy it, you know? Um, I think that's the other thing that people, especially toward the end of the drafting of the book, when, you know, you get tunnel vision and everything is the book and nothing else matters. And even then, when I kind of hated a lot of things, I still loved the work, <laugh>, I still loved the stories. I love trying to tell them I will never get bored. And so that is like, that hunger, I think is what kind of keeps me going.

Pat:

Your passion definitely comes through, loud and clear.

Shauna:

Sometimes too much?

Pat:

No, never! Passion is like books. You can never have too many or have too much.

Shauna:

Well said.

Pat:

So lighthouses are symbols of safety, solitude, persistence. The women who kept those lights burning, they did it without fanfare, and often under pretty tough, harsh conditions. And they did it with a kind of a steady on attitude Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So when the light eventually goes out, when the keeper is gone, what do you hope people still remember about these women? What legacy do they leave us?

Shauna:

I think they remind us that a life well lived is one where you, you know, you loved your family and you did things that made you happy when you could, but you also, you know, took care of others around you. And I don't think that's something that only women can do. You know, I think that all, all of us can can do that. And, and I think to take joy in the little things, and also just proof that we were there, right? Proof that, that women did these things, proof that women have always worked, particularly women of, of all races have always worked, always paid or unpaid, been engaged in, in labor, and that we shouldn't stop , right? Yeah. That we, we need to still be in these places. We women still need seats at the table, and maybe even more so now than ever before.

Shauna:

And, you know, I hope that legacy lives on. The thing I would say about lighthouses too is the lights are still on. In many lighthouses, people think that they are obsolete, and some are, some are decommissioned, but they are not obsolete. Uh, they're still very much used and many of them maintained by various coast guards, but they're mostly automated. So the keepers have left for the most part. And with the exception of maybe some tourist interpretation or, uh, some very specific situations, most, most lighthouses don't have keepers anymore. And so I hope that we remember all of the keepers as mostly ordinary people doing their jobs, loving parts of it, hating parts of it, but doing their duty no matter what. And making a, a really big mark on, on history as a group. And, you know, I guess I would put a plugin for, you know, wherever you are, if you're anywhere near a kind of coast that would have lighthouses to investigate. If this is interesting to you, you know, go visit. If you can, go take pictures, go donate to the Lighthouse associations, because many lighthouses are falling into disrepair, and many more are going to fall into the ocean. Or I suppose the land is going to disappear, and so they will no longer be with us, and they're kind of harbinger of erosion. And so I, you know, paying attention is, is a worthwhile endeavor.

Pat:

Well, as we hit the top of the hour, I just wanna say, these women didn't set out to be remembered. They set out to do the job, but because of your work, we can finally see what their silence left behind. Persistence without applause, labor without spotlight, strength that carried on, whether or not anyone noticed. And by telling their stories, you're not just lighting up the past, you're helping all of us rethink what we value, resilience, visibility, and who gets written into history, or better yet, her story. Shauna, thank you for coming on Fill To Capacity. I just love listening to you, and I can't wait to read your book.

Shauna:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Pat:

And listeners, if you enjoyed today's podcast, tell your friends or subscribe. Thank you for joining us today. Take care and take care of each other. Bye.