North Canso Lighthouse

North Canso Lighthouse marks the west side of the north entrance to the Canso Locks at the Strait of Canso, on the Northumberland Shore's Sunrise Trail in Antigonish County. The site has guided shipping through the strait since 1842, when the first light, a lantern on the roof of a square wooden dwelling, went into operation, with keeper George McKay serving in the 1850s.

That first tower, 35 feet tall with its beam 110 feet above the water, carried an Argand lamp and catatropic lens by 1857 and a catatropic long-focus lens showing a flashing white light every 5 seconds by 1922. Between 1962 and 1968 the old wooden tower was replaced by a circular fibreglass tower about 34 feet tall, painted white with two red bands and no lantern, its beam reaching 125 feet above the water.

The current fibreglass tower, lit around 1965 and fitted with an electric mercury-vapour lantern showing a flashing white light every 3 seconds by 1992, still stands and is automated. The original 1842 dwelling-and-lantern is gone, but the site remains a useful waypoint at the Canso causeway, the busy link between mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.