Point Aconi Lighthouse

The Point Aconi Lighthouse stood near High Point, about a mile south of Point Aconi at the northeastern tip of Boularderie Island on Cape Breton's northeast coast, where Spanish Bay meets the open Atlantic. The original 1874 light was a square wooden tower with an attached keeper's dwelling, its fixed red light shown from oil lamps set in silvered reflectors; a fourth-order Fresnel lens followed in 1915. The old tower served through the late 1930s and was gone by 1947, when pole range lights took over marking the entrance to Little Bras d'Or Channel, and in the early 1960s a skeletal tower finally put a light on Point Aconi itself. A circular fibreglass tower with a red lantern replaced that skeleton in 1989.

That 1989 fibreglass tower burned to the ground in February 2014 — a fire police deemed suspicious — days passing before anyone reported it, and no lighthouse has been built to replace it; by then the navigational light had already moved to a skeletal steel tower, which still operates on the site today. The light's history is one of fits and starts — discontinued, revived, rebuilt, and rebuilt again — reflecting the rugged conditions of this exposed point. Today the site is reached by quiet coastal roads through the former coal-mining communities of Boularderie Point, and though the distinctive fibreglass tower is gone, the point remains a worthwhile stop for lighthouse enthusiasts exploring Cape Breton's northern shore.