By BRIAN JOHNSON

The graveyard of lake Ontario The Main Duck is widely known For a score of hapless vessels On its jagged shores have blown -- Willis Metcalfe

The eastern end of Lake Ontario is no place to be during a late fall storm.

No one was more aware of that fact than young Ken McConnell. Returning to his post as lighthouse keeper on Main Duck Island, McConnell was loaded up with supplies and heading out from Long Point harbour in Prince Edward County. The trip back to his station was a 12-mile crossing of open Lake Ontario. It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon with the wind getting up from the northwest and the cloudy skies turning a dismal grey-black. It was mid December.
Heading in an easterly direction, McConnell set his course with the False Duck Island light over his shoulder. He would keep it in sight if the weather started to get worse with blowing snow and the possibility of losing his landmarks. He would soon pick up the familiar sight of his own lighthouse, which stood proudly at a height of 77 feet on the northwest point of Main Duck Island. Already the wind was freshening as he neared Psyche shoal. The sea, which had been moderate earlier this morning, was now brimming with waves at a height of nearly eight feet. He had made this crossing hundreds of times over the years, especially in this 32-foot steel boat. Although quite narrow, she handled the waves rather well, rolling easily. It was then that he heard the familiar hum of his diesel engine start to sputter. Knowing he had plenty of fuel, he adjusted the throttle and angled his boat to try and reduce the rolling motion. Must be sediment in the fuel tank, he thought. The engine sputtered again, coughed, and suddenly died. The narrow boat was now at the mercy of the wind and waves.
The area surrounding Main Duck and Yorkshire Islands is called the graveyard of the Great Lakes. Since the earliest explorers headed west from the sheltered waters of the St. Lawrence River, scores of ships have come to their end when wind and weather conditions leave them in a confused and tormented sea. Shallow areas become hidden with breaking waves during the late fall storms as well as sudden fog or late fall 'steam' which can hide even the nearest aid to navigation.
Two French ships, in 1760, were wrecked nearby and the hapless sailors found themselves on the deserted islands watching their drowned companions wash up on the gravel beach. They buried them, one by one, until they, too, succumbed to the winter elements. Later, about 1848, Captain Walters pastured sheep and cattle with his brothers on Main Duck and Yorkshire Islands. The area of land is 518 acres and 47 acres, respectively. In the late 1800s, fishermen with their families gradually moved to Main Duck Island with its protected harbour later called Schoolhouse Bay. And then Claude W. 'King' Cole, a native of Big Island in Prince Edward County, paid a visit to the island. In 1905, Cole purchased the islands for $1,200. Spending winter at Cape Vincent, N.Y., Cole lived on the Main Duck all through the navigation season. He granted fishing rights to more than 70 fishermen who lived there for the season. Later, during the prohibition years, the island was a favoured spot for the rum runners seeking shelter from the law or the wild lake. Main Duck Island was a world unto itself and Cole was its 'king'. At the northwestern end, a lighthouse was built in 1913 with a dwelling for the keeper.
"There's nothing out there now," said former light keeper McConnell, now 72. Ken and his wife Barb are the last lighthouse keepers from Main Duck Island. They are also the island's last residents. In 1978 the light became automated and light keeper McConnell was transferred to the lighthouse station on Long Point, Lake Erie. Shortly after that, he retired when it, too, became automated.
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Living today on the mainland, the couple have many fond memories of raising their three children, Kerry, Blaine and Scott, on Main Duck Island during the navigation season. Claude Cole and his rum running and fishing dynasty had long ended. One by one, the fishermen and their families left for different lives on the mainland.
In 1941, the island was purchased by U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the negotiator of the peace treaty with Japan following the Second World War. He found it a quiet retreat during the Eisenhower era. And then he was gone. Nobody in the deserted shacks, the pathways weeded over, trespassed by some wild cows, bison, snapping turtles and snakes by the hundreds. But the lighthouse keepers, who lived at the northwestern end, eir rigid, nightly vigil, maintaining the huge Fresnel lens, its mercury vapour light stretching out for more than 17 miles in a sweeping 360-degree direction to mariners in peril. Including one of its own keepers, one wild December night.
"That wind got up to 55 miles an hour," McConnell remembered. "I got down in the hold changing filters and hanging on. I'd get her started and head up into the wind and she'd quit again. This went on and on. I got fairly close to the island, trying to get help but they didn't see me. By now the seas were about 15 feet high. Finally fishermen Rory McIntosh and Ray Lancaster spotted me and tried to get a line on. By then it was about two in the morning." What both men didn't know was the Whitefish Bay, a 730-foot bulk carrier was upbound, full steam ahead in the violent seas; her officers watching the blips on the badly sea-cluttered Kelvin Hughs radar.
"They couldn't pull me, the wind and sea was too strong," McConnell said. "Suddenly I was blinded. The Whitefish Bay put her big spotlight on us. I hollered to Ray, 'Give 'er the devil!' They did. Got me out of the way just as I read the big name way up on her bow. I thought we had it!"
Daily duties like weather reports four times a day kept Ken and his counterparts busy in the daytime. They would take turns sleeping. Every night, an ever-vigilant watch was needed up at the top of the stairs checking the 'third-order' Fresnel lens, ensuring it was working properly.
"At one time the light was kerosene," Ken recalled. "We had to pump that up and clean the lenses every second day or so. It was hard work because they were all different shapes so it took a lot of time. Later, we went to mercury vapour. The light turned by weights, which had to be cranked back up every day. An electric motor changed that later. The mercury had to be cleaned out every couple of years. We were on a pick and shovel, too, for about 10 years, building cement retaining walls around the light," he remembered.
"We even put in a runway for aircraft. I had my pilot's licence so I'd fly out now and then. And there was always the boaters in trouble or lost. Yeah, we saved quite a few out there. I went out and brought a guy in once. His steering went out. So he stayed the night. In the morning he asked where he was. I said 'on Main Duck Island.' He said he was supposed to be in Florida. When he left, he headed straight out into the lake. Who knows where he ended up."
So what was it like, being married to a lighthouse keeper? Way out on wild, Lake Ontario?
"I would go out every weekend," said Barb, "because I worked on the mainland. Our kids grew up out there. They loved it, especially Kerry, our oldest daughter. The children stayed out there until school went back. When we were first married, we were stationed on False Duck Island, a little closer to the mainland."
"Yeah, it got so rough that you couldn't land that one time," remembered Ken. "So they got close enough and your brother tossed the baby to me as you went by. Kerry wouldn't remember that."
"I do remember the big foghorn," Kerry said, now 50. "After a while you got used to it."
"Kerry would move out there, if she could," Ken remarked. "Trouble is, everything is wrecked. Our house, the old cottages, everything. The island is one of the St. Lawrence Islands National Parks now. The lighthouse and buildings are OK though. There's just nobody there anymore."
What about Claude Cole's treasure from the rum running days?
"Oh there was still some of that," Ken laughed. "It was in the old ice house. Cases of it. Once in a while, maybe we had a nip. But it's gone, too, like the ice house"
Kerry and her husband, Jay Childerhouse, gave her parents a model lighthouse for their front lawn.
"It's really sad," she said. "I was 18 in 1978 when we left the island. Something should have been done to protect the buildings, especially our house and some of the cottages. All ruined now."
On June 14 of this year, the federal government declared surplus almost all of the lighthouses in Canada, both active and inactive, including the lighthouse on Main Duck Island. Under the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, this means that if local communities want to preserve their historical value, they have to take the structures over themselves. The Heritage Canada Foundation has condemned this move.
"I was out there about 10 years ago," said Kerry. "The paths are overgrown but the shoreline is the same as I remembered as a kid. It will probably stay that way forever. I hope so. I'd love to go back again."
But could she live there, way out on the wild lake like her father did for about 30 years?
"I'd have to think about it," she said. "I really would."

Brian Johnson is captain of the Wolfe Islander III.