SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Cape Spear National Historic Site

Honourable senators, today I am pleased to present Chapter 90 of “Telling Our Story.”

Friends, I ask you to picture in your mind this scene. You may close your eyes if you wish.

It is a few minutes before the first sunrise appears in North America, and you are sitting on a grassy knoll, listening to the sounds from the waves of the vast Atlantic Ocean making a dramatic landfall on the shoreline hundreds of feet below you. The experience will leave you breathless and wanting more and more of the place I am so proud to call home.

Just a few kilometres east of the beautiful and historic city of St. John’s, you will find the Cape Spear Lighthouse National Historic Site, home of the oldest surviving lighthouse in Newfoundland and Labrador. The year 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the designation and official opening of Cape Spear Lighthouse as a Parks Canada site.

In 1846, James Cantwell became the first member of the Cantwell family to serve as lighthouse keeper, a family tradition that would last for over 150 years, until 1997, when the light station became fully automated and de-staffed, with Gerry Cantwell being the last lighthouse keeper.

In 1962, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recommended the historic lighthouse for designation as a national significant historic site, and in 1964, the federal government, through Parks Canada, acquired the site.

Webster himself would have difficulty to explain in mere words the magic of a visit to Cape Spear. Whether you go there to witness that first sunrise in North America, marvel at the 10,000-year-old icebergs floating by, experience the frolicking of migrating humpback whales, visit the historic lighthouse or just sit in silence as you gaze out over the Atlantic Ocean and breathe in the salty air, you will not be disappointed.

The Portuguese first named this location Cabo da Esperança, meaning “Cape of Hope,” which became Cap d’Espoir under the French and finally Cape Spear.

If you are a hiker, you have to make the trek and experience Cape Spear where you will find a trailhead and a trail end of the beautiful East Coast Trail.

When you are overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from the hillside of Cape Spear, you are only 3,324 km from downtown Dublin, Ireland, but when you turn your back to the ocean and look westward, you are 4,805 km from downtown Winnipeg. So I will leave it to you to decide whether you are at the point where Canada ends or, as we love to say in Newfoundland, “This is the place where it all began.”

With the federal government’s announcement yesterday that admission will be free at the site this year, I am confident that 2025, the fiftieth anniversary, will be a banner year for Cape Spear, as it is one of our province’s most iconic tourist attractions, with more than 300,000 visitors to the site annually.

While I cannot guarantee you a sunny day at Cape Spear, I am confident that a visit there will be well worth the trip. Thank you.