Residents want to rebuild historic lighthouse near Brockville

There was a flash and a bang before the Five Mile Lighthouse lit up for the last time.

Now cottagers are trying to come up with the money to rebuild the historic lighthouse near Brockville that burned down late last month.

Mike Milne could see the fire from his cottage on the St. Lawrence Seaway, during a strong thunderstorm on July 23.

"Out of the blue, there was one bolt of lightning and an immediate clap of thunder that was so loud, I ducked," he told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning Thursday.

"Within a minute or two, I got a call from my neighbour wondering [if they were seeing] smoke coming out of the lighthouse."

Milne said the three-storey lighthouse, named because it's five miles west of Brockville City Hall, had stood for more than 160 years, lighting the way through a dangerous stretch of the waterway.

"It's a notorious bay, everyone knows it as the 'Coal Shoal,'" he said.

"There's a series of five shoals here that have claimed many a propeller over the years and [caused] larger shipwrecks. It was originally built to assist St. Lawrence River traffic long before the Seaway was ever built."

It was decommissioned in the late 1920s or early 1930s, he said, and was transferred from the federal government to the Ontario Heritage Trust — an agency of the provincial tourism ministry — in the 1970s.

Milne was already in talks with trust officials to stabilize the structure, before it burned down. But that meeting wasn't scheduled to happen until days after the fateful storm.

The officials came to look at the site anyway, but Milne said there's not really much left.

Milne said he and a group of other locals are now taking matters into their own hands.

They're set to meet this coming Saturday morning to discuss logistical issues and how much money they'll need to raise to rebuild it.

"It's part of the local folklore. Everyone knows the Five Mile light … if you tell an American or a Canadian, they'll ask where your cottage is and as soon as you say the Five Mile light everyone knows it."