a calm night, although it was a strong tide, and Daddy and I watched her come down the inside shore there--this was around midnight--and then went to bed." The Peggy's mate, W. Ingram, came up on watch at 11:45 P.M. and noticed that "the sea was really boiling when the tug entered the riptide of the pass." They had no sooner passed Allison's light when the tug pitched wildly and a hawser snaked ominously over the handrail. Ingram raced to the galley for an ax, but the Peggy McNeil started to roll before he reached it. She turned clear over. To his horror, Ingram found himself underwater with the deck overhead. When he finally fought his way out to the surface, he saw scows bearing down on him. He swam for one but was helpless in the grip of that mighty current. "One large whirlpool dragged me under and I thought I would drown before reaching the surface again." The tide bore him within reach of a bell buoy and he grabbed hold. Catching his breath, Ingram struck out again for the scow, reached it, and pulled himself aboard. From his vantage point he could see his mates clinging to the other scow's line. He spent his last ounce of strength trying to pull the two together, shouting at them as the scows bucked and plunged wildly in the current. "These men had been in the water for almost three-quarters of an hour and were losing their strength, for one by one they disappeared." A fish-boat found Ingram drifting by on the scow next morning and took him to Nanaimo. He brought a ferry ticket to Vancouver and marched into the offices of the Pacific Tug & Barge Company, seawater squelching in his shoes, and declared to the incredulous clerks, "[I am] all that is left of the Peggy and her crew!"

Allison's steadfast dedication to mariner's safety combined with his mounting expenses to spur his determination to have a modern fog alarm plant installed at Porlier. Along with his monthly report for November 1927 he wrote, "A great many [seaman] are complaining about the fog horn at this time of year." Not without cause, since Porlier was one of the few stations still relying upon the obsolete hand horn. The New Westminster Owners of the launch Bobby listening for it in vain on the night of 2 December and came storming upon the station next day, "very hostile," demanding to know why he had tried to drown them the night before. Their launch had struck a reef off Valdez Island around 6:30 P.M., and they blamed Allison, who reported the incident to Wilby.

We said did you here a steamboat blow 3 whistles to us & they said yes & did you hear us blow back at them--"Yes." They thought that was two boats blowing to one another. This steamboat was inside & each time she blew we blew & when she passed the house she blew she was allright, & in the gulf now & so we came in the house, untill another big whistle blew. These New Westminster men say they expected a siren whistle in a dangerous pass like this & didn't think they had to blow to us & were going to report us for not keeping the siren blowing continually. We showed them our hand horn & then you should have heard there talk."

There was no better indictment of the hand horn: it was adequate aid to steamers who called for it, but useless to smaller vessels who had no horn of their own to sound the request.

By 1929 Allison sought escape from his downward spiral into debt in drink. First wartime inflation, then the Great Depression had torpedoed his financial security, and if he had hoped to recapture the halcyon time with Mathilda before the war, the vision soon dissipated. Elizabeth Allison paid the price of his ruin.

She had fled his mush-mouthed rages three times before Christmas week 1929. On the night of 22 December Sticks brooded over another bottle of rum. Their quarrel, when it came, escalated far beyond insult. Allison seized a shotgun by the barrel and swung it in a vicious arc at her head. She jumped aside and the walnut stock shattered on the floor. With her son Edward fending him off, she managed to elude the rampaging Sticks until 2:45 A.M. when he finally passed out. Next day she called at the Ladysmith Provincial Police detachment to swear out a complaint. Through Allison had no recollection of the incident, he stated in the court that, "since he married her, he tried to do everything to make her comfortable, and count not understand why she wanted to leave him." At one point the judge cleared to court "owing to Mr. Allison's filthy language." He granted Elizabeth a separation, and ordered Allison to pay her $40 a month maintenance.

Elizabeth wrote Colonel Wilby in January to inform him she and Edward were now living on a Home Oil barge anchored near the station. She related that Allison had left the station without leave the day before, and was last seen with two cronies on their way into the Travelers Hotel Beer Parlour. "I am very sorry to leave my Light House home as I love it there," she lamented, "if only he could leave the drink alone."

Wilby sent a report to Deputy Minister Hawken in Ottawa, recommending Allison's dismissal. But when Halkett came forward to state that neither he nor any of the mechanics or seamen on the Berens "had any ground for suspicion that Allison was in any way a drinking man." Throughout his twenty-eight years' service there had "never .. been one complaint as to the proper keeping up of his lights and foghorn." Why not at least hold out for an opportunity for him to retire gracefully?

By way of explanation for his recent behaviour, Sticks sent in a bizarre letter charging that he had been slandered as an informer for his daring exploits on behalf of the Provincial Police. He claimed he had captured a murderer and two burglars who had broken into the store at Ladysmith, and tied them to chairs at the station. He was also the bane of local "Dope Peddlars," and had laid a great many other criminals by their heels although, he complained, "Even yet I am Called a Stool Pigeon to Strangers by Residents here."

Allison's Day at Porlier were surely numbered, yet his long and celebrated service seemed to fly in the face of the notion that he was coming apart at the seams. A.W. Niell, his MP, asked Wilby: "Could not justice be tempered with mercy, considering his long service and give him a chance to retire so that he could get superannuation allowance?" Then George Askew, an influential Victoria yachtsman, took up Sticks' case. He had called at Porlier in late January, as was his "Custom on .. yachting cruises," to check on the weather in the Gulf. He was outraged to learn of "Capt. Allison's" imminent dismissal. "In justice to our much beloved Lighthouse Keeper Captain Stick familiarly known to us, we feel like loosing a real friend, a trustworthy servant," he wrote. In spite of his "family problems," his first loyalty had always been to mariners. "I know he has always been on the job, always has his light and horn been working. Over twenty years of faithful service to Mariners. I assure your Department of voice of protest will be heard," Askew wrote, and warned Wilby to "stay his dismissal until" the department was "more fully informed." If not, he threatened, "Influence will be brought to your notice why so many of us demand his retention." The agent had better "give this matter .. serious consideration."

This was the stuff which moved men in office, men otherwise immune to the anguished supplication of isolated light keepers. ON 12 February Hawken wrote from Ottawa, ordered Wilby to tell Allison the department was "disposed to overlook .. [his] lapse of good conduct on the understanding that there .. [would] be no cause for complaint in the future." This was poetic justice indeed. If the department seldom rewarded light keepers for their sacrifices, the seagoing public obviously did. Never before had a mariner come to the aid of a light keeper in such distress.

Allison thanked Wilby "with all .. [his] Heart." As for Elizabeth, he wrote, "she is still my wife and I love her still" He wanted her back, but she was working full-time for Home Oil, pumping gas on the barge. Dejected and deserted, Sticks Allison began meandering beyond the bounds of rational behaviour. In his drunken reveries he cultivated the paranoid delusion that Elizabeth was consorting with other men, an opinion he committed to paper, mailed to puzzled neighbours, and blared in strident harangues from the rocks to passing boats. T.W.S. Parsons, acting superintendent of the Provincial Police, had quite a pile of Stick's barely legible diatribe's on his desks when he wrote Wilby, asking him to tell Allison "this practice must cease."

Sticks was in court again that August, this time as plaintiff, after sending the police a message: "ARREST EDWARD GEAR FOR MURDEROUS ASSAULT: ALSO ARREST MRS. F.T. ALLISON--MY WIFE--FOR THREATENING TO SHOOT ME AND DROWN HERSELF AT LIGHTHOUSE STEPS." On 11 August he had been on his way over to the Home Oil barge to deliver another diatribe about his wayward wife's "infidelity," when Edward intercepted him. The two circled each other out in the swirling pass, exchanging curses and blows with their oars. In court Allison's attorney moved to withdraw the charge and the judge held the keeper liable for costs. "from my observations on this investigation," Constable O.L. Hall reported, "it was very clear to me that Mrs. F.T. Allison and her son, Edward Gear, command the respect of all citizens in that settlement."

By June 1932 Allison had become a full-fledged public nuisance. Constable Hal sent another report to the sub-inspector of the Victoria Police District. A Chemainus man had received a number of threatening and abusive letters from Porlier, and complained "that when he ... [went] by boat to the Allison Home Oil station for fuel -- F. T. Allison from a high bluff .. [shouted] for the full benefit of all in the settlement -- accusing him of immorality with Mrs. Allison." He suggested the police talk to Wilby again. IF a transfer could not be arranged, why not "have Allison mentally examined"? Dr. Rogers at Chemainus had already offered to make the examination. "If the Doctor certifies Allison insane, he could then be brought to Chemainus for the second Doctor's examination," Hall recommended.

The harried agent admitted Hall's statements were "perfectly correct .. so far as Allison's sanity .. [was] concerned," but he had had no complaints about the upkeep of the station. Wilby ruled out a transfer, nor would he take responsibility for ordering a mental examination, pointing out that the police had "the perfect right to take this responsibility for themselves."

Indeed, Allison continued to provide ample evidence that his obsession was no obstacle to his performance. In July 1934 he rescued C. D. Cotton, a Vancouver insurance broker whose party was swamped in the pass, and put them up "while disabled" for three days. Cotton wrote Wilby expressing his gratitude and admiration for Sticks Allison's heroics, and the agent wrote the keeper, "All such letters pointing out the courtesy extended by employees have the very sincere appreciation of the Department, which all helps us to keep up the service of which were are all very proud." If Allison was mad, he was also indispensable.

Sticks turned seventy-five in 1941. He refused, however, to submit his birth certificate prior to retiring, even at the risk of foregoing his superannuation. He was holding out for the Imperial Service Medal -- tangible proof that a much-maligned keeper had given superb performance for thirty-nine years at Porlier Pass. Wilby came to visit him at Chemainus before he left in the fall of 1941, and assured Sticks he would recommend him for the award. It had not arrived by January 1942 and Allison learned from McPhail, the minister, that it never would. It was a cruel blow and Sticks went after Wilby with the same cranky determination with which he had pursued his wife.

"He, I know, has not ever Had any liking for me," he wrote McPhail. IN all that time Allison was at Porlier, Wilby had never even visited the station. Sticks charged that the agent had ordered the lights moved from their original position (there is no record of the alteration), prompting a torrent of complaints from mariners. "I am complaining & saying they are not in Position as formerly installed by a Mr. Anderson & Capt. Lautin [sic] 50 years ago just because I have tried to have lights Rectified by that Agent I am Placed at Bottom of his List & he Refused to allow me the Long Service Medal, which I ought to be given for my Long Service."

The medal remained out of reach. Allison's last communication on file was addressed, in desperation, to McKenzie King, "Premier of Canada," complaining that Wilby "held it in his spiteful way to refuse it .. Mr. McKenzie King, it is such servant as Mr. Wilby who are the ruination of the Liberal Party," Allison charged. "Mr. Wilby is a dommint & very a very ignorant person, when one knows him and is not liked by any [of] our light keeper nor any one of the seamen off the employ." Sticks Allison died six years later, still without the medal he coveted -- and deserved -- so much. Devina and Frances both went back to Porlier Pass in turn, as wives of Keepers who came long after Sticks Allison.