Carver, Clarence Edgar

In 1923 he was the first wireless telegraph operator at Lennanrd Island Radio Station. (This station closed later that year when a telephone cable was laid to the station.) In 1934 he was the Keeper of the Nootka Lighthouse.

In 1944 she was the Keeper at the Active Pass Light Station.

Roy E. Carver (Email to Nauticapedia 15/10/2021) stated "My father Clarence E. Carver emigrated to Canada (Victoria) as a boy in 1913 with his father and an older brother. His mother and younger brother came later.

He developed a passion for radio, and taught himself by building the radio components, and constructing and using one of the first armature radios in Victoria. (His 1930s call sign VE5EL).

He owned a locksmith shop and small engine repair store in Victoria.

He formed and played in a dance band. With his father, he started one of the first jitney services (taxi) in Victoria. Clarence joined the West Coast Radio Service, and he was posted up and down the Pacific coast in the 1920s, traveling on CPR ships and living and operating radio stations at remote locations.

He was a radio operator in 1923 at the station on Lennard Island. When that station closed, he assisted in the laying of a submarine cable from Lennard Island to the Tofino Life Boat Station.

He worked at the Life Boat station as a radio operator until 1925. Later in 1929 he decided to sign on to the Empress of Asia and did a few trips to the Philippines and Japan as a Marconi Operator. (The Marconi Company had the monopoly on operating radios in deep sea ships at the time.) He also worked for the British Columbia Telephone company in 1930 and worked at the Bamfield Cable Station.

In 1931 with the economy taking a major downturn Clarence decided he needed a job to see him through the hard times, so applied to be a light station keeper.

He was accepted and assigned to the Quatsino Sound Light Station (at Kains Island) in the fall of 1933.

He had his amateur radio station (ham radio) with him (call sign VE5RN). In the late spring of 1934 Clarence's fiance arrived at the station from Victoria and they were married at the station, a minister, a friend and an RCMP constable attending from Port Alice. In July of 1935 a son was born in Victoria, in a nursing home on Cook Street. In May of 1938 a daughter was born in the Port Alice mill hospital. Occasionally the family would make trips to Vancouver and Victoria, traveling on the Union and CPR steam ships that traveled up and down the East and West coast of Vancouver Island.

In 1940 Clarence developed an abscess in the left eyelid. On visits to doctors over time in Victoria no one knew how to treat the worsening ailment. So he asked for a transfer to a station location where it would be easier to see doctors.

In 1944 he and the family was transferred on the C.G.S. Estevan (a buoy tender and light station supply ship) to the Active Pass light station (on Mayne Island) that allowed him to get off the island once a week to go to Victoria. It was a big change for the family, the Berens (buoy tender and light station supply ship) only supplied supplies and materials for the light station. Anything the family needed was obtained in the two stores on the island, plus items could be ordered and shipped by steamer to the island. And there was a school for the children. Over the years the abscess got much worse as the doctors couldn't help him. In the spring of 1947 Clarence retired to property in Saanich and he passed away in the fall of 1949 from cancer in the left eye, which went to his brain."