How do you move a 1,000-tonne limestone lighthouse?
Moving a historic stone lighthouse is not a job to be taken lightly.
Historical heft aside, Hamilton's beach canal beacon weighs about 1,000 tonnes, thanks to the rough dolomite blocks that form a base wall nearly as thick as an adult is tall.
Put another way, the lighthouse is heavier than nine blue whales, 15 army tanks or 140 male African elephants - all of which are more mobile than a stone tower settled into the beach strip sand near the entrance to Hamilton Harbour.
Despite the daunting weight of limestone and history, engineers plan to gingerly jack the lighthouse off its 164-year-old foundation later this year and move it - ever so slowly - to a new, more publicly accessible home.
I think people are surprised that it is possible, but we know from other places that it is possible," said Larissa Fenn, public affairs director for the Hamilton Oshawa Port Authority.
The agency recently took ownership of the heritage-protected lighthouse and announced plans to move and restore the building, with the $1-million relocation cost shared by the port, federal and municipal governments.
The bulky beacon doesn't have to go far - maybe half the length of a CFL football field - with a new foundation built on port authority land midway along the shipping canal that links Lake Ontario to Hamilton Harbour.
Critically, the deal will move the lighthouse out of the shadow of the federally operated Burlington Canal lift bridge. That's the only way volunteers will be allowed to restore the long-shuttered building - or for visitors to eventually climb the 79 steps that spiral up the beacon, said Fenn, because the government considers the lighthouse too close to the lift bridge for safe public access.
But how do you even move a five-storey-high stone edifice that weighs twice as much as the world's largest truck can carry?
The short answer is very slowly," said Gabriel Matyiko, vice-president of specialty moving company Expert House Movers, who has heard about Hamilton's lighthouse relocation but is not involved.
It is 100 per cent doable ... but each different building has its challenges," he said. This being a historic structure made of limestone, you know, it wasn't built ... to be moved or picked up."
The Maryland-based company has helped rescue" six lighthouses in the U.S. from the threat of ocean erosion. That includes partnering on relocation of the nearly 5,000-tonne Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina close to a kilometre inland using a specialized track of steel beams and rollers.
To say the nearly $12-million project was complicated would be an understatement.
Multiple hydraulic jacks were needed to safely hoist the tower and a temporary base high enough to be pulled along a specially built track, about 1.5-metres at a time. Around 60 automated sensors were installed on the lighthouse to measure vibration and tilt - plus a tower-top weather station to monitor wind speed.
A contractor hasn't been chosen for the beach lighthouse move yet, so it remains to be seen whether Hamilton's relatively smaller limestone tower will move on rails, rollers or some other mechanized platform.
Expect a crowd on moving day, suggested Matyiko - but don't expect the slow spectacle to lend itself to a 15-second TikTok video. The Cape Hatteras brick lighthouse inched to safety over 23 days, but sometimes as little as six metres a day.
The beach beacon only has to move about 60 metres - but the march to moving day could also be painstakingly slow, said port authority vice-president Bill Fitzgerald. He hopes to see relocation start before next winter, but there are obstacles other than heavy stone to overcome.
For example, any major work at the lighthouse will have to be co-ordinated with lift bridge operations and marine canal traffic. The limestone tower can't duck under power lines, either, so those will come down temporarily.
The port authority also has to map out underground utilities and test the stability of the surrounding soil to ensure it can hold up under the 1,000-tonne footprint of a limestone giant.
Expect further delays if preventive masonry work is needed first on the old limestone - or if protected birds are nesting in the plywood-covered iron lantern atop the tower.
Given the unique challenges involved, some members of Hamilton's heritage committee last month questioned whether the relocation plan could damage the lighthouse.
Matyiko said he is not aware of any attempted lighthouse relocations that ended with a toppled tower.
That's not a big worry" for members of the Beach Canal Lighthouse Group, either, said Ian Kerr-Wilson, who chairs the citizen group that formed decades ago to help save the tower.
Kerr-Wilson said in an ideal world, the lighthouse would stay put because location is often a big part of the historical significance of a building. The beacon and a nearby keeper's cottage are the oldest structures left on the Hamilton beach strip - and the current lighthouse and its wooden predecessor guided ships into Hamilton harbour for 123 years before modern technology and a bevy of tall bridges rendered it obsolete.
You don't move heritage buildings if you don't have to," he said. But if we want to preserve the lighthouse - and that's the No. 1 goal - then at the end of the day, moving it is the only way we make that happen."
Restoration of the relocated tower will include replacing boarded up windows, repointing the mottled grey and brown stone exterior, fixing the rusted, plywood-sheathed iron lantern and replacing the long-removed beacon lens - allowing actual light atop the lighthouse for the first time since 1961.
A restored and relocated lighthouse will be the anchor" of an ambitious new port plan to reimagine 17 acres of mostly empty asphalt along the Hamilton side of the canal between the lift bridge and the Burlington Skyway, said the port authority's Fenn. The agency sought public feedback in 2019-20 on a Fisherman's Pier concept plan that would add an amphitheatre, park greenery and space for pop-up events" around a newly accessible lighthouse.
Challenges remain for that plan - like negotiating public access to the federally owned, newly gated canal piers that stretch into Lake Ontario - but moving the lighthouse is very much the first step."
Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter for The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com