A mystery in Saskatchewan: we're in Cochin and we're here to find out why
they chose to put a lighthouse in one of Canada's foremost prairie provinces.
The resort village of Cochin is home to Saskatchewan's
only lighthouse, but that's not surprising since Saskatchewan is a completely landlocked
province. Looking to the north, the fields are endless but if you turn around to face
the south, you land right in front of Jackfish Lake. Now if you want to enjoy the view from
the locally famous beacon at 153 steps, it's no small feat to get to the top.
I don't know if I'm qualified for 152 steps after three months of isolation.
Would you believe me if I told you I normally run up?
You've got calves of steel you must do this a lot.
Pretty well every day.
Can you tell me what you think this lighthouse has done for Cochin?
Oh it's put it on the map. You didn't even know about it until you started looking and
now you're here and you're amazed and the word spreads. People say 'yeah we're up at
Cochin, we went up the hill is it ever great up there you can see forever'. We
wouldn't have had the exposure that we now have and have had without the lighthouse.
I think it's pretty unique to have a lighthouse in a prairie province — why a lighthouse for Cochin?
Well the village was incorporated in 1988 effect of January 1
as the resort village of Cochin. The first mayor was a man by the name of Tom Archdeacon, and he
had traveled to the east coast the year before and of course had seen lighthouses out there.
Okay it was, it was inspired.
Actually inspired, and he came back all revved up with
we've got to put a lighthouse on top of Pirot's Hill.
I am so thrilled that this was inspired by the coast because
you kind of have a hunch but you never know. How did they come up with this particular design?
That's lost in history and I suspect there was a lot of
on the backs of envelopes sketching and so on, but ultimately there would have been a plan.
We've looked for the blueprints we cannot find the blueprints. From a distance it looks much larger
than it is. So the interior is maybe 14 feet across and there's no room to
have stairs up or anything like that, there's just a service ladder in there.
Oh sweet. So nobody goes up there?
Other than for servicing no.
Okay, could I go up there?
Absolutely.
Yes!
Here we go!
In 1988, premier Grant Devine's government was giving out grants for various things.
Oh spiderwebs, gross!
So the village applied for a grant to the provincial government and was approved and
32 thousand dollars later we have the lighthouse and the surround of the lighthouse.
For over 20 years Cochin has been home to the Cochin Community Players,
a theatre group that puts on performances every spring and fall. But what is it
really like to be in the performing arts in a small resort village? They're here to tell us.
What do both of you do here at the Community Players?
Well I've been producer for the last few plays
and a stage manager a couple of times and just fill in whenever.
I've had various roles as an actor, director, prop builder, just various things.
We started in 1996, with audiences of around 200
per year and then we've just progressed from there so we've been in business for 25 years.
At each show we sell probably in excess of a thousand tickets. So you know because we do,
I think, seven or eight performances of each of each show. And it's dinner theatre,
people really seem to like the dinner theatre motif. So we bring a lot of people together,
we sell a lot of tickets, and we we are actually profitable, so we have used our profits to improve
the the community hall. Cochin has had quite an interesting history. This was a
big big resort village back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. Lots of performance history here I would say.
So I think that Cochin has become known perhaps not as a cultural centre of
Saskatchewan, but there's a lot of culture here and when people come we hope they leave
talking about our play and about the whole experience of coming here to Cochin.
Unlike many of the monuments across the prairies,
the lighthouse here seems to be widely accepted. The residents of Cochin have
never looked at it as anything but a symbol of the community, even a few generations later.
It's been our landmark and it's truly it's what identifies us. If
you talk to somebody who's maybe been through here or
heard of it and you say 'I'm from Cochin', they'll say 'is that where the lighthouse is?'
'yeah yeah'. So it's something that connects us with a landmark that everybody knows about.
You know it may seem a bit odd, but it's still this beautiful
beacon on the top of a hill beside a massive lake
On a lake, exactly yeah, so it's still it still has a purpose. If you had that in the middle of
the prairies with no lake it wouldn't have near the value I think or the connotation to it. I
think it's just a great thing especially with it located right on the edge of the lake like that.
It was a unique idea, nobody else had it and as council now we certainly do our best to keep it
up, to maintain it, and keep it attractive and it's still an operating lighthouse.
People all over Saskatchewan can point out Cochin on a map because of this lighthouse.
It wasn't put there to serve as public art or anything other than what it is:
a beacon of light for this community.