Cape St. Francis: The View, the Past, and a Movie Set

—SHOW NOTES—

◘ My friend Judy and I visit the lighthouse at Cape St. Francis and come upon a movie set ◘

—Sources—

◘ Lighthousefriends.com, “Cape St. Francis Lighthouse,” 2025, lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=1293 ◘ 

◘ Memorial University Maritime History Archive, Maritime History Archive Public Photo Catalogue, “Cape St. Francis, Newfoundland, and Lighthouse,” PF-055.2-E31, 2005, https://mha.mun.ca/mha/pviewphoto/Record_ID/2230 ◘  

◘ Nellie Andreeva, “Josh Hartnett to Headline Netflix’s Newfoundland Limited Series; Jessica Rhoades Joins As EP,” Deadline, May 22, 2025, https://deadline.com/2025/05/josh-hartnett-newfoundland-netflix-limited-series-1236408402/ ◘ 

◘ “Untitled Netflix Newfoundland Series,” IMdB, 2025, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35934755/ ◘ 

◘ Wayne Jones, Google Photos Album, “NLBoy: Cape St. Francis, Newfoundland (October 2025),” November 15, 2025, https://photos.app.goo.gl/dPZ3zSE6qTtkf51v5 ◘ 

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:16 The Drive to the Cape
• 2:04 Judy Reminisces about Past Trips There
• 2:55 The View Across the Atlantic
• 4:02 History of the Lighthouse
• 6:20 The Movie Set
• 7:25 Signoff

Transcript

I took a road trip to Cape St. Francis last month with my friend Judy. It was my first time there but she knows the area well from visits in her youth. As you know if you’ve listened to some other episodes of the podcast, I live in St. John’s, the capital city of Newfoundland, which is located on one of the four so-called “arms” of the Avalon Peninsula, specifically the northeast one. Cape St. Francis is located further up that arm, and as the name implies it is located at the very tip, about 40 km directly north (though the road itself is anything but direct!). It’s just outside the community of Pouch Cove, pronounced that way even though it is spelled P-O-U-C-H. For a perspective on the location, see a snippet from the map, and a link to some photos, in the show notes.

It’s a lovely ride up there, frankly as it is to get to most places, and especially most small places, in the province. There is no concrete jungle or no divided highway with giant blocks of concrete between sets of lanes. No, nothing but forest and interesting scenery. It’s one of my favourite things about Newfoundland. Once you start the approach to the actual cape, the road gets a little “tangly,” as Newfies say, that is, a little complicated and a bit of a problem.

It’s not paved of course and the descent to where you can be closest to the former lighthouse is a steep hill with a cliff on your right to the rocky shore of the Atlantic Ocean if you take a wrong turn or lose control of your vehicle.

My friend Judy reminisces about her visits there as a child:

There are one of three directions to travel out of St. John’s … north, south, and west … North is Cape St. Francis, where I’d been so many times many decades ago. It was a regular route  for our family on Sunday afternoon drives. To say the road was rough, years ago, is an understatement. Unpaved, narrow, winding, and rocky; to say it’s rough today is still an understatement. Unpaved, narrow, winding, and rocky. Even more so now. I certainly don’t remember thinking we were going to fall over a cliff at any time. 

We weren’t able to get up close to the lighthouse because it is barred off with wire fencing and an imposing gate with a big lock. What we could see though was a spectacular view of the Atlantic, nothing impeding it, and across there somewhere on what appeared like a flat surface, was England. Too far away to see of course what Charles and Camilla and the other Royals were up to that day, but that mattered not at all to me. Just that vast expanse of the Atlantic was just something. Just the idea that we could drive for less than an hour and be this close to it all. Amazing. I did manage to back the car up without either hitting a truck that had pulled up with a photographer in it, and, even more thankfully, thanks to Judy’s nervous but expert guidance, without steering the right rear wheel into a slight dip in the land around one of the fence posts, which would have sent us tumbling. It would have been A Long Way to Tip an Audi.

Before I tell the little tale about the movie set we happened upon, I want to give a few facts about the cape and its lighthouse. It has a long history, which began in 1865 when

a petition from John Munn and other residents of Harbour Grace calling for a lighthouse on Cape St. Francis was presented to the House of Assembly. When this didn’t produce the desired result, petitions from inhabitants of Harbour Main, Bay Roberts, and Carbonear, all settlements on Conception Bay, were presented in 1871. A lighthouse had been established on Baccalieu Island in 1859 to mark the northern side of the entrance to Conception Bay, but those involved in maritime activities in the bay clearly wanted a companion light at Cape St. Francis.

The petitions were ultimately successful and not only a lighthouse but also a fog alarm were established on the cape at different times during 1877. Both the light and the horn were maintained and improved over the years, first in 1911 and 1912. A big change came in 1957, when the original lighthouse “was replaced with a two-storey keepers’ duplex with an adjoining concrete structure that contained the fog signal equipment and was topped by a lantern.” The duplex “was demolished in 1993, and a helicopter landing pad was put in its place to make accessing the remote station a bit easier.” It’s no longer a functioning lighthouse.

In the early years of operation, it’s notable that the lighthouse keeper and the engineer didn’t get along very well. The keeper filed a formal complaint of misconduct against the engineer in 1886. It backfired on the keeper a bit as he was forced to retire and the engineer was only reprimanded and briefly suspended. A new keeper was appointed the following year.

About 140 years later, Judy and I got on just fine, and no complaints, formal or otherwise, were filed. And we did get to see that movie set, which consisted of a rickety church in place but threatening to fall off the cliff into the ocean. There was also a fake graveyard to the left of the entrance to the church, perhaps reminding parishioners of their ultimate fate. It turns out that it’s an upcoming, as yet untitled, Netflix series featuring the actor Josh Hartnett. Check the show notes for more details about the production, including other actors. IMdB describes it as a drama/horror/thriller: “When a mysterious sea creature terrorizes a remote town, a fisherman must fight to protect his family, his community, and his way of life.” We made it back safely to St. John’s, with no creature of any kind impeding our journey.