Toronto Amazing - Gibraltar Point Lighthouse
Western tip of the Toronto Islands, just beyond Hanlan’s Point Beach.
Built in 1808, it’s the oldest standing lighthouse on the Great Lakes and one of the oldest stone buildings in Toronto.
Its first keeper, John Paul Radelmüller, was a German immigrant who brewed and sold “bootleg whisky” to passing soldiers from Fort York.
On January 2, 1815, two soldiers came to visit, supposedly for a drink. A fight broke out — maybe over whisky, maybe over debts.
Radelmüller disappeared that night. When others went looking, they found only blood in the snow and, weeks later, fragments of bone buried near the tower.
The soldiers were arrested but never convicted; no body was ever found.
1893- George Durnan, who kept light from 1832 to 1905 with his dad James Durnan, found a jawbone by the tower.
Locals say his ghost — sometimes a flicker of light at the top window — still walks the shoreline.
It’s often called “Toronto’s most haunted building.”
Video segment shot in 1958: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.3595123