ABOUT BUCHANAN LIGHTING LTD.

It all started with a helicopter.

In the late sixties, my father, Jack Buchanan was an electrical officer in the Canadian Navy and was on a ship in the north Atlantic.  A helicopter was scheduled to arrive and land onboard and that was a very challenging task.  The seas were rough and if you’ve never been in the North Atlantic at night you don’t understand dark. The ship was pitching fore and aft (front to back) and there was a bit of yaw (side to side) as well. Picture yourself in the cockpit of the helicopter. Its pitch black, the ship, a dot on the sea with its running lights on, and there is a pad for you to land on not much bigger than the chopper itself and it’s moving all over the place. You have to hover over this moving pad, drop a cable to hook to the deck (Bear trap) and winch yourself down to about the four foot mark and then at exactly the right moment  slam the chopper  onto the deck so the landing gear hits perfectly flat. like I said...a real challenge.

 My father was tasked to improve this procedure. He determined that the single biggest problem was the inability to see the horizon, so in typical Canadian Navy fashion he built one. Basically it was a big light bar that was mounted so that no matter the position or the movement of the ship the bar stayed perfectly in line with the horizon. He recognized he couldn’t change the weather or the motion of the seas but he could help the pilots to line up. It worked and saved a lot of damage to the helicopters as well.

 He went on to work on other lighting problems the navy had and a few years later he retired and thought that lighting was an interesting field to study. In 1970 Buchanan Lighting was started and so now, over 50 years later we are still here and looking to solve lighting issues. I started in 1977 and my son Tyler has joined me about 15 years ago. 

Over all those years we have all seen the changes to incandescent bulbs then the fluorescent and now we are deep into LEDs and through all that, light is still a very important part of our daily journey. From health and wellness as it regulates our internal clocks to managing our traffic flow and to getting  us to work, and allowing us to see what we are doing. It grows our plants, convinces caged birds to mate and keeps the Komodo Dragons healthy. Our hospitals and the medical experts use specialized lighting every minute of the day. What makes my job great is that everyday someone brings us a new challenge.  At  Buchanan Lighting we spend all day, every day focused on lighting and ensuring that you have the solution you need.

Andrew Buchanan