PEI to Cape Breton

After a week on Prince Edward Island we decided to spend our last day hanging out on the beach.  Well, that plan sort of worked…it rained in the morning, so we hung out at home, took a nap, read, etc.  That afternoon the weather cleared and we took off for Cavendish Beach.  There was to be a sand castle building demonstration by a professional sand castle sculptor (who knew there were professional sand castle builders!).  Turns out that he wasn’t doing the building, but was helping others build their castles.  We were late, so didn’t participate in the labor, just stood back, admired, then found a place in the sun to lie down and continue reading our books.  We did venture into the water, but it was a little nippy for us although there were quite a few Canadians swimming. 

Sandcastle dreams

The next morning found us up early, packing and heading out.  We had a ferry to catch!  We drove down to Wood Islands and caught the Northumberland Ferry over to Pictou, Nova Scotia.  This is certainly no tiny little 3-car ferry.  They loaded up motorcycles, cars, and semi’s like it was child’s play.  After an hour of very smooth sailing, they spit us out on the other side.

Ferry arriving at Wood Islands.

Bay door beginning to open.

Vehicles leaving the ferry.

Heading into our assigned space.

Ferry ride over with, we started driving up to Cape Breton Island, the northern-most county of Nova Scotia.  This is an interesting part of the province.  In the 1800’s Scottish immigrants settled in the eastern side of the island, while French immigrants were dominant on the western side.  Subsequently there are lots of legacies of that time.  Many of the current residents speak either Gaelic or French; signs on the eastern shore are in English and Gaelic, while on the western shore they are in English and French; traditional music is either Scottish or Acadian in flavor, but both styles rely heavily on the fiddle.

Sign in English/Gaelic

We drove up to Whycocomagh Provincial Park just outside of the small community of Whycocomagh (pronounced Why-co-ga-mah).  This is a pretty little park at the base of Salt Mountain.  There was quite a bit of coming and going of RVs and people with tents.  We had a great spot on top of a hill looking out over the Skye River Valley and Bras d’Or Lake.   While the name implies that this huge body of water is a freshwater lake, it’s not.  It is actually an inland saltwater sea surrounded by forested hills.  There are several outlets to the Atlantic Ocean, so the lake has tides just as the outer coastline has.

Sunset over the valley.

Bras d'Or Lake from our campsite.

For our first full day on Cape Breton we decided to explore the small town of Baddeck.  The town was founded in 1839 as a fishing village.  In 1885, Alexander Graham Bell and his wife visited and fell in love with the area.  They built a summer home across a channel of the lake from Baddeck and came every summer for the next 27 years until his death.  The home is still owned and lived in by his descendants. 

During his time in Baddeck, Bell began experiments in the development and use of tetrahedral kites and later formed a coalition with several other aviation pioneers to develop some of the earliest airplanes.  Their “Silver Dart” made the first controlled, powered flight in Canada off the ice of Bras d’Or Lake in 1909.  I don’t know about any of you, but I never knew this about Bell - I only knew about him teaching the deaf and inventing the telephone.  In addition to these, he also experimented with sheep breeding, perfected Edison’s phonograph by developing the system of wax cylinders, invented the audiometer to detect hearing loss, designed a “photophone” that transmits sound over sunlight - the first portable telephone (in 1880!), and developed the hydrofoil boat, a design still in use today.  He was also a founding member of the National Geographic Society and often wrote articles for the magazine Popular Science.  During a speech he said:

            “We are all too inclined to walk through life with our eyes closed.  There are things around us at our very feet that we have never seen, because we have never looked.  We should not keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone.  We should leave the beaten track occasionally and enter the woods.”  What a great philosophy.

There is a museum devoted to his work and life in Baddeck where you can take a “white gloves” tour.  This gets you into a back room of the museum with a chance to actually touch some of the artifacts.

Heinz prepping for the white glove tour, much more fun than his white glove days in the military!

Bible given to Alexander Graham Bell on his 11th birthday.

There was a regatta occuring at the Baddeck pier while we were in town, so we stopped by to check out some of the boats.  The kids were coming in from their own event as we arrived and it was really fun to see pre-teens sailing small boats on their own (and doing it very nicely!) without adult supervision.   It was very peaceful watching all the sailboats on the beautiful clear water. (The Bras d’Or Lake is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve site.)

End of the children's race.

Baddeck harbor and lighthouse.

We also checked out a few of the shops and found some lovely things at a local antique store.  Heinz lusted after some beautiful vintage split cane fly fishing rods and I tried not to drool on a second edition of The Complete Angler, from 1865.  In the end we both decided that the prices were a bit too steep for the current market and moved on.  However, not before picking up a new pair of Steampunk-ish glasses for Heinz.

Optometry "fitting" glasses, circa 1900.

On Friday we headed out with a very ambitious plan: bird watching boat tour, errands in Sydney, Miner’s Museum in Glace Bay, French fortress at Louisbourg, and a candlelight tour at the Highland Village.  Yes, I know, I can hear you now, “You know you never get it all done, so why continue to plan it!”  Hey, someday it may happen, we may actually see everything, just not that day! 

We started our day with a tour from Bird Island Boat Tours located in the community of Big Bras d’Or.  This was a 2¾ hour boat tour that goes out to two rock islands in the Atlantic Ocean known as the bird islands.  They support the largest colony of great cormorants in North America, along with a large colony of Atlantic puffins, black guillemots, razorbills, black gulls, herring gulls and bald eagles. 

Great cormorants (white faces) and double crested cormorants (orange faces).

Bald eagles don't nest on the Bird Islands, but fly over to feed on gull chicks.

Getting back to shore around 1PM, we drove over to Sydney with the intention of running a few errands.  Getting delayed by massive amounts of road construction did not help our timing, so we blew off the errands and drove into a MacDonald’s to grab a cheeseburger for the road.  Oops, no cheeseburgers on the menu, but in their place was, I kid you not, the McLobster!  Well, really, with that as an option, you’ve got to try at least one!  It will not remain at the top of my gourmet goodies list.

The McLobster

Alas, timing also did not allow for the Miner’s Museum.  But, we soldiered on and headed for the French Fortress of Louisbourg.  The fortress is the largest historical reconstruction in North America.  The original fortress was built in the early 1700s to protect France’s interests in the new world and to serve as the center of its massive fishing industry.  It was first captured by the British in 1745 after a six-week siege and then returned to France by treaty in 1749 over the protests of the American colonies.  The fortress was defeated a second time after another six-week siege in 1758.  In 1760, the British blew up the fortress.  The imported cut stone used in the fortifications was re-used around the province, and is still found in buildings from Halifax to Sydney.  Starting in 1961, the Canadian Parks Service began rebuilding the fortress, taking 20 years to transform it from ruins into the impressive historical and interpretive site it is today.

There are costumed interpreters throughout the buildings who bring the town’s residents to life, including gentlemen merchants and their wives, boat builders, innkeepers, soldiers, fishermen, blacksmiths, priests and nuns.  At 4:45 every afternoon, the soldiers fire a cannon to announce the closing of the fortress for the day.

                             

Fortress of Louisbourg

A gentleman of the town.

Firing of the cannon.

After visiting the fortress we were sorry that we did not have more time to spend here.  There was so much to see and so many re-enactors to talk to that we could have easily spent an entire day wandering around. 

However, our next stop, the Highland Village Museum, was 60 miles away down narrow two-lane country roads in the little town of Iona.  So we hopped back in the car and turned it southwest.  Once again, this is an interpretive center where re-enactors dress in period costume.  However, this is the only living history museum in North America for Gaelic language and culture with all staff fluent in Gaelic.  As a nice twist, we decided to take the candlelight tour starting at 7 PM.  Two staff members take you on a tour of the buildings, telling stories of the Scottish immigrants and interacting with re-enactors around the site who act as though the tour-takers are visitors.  The tour begins with a replica Taigh Bubh (Blackhouse) that gives you an impression of life in Scotland before emigration to North America.  From there, you follow the progression of Scottish Nova Scotia life in a 1800s log cabin, to a 1920 frame house, houses from 1830 and 1865, a school, forge, general store, barn, carding mill, and a church. 

This was both an educational and a fun tour.  Our guides were knowledgeable, funny, and interesting.  The re-enactors were natural, friendly, and told hilarious stories about daily life in the Gaelic community. 

Taigh Bubh (Blackhouse)

The Malagawatch United Protestant Church, circa 1874.  Bought from the congregation for $25.  Moved across the bay by barge and installed at the Highland Village for a mere $425,000.  Saving history isn't cheap.

A comforting home scene.

Flax spun and dyed with natural dyes, such as nuts, flowers, and roots.

The storekeeper tallying up the daily receipts before closing.

Heading home from the village gave us one more interesting experience: a ferry ride across the neck of St. Andrews Channel at Little Narrows.  We arrived and the ferry was on the other side of the shore.  We had to call on an intercom to get the ferry to come over for us.  It was a small boat, able to maybe hold 3 cars in a pinch (if they're compacts) and moved by means of a cable and pulley system.  Very interesting to watch it in action and I thought reasonably cheap, $5.25 to cross for a car and all passengers.

We’ve now moved up the Cabot Trail to the east side of Cape Breton Highlands National Park, so more on that to come.

Our friends of the day are a little more whimsical than usual: