No surprise when you consider this unique part of Nova Scotia is the self-styled Celtic Heart of North America.
It's a living history dating from the 1770s when people from the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland began emigrating to Nova Scotia. In Cape Breton, they found a landscape mirroring their misty-mountained homeland.
Their descendants keep the culture alive. Road signs in the western region are in Gaelic and English; Gaelic language classes are held in many communities; some radio stations have Celtic programming; there is an international Celtic Colours festival each October; a Gaelic arts and crafts college; a single malt Scotch whisky distillery; and a Highland village detailing life over a span of 150 years, from 1770 to 1920.
The village is located near the community of Iona, smack-dab in the middle of the island overlooking Bras d'Or Lake, which cleaves Cape Breton in two.
It is a time tunnel trek meandering through five generations of settlers -- their homes, their work, their worship -- beginning with a traditional "Black House," which ordinary folk would have lived in before crossing the ocean, a dry stone-wall structure with wooden rafters covered with a thatch of turf. The floor was generally packed earth and there was a central hearth for the peat-fuelled fire. There was no chimney for the smoke to escape though; instead it sootily seeped its way through the roof, hence the term "black."
But in Cape Breton, the newcomers found forests aplenty and quickly switched to log cabins and then more substantial homes built of planed lumber and with fireplaces in the middle, about as close to central heating as you could get in the mid-1800s.
The reconstructed village also includes a schoolhouse, general store, carding mill, the Malagawatch church originally built (1874) to serve the staunchly Presbyterian settlers, and some representative livestock including a trio of ginger-haired Highland cattle named Pam, Mooka and Alice as well as a small herd of rare Soay sheep, a hardy, fine-fleeced breed originating in the remote St. Kilda archipelago, about 65 km from the Western Isles.
Costumed staff, some conversing in Gaelic, are stationed at many of the buildings, including the forge where a willing blacksmith pounded out a 4.4-cm iron nail from scratch in three minutes.
The Scottish connection is evident in myriad Cape Breton place names, including Dunvegan, a west coast Ceilidh Trail community.
There are four other theme-named highway routes: The Cabot (as in explorer John Cabot) Trail in the northwestern highlands; the Fleur-de-Lis Trail in the Acadian southeast; the northeast (Guglielmo) Marconi Trail, centred on Sydney, and honouring the Italian inventor's transatlantic wireless station built near Glace Bay in 1902; and the Bras d'Or scenic drive, which encircles the mid-island lake on lesser-travelled routes bordered by swaths of pink and mauve lupins and yellow hawkweed.
HISTORIC SITE
If Marconi was the Wizard of Wireless, Alexander Graham Bell could be easily be called The Great One.
The Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site at Baddeck pays tribute to Scottish-born Bell, not just because he invented the telephone (1876), but for various far-sighted pursuits including aviation (the 1909 Silver Dart, Canada's first airplane flight) and hydrofoils (a world record 114 km/h by the HD-4 in 1919), not even considering his work with, among other things, tetrahedron kites, X-rays, desalinization and sheep breeding -- all to the detriment of his one-time dream of becoming a concert pianist.
One tale told by a Parks Canada interpreter at the Baddeck centre (expect to spend two hours there, and bring the kids) relates how Bell and some associates spent several hours one day dropping cats (onto a mattress) from a height of 2.5 metres to confirm they always landed on their feet.
And yes, here too there's a Gaelic connection: The inventor's home overlooking Baddeck for most of the last 35 years of his life is called Beinn Breagh, meaning "beautiful mountain" and it's where the innovative scientist and engineer is buried.
V CAPE BRETON MORE INFORMATION
See the following websites for travel ideas and details on visiting: highlandvillage.ca celticheart.ca pc.gc.ca/bell pc.gc.ca/louisbourg cbisland.com
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