Cape Breton Island (CBI) = île du Cap-Breton, formerly île Royale (French) = Ceap Breatainn or Eilean Cheap Bhreatainn (Scottish Gaelic). Most of these names refer to Breton, a hilly peninsula in north-western France. Unama’ki (Mi’kmaq) = land of fog. It is a rugged and irregularly shaped island on the Atlantic coast of North America that is part of the province of Nova Scotia.
My McLellan ancestors escaped from Swordland, on Loch Morar, on the Scottish mainland, and South Uist, an island in the Hebrides, and arrived near Inverness, on the east coast of Cape Breton Island about 1790 and settled in the Margaree valley. The brother of my ancestor, was the catholic priest for this group of settlers.
Scottish Gaels settled in Nova Scotia between 1773 and 1850. Scottish Gaelic is a member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages and the Canadian dialects have their origins in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The parent language developed out of Middle Irish and is closely related to modern Irish. Canadian Gaelic is closely related to Newfoundland Irish. At its peak in the mid-19th century, there were as many as 200 000 speakers of this language, making it the third-most-spoken European language in Canada after English and French. The population dropped from a peak in 1850, to 80 000 in 1900, to 30 000 in 1930 to 500–1,000 in 2025.
For the past year or so, I have been practicing Scottish Gaelic with Duolingo on a daily basis. Since 1980, I have also used Teach Yourself Gaelic (1971) on an intermittent basis. This does not mean that I am fluent. In terms of languages it ranks somewhere between fourth to sixth. Languages ahead of it include: English, Norwegian, then Danish (written) and Swedish (spoken), before one comes to French, then Gaelic. In both Scottish Gaelic and Irish my name would be written Broc = badger.
Wild badgers are absent from the Hebrides, because the sea separated the islands from the mainland after the Ice Age. While badger remains have been found in archaeological records from the Outer Hebrides, this evidence suggests they were imported as fur or trophies, not as living populations. In contrast badgers are found on Loch Morar.
From Caribou to Antigonish
Once our ferry had landed from Prince Edward Island at Caribou, Nova Scotia, we drove towards Cape Breton Island, stopping 79 km further east, at Antigonish, to look at the University and to eat. The university is Catholic, and is world famous (yes, not just in Nova Scotia, or in Canada, but in the entire world) for its work encouraging cooperatives. I have written about it previously.
After our meal, we continued on for 52 km to the Canso causeway, The Canso Causeway is a rock-fill thoroughfare that connects Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia, crossing the Strait of Canso. The causeway is 1 385 metres long, and fills the Canso Strait to a depth of 65 metres making it the deepest causeway in the world. It includes a bridge and a short canal/ channel to allow for ship passage. It is the only road and railway link between the island and the mainland. The causeway was completed in 1955.
Alistair Fraser (1885 – 1965), one time Lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, sold 10 Tg of granite from his property on Cape Porcupine Mountain on the Nova Scotia mainland to fill in the Strait with rock. He was offered CAD 5 000 by the Canadian government for it, but after suing, the Supreme Court of Canada ultimately awarded him CAD 560 000.
It should be noted that while Cape Breton’s coal and steel industry and the Canadian National Railways were eager to have a rail line connecting Cape Breton to the mainland, no environmental assessment was made. The fishing industry were the major losers from this development.
On the far side of the causeway, we turned left, to head along the west coast of the island. This is not my first trip to Cape Breton Island. I had spent Christmas 1975, with a family in Sydney, travelling by train from Halifax.
We stayed in a cottage on the Cabot Trail, in Saint Joseph du Moine = Saint Joseph the munk.
The next day we took a tour around the Cape Breton Highlands. We had planned to stop at North Cape. Unfortunately, poorly planned road construction, did not allow us to escape from the convoy being escorted, at the appropriate junction. Nova Scotia had the worst maintained highways we encountered on our trip.
For someone brought up in British Columbia, and spending most of my adult life in Norway, the terrain of Cape Breton Island was appealing. No, I am not a flatlander!
CBI is dominated by Pitupaq (in the Mi’kmaq language) = the long salt water, referring to its brackish waters. In English and French it is Bras d’Or = the golden arm. Sometimes it is referred to as a lake, but it is an estuary = a partly enclosed coastal body of water in where river water is mixed with seawater. An estuary is thus defined by salinity. To my Norwegian inspired mind, it is a system of fjords. Bras d’Or has a surface area of 1 099 km2. It is connected to the North Atlantic by two natural channels; the Great and Little Bras d’Or Channels which pass on either side of Boularderie Island. To the south there is another connection to the Atlantic Ocean, the artificial Saint Peters Canal, built for shipping traffic in the 1860s. Its maximum depth is 287 m in Saint Andrews Channel. The Bras d-Or draining basin occupies 3 500 km2. The western side is generally shallow and is part of an extensive drumlin field = an elongated hill in the shape of a half-buried egg formed by glacial ice acting on underlying unconsolidated till or ground moraine. Steep hills rise abruptly on the northwestern side forming the Cape Breton Highlands.
Sydney Mines
Klmuejuapskwe’katik (Mi’kmaq) = place of the coal = Sydney Mines (English) is known for its coal mines. It is also the birthplace of my grandfather, Alexander McLellan (1869 – 1935), a coal miner and later secretary of miners’ union in Nanaimo, British Columbia. However, we visited Sydney Mines, spending time at the local omni-religious graveyard, looking for assorted McLellan ancestors.
Louisbourg
After ceding Newfoundland and Acadia, a New France colony in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River, by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, the French established Louisbourg in 1713. In addition to Saint Pierre et Miquelon, France retained possession of Cape Breton = Isle Royale and Prince Edward = Isle Saint-Jean, islands. These islands were important bases for a cod fishery off the Grand Banks. In 1719 Louisbourg was constructed as a fortified town, completed in 1745.
The cod fishery accounted for most of Isle Royale’s prosperity. Dried before export, the fish was salted and laid on stages which lined the beaches of Louisbourg and its outports. Louisbourg became a hub of commerce, trading in manufactured goods and various materials imported from France, Quebec, the West Indies and New England.
One might think that the fortress would be prepared for any onslaught. Yet, while the harbour was well defended, the main landward defences were commanded by a series of low hills, some dangerously close to the fortifications. All provided excellent locations for siege batteries.
In 1745, following a declaration of war between Britain and France, New Englanders attacked Louisbourg. After 46 days the fortress was captured. However, three years later the town was restored to the French by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1758 Louisbourg was besieged a second time. Within seven weeks Louisbourg was captured. This time, the British demolished the fortress walls.
It was interesting to visit the fortress site, and to learn more about the French history of the area. Between 1961 and 1980, the Canadian Government Invested CAD 25 M to reconstructing approximately one-quarter of the original town and fortifications. Abandoned after 1763, Louisbourg became the only major colonial town without a modern city built on top of it.
Louisbourg Railway Museum
Of course we could not leave Louisbourg without visiting the local, Sydney & Louisbourg Railway Museum. They offer a business card titled Pocket Poem, with the railway logo on one side, complete with a Facebook address = slrailway. The poem, titled My Job, reads:
It is not my place / To run the train. / The whistle I can’t blow. / It’s not my place / To say how far / The train’s allowed to go. / To shoot off steam / Nor even clang the bell. / But let the damn thing / Jump the track … / And see who catches hell!
Miners Museum at Glace Bay
I appreciated the name, Miners Museum, not Mining Museum. It was an interesting place to visit, and to find out more about the life of miners in Cape Breton, one of which was my grandfather.
One of the volunteer guides commented that the first thing a miner should do is to inspect the roof of that part of the mine where the miner is working. He explained that he had lost two colleagues who didn’t do that.
The Margaree Valley
The rainbow, including the use of a rainbow flag, has been the symbol of the co-operative movement since 1928. Various modifications have taken place over the past 97 years. I find it irritating that latecomers think they have an exclusive right to that symbol. Its use by various groups of homosexuals came 50 years later. Of course, I also take exception to the use of the word pride. It originally referred to an excessive love of one’s own excellence. Pride = hubris = ὕβρις (Ancient Greek ) = futility. It is considered the original and worst of the seven deadly sins, the most demonic, and the source of the other deadly sins. Pride is viewed as the opposite of humility.
The Margaree area is multicultural, largely populated by descendants of the original Acadian (French), Irish and Scottish populations. We took one final drive though the valley. The Margaree River = Abhainn Mhargaraidh (Gaelic) has three branches. The northeast branch of the river derives from the watershed of the Cape Breton Highlands, while the Southwest Margaree flows northeast from Lake Ainslie, the largest natural freshwater lake on Cape Breton, approximately 20 kilometres long and 5 kilometres in width, on average. It was formed during the Pleistocene, about two million years ago, when glacial outwash blocked the drainage of the valley of Loch Ban. The two branches join at Margaree Forks. The river then flows north to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence at Margaree Harbour. The river system is 120 km in length and drains an area of 1 375 km².
Baile nan Gàidheal (Gaelic) = Highlanders’ town (literal English translation), although signs tell me it is called The Highland Village.
We had an enjoyable visit to the village, learning about the way of life that in many ways contrasted with the mining and industrial life portrayed at the Miners Museum.
Note: of the places we visited on this trip to Canada, CBI is the one place I would like to visit again, with a possible excursion to Prince Edward Island. It is probably the most affordable place in Canada where I would want to live, since the Lower Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island are undoubtedly beyond my economic capacity.
Return to Norway
After visiting the Highland Village Museum, our CBI adventure was over. We drove to the Canso Causeway, crossed it, then continued on to the Halifax Airport. We took a flight to Reykjavik, then transferred onto a flight bound for Oslo.