We have spent most of this week on Cape Breton Island. We have visited museums, a national park and a major historic site, I've eaten my lobsters, we've once again been eaten by
mosquitoes and black flies, the weather has been overcast and often misty, and
we have had a wonderful time!!
Cape Breton is actually an island. We reached it via this causeway.
Cristina and Paul had told us to drive the Cabot Trail in a clockwise direction, so
we leaned left and headed to Cheticamp.
We stopped in a very friendly private rv park, The Lakes,
in NE Margaree, about 30 minutes before Cheticamp on the Cabot Trail. The owners, Michel and Edna, have just recently taken possession of the park and they are working hard to make it a great place to stay. We think they are doing a great job.
They certainly made us feel welcome.
There's a go kart track, a playground, swimming, a pool,
and a restaurant that serves home cooked and baked food.
And lobster!!
We worked on the blog for some time in the restaurant and then ordered dinner.
My lobster platter came with TWO of these babies.
Fresh from the tank, to the kitchen, and finally to me.
I savored every bite...!!!
Here's Ed carrying my damaged computer, minus a couple more keys
up to the dining room so we could get on the wifi.
(The duck tape is holding...)
We said our goodbyes and left for Cheticamp on our tour of the Cabot Trail.
Now, Cheticamp is the center of a unique art form - rug hooking.
Not the big latch hook work we did as kids, but fine skilled art.
It's home to the Rug Hooking Museum.
The museum begins with tools of life in the town....
...and artifacts of an earlier existence.
And then I meet a hooker. There's actually a pin that reads,
"Happy to be a hooker."
She was working on burlap on a special frame to keep it taut so her stitches would
be tight. She gave me a complete demonstration of the technique.
The rug hookers work with a very small hook and pull up loops that are
as high as the yarn is wide.
She shared with me that it is a dying art as most of the hookers
are women over 50. It would be a loss to let the art die.
Then we moved on to the galleries.
What a surprise we were in for.
The fine detail and scope of the work is stunning.
It seems that in each art form there is someone who takes it to the next
highest level. In this arena, it was an artist named Elizabeth LeFort.
She was known for her portrait rugs. This massive piece shows the U.S. Presidents.
There is one of the first astronauts, the Kennedy's, the Canadian
law makers, and on and on.
She was born in 1914 and died at the age of 91 in 2005.
She's still considered the grand dame of the art form.
More of LeFort's work.
The end of the exhibit has this set up from the office of a local dentist.
I'm including it because the dentist my parents took me too had this
same office with the white bowl and black chair. He's the
one who did my fluoride treatments...
Am I really this old!?!?!?
And we were back on the Cabot Trail. It's a circular tour of the top of Cape Breton
that is mostly a Canadian National Park. And the scenery changed...
To views of the coast to the left and...
hills to the right.
Every changing. Some a white knuckle affair since we were pulling Estelle.
There are few campsites in the park - something we didn't expect.
Watching the water you see whales and seals.
We stopped at most of the overlooks. This one is on the Atlantic side.
We continue to meet friendly people who play with Finnegan and offer
to take our picture.
This bit of coast was especially impressive.
Looking right...
...Looking left
It was about 4:00 p.m. when we happened upon this Celtic Institute.
This is the Scottish side of the island and this place is a summer camp
of the Celtic arts. The young come here during the summer to learn
dance, bag piping, crafts, language - to preserve the culture.
There was an empty parking lot to the left full of signs saying
"No Overnight Parking."
I was cruising the gift shop and chatting with the lady in charge.
She suggested we park for the night (!) before continuing on.
It's so nice to be self contained. Especially when Ed had been driving all day.
We got a great nights sleep. Free. Quiet.
Up and ready to go. We've gotten lazier as this trip has gone on.
We never seem to get up before 8:30 and often don't get going until 10:00.
Hey, we're retired!!
A 30 minute drive and we were in Baddeck (pronounced Ba-deck with the
emphasis on the deck) which just happens to be the home of the
Alexander Graham Bell Museum. It's where he spent summers with his family and where
his 35 room estate still stands under his descendants care.
The setting overlooking the water on the right is gorgeous.
The main building is in the shape of a tetrahedral - Bell's favorite shape.
Not a bad view complete with a lighthouse.
This is a photo of the Bell estate.
The story goes that he wanted the land to build on but there
were already homes there. Over a period of years, he bought each
property as it came up for sale and finally got the land he wanted.
It's near the light house.
We know of Alexander Graham Bell as the father of the telephone.
That was the invention that funded his ability to work on other things of greater
interest to him.
Bell was most interested in sound science and worked with the deaf to
find ways for them to speak. His father was a teacher of the deaf.
He looked at light as a source of sound,
He looked at light as a source of sound,
invented a visual alphabet, sought ways to improve life, served on committees,
all with a humanitarian intention.
This is a photo of Bell on the right with a young Helen Keller
and her caretaker, Annie Sullivan.
Xray equipment on the left and the vacuum jacket
for artificial respiration
Tools for experimenting with light producing sound
The tetrahedral is a triangular structure that fascinated Bell.
He built kites out of them with the idea of using them
in other forms of flight.
Bell went on to experiment with flight.
His wife Mabel suggested he cooperate with others of like mind.
They formed a group called the Aerial Experiment Association.
All the members were younger than Bell, distinguished in their later careers, and included
Glenn Curtis (builder of American airplanes), Lt. Thomas Selfridge (#1 military pilot in America), Frederick "Casey" Baldwin ( the first Canadian to fly),
and James McCurdy (Lt. Gov. of Nova Scotia).
The group designed this aircraft, the first to fly in Canada, using a Glenn Curtis
8 cylinder engine. The one in the museum is a replica.
It flew in 1908, five years after the Wright brothers.
Bell's interest moved to the hydrofoil. He was involved in the design.
He provided the funding for the fastest vehicle on water, the HD-4 went over 70mph.
He never rode on it because of the noise.
He experimented with hydrofoils from 1906-1921 and
imagined they would use them in the military, but after WWI ended
there no longer any interest.
Alexander Graham Bell was a man of many interests. He didn't think outside the box,
for him there was no box.
Bell was married to his wife Mabel for more than 45 years. It was a loving and
devoted marriage. They met when her father hired him to teach her to speak.
She was deaf.
She was a child of privilege, educated, an expert lip reader, the patron of the Montessori
school system, a philanthropist, and a supporter of her husbands interests.
(She rode the hydrofoil since the noise did not bother her.)
It was a partnership of two remarkable people.
Beddeck is home to one of those charming white churches we have seen all over
the Maritimes provinces. This one is quite large.
The Beddeck Courthouse was built in 1886.
The Fortress at Louisbourg
is a living history museum, part of Parks Canada, and claims to be
the largest reconstruction project in North America.
A brief history: The settlement was founded in 1713 by the French and
became a thriving center for fishing and trade.
It was besieged twice before finally being destroyed in the 1760's.
Damn those British!!
The rebuilding began in the 1960's to provide work for unemployed miners.
It's a huge undertaking, beautifully done, and interesting to visit.
The visitor center provides bus transportation to the Fortress and, of course,
collects to money. This is the main gate:
There's that cute guy again...
Ed started flirting early on and found himself a maid.
There are costumed citizens of all social levels throughout the Fortress.
The range of information they provide is extensive from history
to lifestyle, law, military, economic, everything!
The main drag along the waterfront. Many of the building are open and have
citizens working inside. Mini museums.
The blacksmith was making a pair of tongs. Ed thinks he has been working
on them for months. He was big, but not efficient. Must have been all
the questions he was busy answering...
This man was the most knowledgeable gent we met.
Clearly from the upper class, he introduced himself as a merchant who
could acquire for me anything I wanted for a price....be it a buffet, a slave,
or a new dress. A businessman of the time.
He strolled around with us for a time and took us to other buildings.
Ed is convinced this man is Sidney Greenstreet reincarnated as the
priest of Louisbourg. He explained to us the training and history of the
royal engineer. He was seated in the kitchen of the home.
This position of Royal Engineer.was of high importance. The role of designing and building and
supervising all major projects fell to this one man.
There were no committees or specialized jobs.
He did it all. He lived well and was highly respected.
The royal engineer had an office in his home. These are copies of the plans for
the Fortress. They were found in French archives in Paris and used in the
reconstruction. The merchant escorted us here and explained all.
Traveling the town...
The Kibel's chose to lunch with the upper class. We fine dined at a local
restaurant on porcelain and pewter.
We were given instruction along the way by the maids - how to wear our
napkins, Ed was to serve me the soup...
One of many store houses. Much of what they stored was rum.
This was a very happy place.
A public humiliation was punishment for a minor crime.
Our friend the merchant was
now the town magistrate.
The governor's residence in the Fortress is elegant...
...and expensively furnished. Very French.
His soldiers living in near squalor had no idea as they never saw the inside.
The changing of the guard...
...who became my best buddy. She may have lived 300 years ago, but she
wears Birkenstocks when not in costume. Ed called us the white heads.
Firing a close range mortar. Left a cloud of smoke that filled the courtyard.
Going through the art museum near the Govenor's Residence, we saw these
two large scale paintings of the Fortress in its heydays.
As a center of trade and business...
...with a population of more than 2500 inside
and as many as 3000 outside during fishing season.
Here's the little guy that made this place so profitable. The cod. Dried and salted.
Our last look at the main wharf front as the fog rolled in at the end of the day.
I stopped at an inn run by a widow who explained that she could never remarry
as her husband would get the inn. She also offered me a mattress for the night and explained
that last nights visitor had mistaken it for a chamber pot, but it had aired all day
and would be fine for sleeping.
A final check on the storage - magazine and the all important rum.
The room is all military, but the rum is nearby.
We had a great time! A Kibel 5*****.
And no mosquitoes - too much wind.
We will head out of Nova Scotia in the morning and make our way to
the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy.
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