Dual Personalities
Baddeck is music and seafood, music and Gaelic, music and oat cakes, music and tartan, music and history...did I mention music? This charming little Cape Breton town on the ocean shores is where Alexander Graham Bell and his wife spent their summer months, beside their Rockefeller friends. Did you know that the telephone was a by product of Alex trying desperately to create a device that would help his deaf wife hear?
Of course we go to a Ceilidh, a Cape Breton kitchen party style music with an amazing fiddler, piano accompanist and stomping, tapping step dancer. We were lucky enough to Maudie Rankin, a niece of the large Rankin family whose music many Canadians know. I think that children are all given fiddles on their third birthday and learn to play because it is their blood, in their heritage, in the very air they breathe.
We went on a Puffin Tour! I've always wanted to see the little black and white birds with their orange striped beaks and orange feet. We are surprised to learn that the Atlantic Puffin is the smallest of the breed, standing only 6" (15 cm) tall and weighing in at under 8 oz. This little fellow is preyed upon by larger gulls and eagles. With their stubby wings they aren't good flyers but can swim under water using these same wings and achieving speeds of 50 mph. When they aren't breeding, which happens every one to three years, they literally spend all their time floating and diving on the water, only flying for short distances when absolutely necessary.
There are two black granite islands off of Englishtown, NS, where sea birds flock to nest. The only foliage is a bit of grass on the very top of these craggy places. Donalda, who has been doing these tours for over 20 years, is a fount of information regarding seabirds, and we see hundreds of birds on the 2.5 hour tour. Her tour season is short, since breeding pairs of puffins (they mate for life like we have) only arrive in late May and will leave in masse on the first full moon of August.
Jeff and Joanne, the travellers we met in Ft Macleod, re connect with us and see share a seafood dinner and travel stories. They are on their way to Newfoundland, so we are able to suggest some interesting things to do there. They are big on golf, while we are big on history, so have differing interests.
Saturday, July 26:
We go to an afternoon matinee of "He'd Be Your Mother's Father's Cousin", a musical filled with Maritime humour. Anyone who is familiar with Mary Walsh and Mark Critch, knows that this is a unique but delightful type of fun. Halfway through the show the lights went out. Turned out the power was out, not only in Baddeck, but all along the North shore of the Cape as we headed to Cheticamp. We were in need of fuel, but everything was closed - pumps don't work without power. We make it to our campsite, and have a cold dinner. The power eventually comes on 7 hours later.
When you leave Baddeck and it's Scottish roots your move into the other personality of the Cape, the Acadians are here so French replaces Gaelic and music, while still lively and favouring fiddles, is more akin to the Metis music of jigs and reels we know from Saskatchewan. Cheticamp is in a rougher, tougher part of the peninsula along the Cabot Trail. The coastline is more jagged with fewer landing places. In the early 1800's, about 50 years after their expulsion, some Acadians returned to their roots. This part of the area was less developed, so they settled here.
We drive the most scenic part of the Cabot Trail, stopping to hike at the Butterea. We had visited this place 12 years ago when the hills seemed less steep. The trail leads to the remains of 5 farms. These Acadian fisher families had a minimum of 9 children each (50 kids in all between 5 families). They built a house, a barn, and had a cow, a horse and wagon, sheep, pigs, and chickens. They grew what they could in the poor rocky soil and relied on fish. They lived here in the late 1930's and the fish were still fairly plentiful. The men would leave for a week at a time and the women and children basically did all the farm work.
We also stroll through a marsh, one of Nature's water purifiers built of sprahum Moss. It is drying out, as are many marshes in the world's fastest warming country, our Canada.
Pictou is famous for the arrival of the Hector, a slightly rotten boat that brought the first Scottish settlers to this part of the Cape. The 5 week journey ended taking them 11. Of course, the poor highlanders, after being slaughtered at Culloden by the British, this proud people were stripped of their traditions and their land. They were made share croppers, forbidden to wear tartan or play bagpipes. They were so repressed that many were eager to try a better place that was promised by a British promoter named Ross. He promised them 200 acres of land per family, and provisions for the first year. Instead, they were starved on the journey and brought to a rocky shore, refused provisions and left on their own. It was already late September in 1773, and if the local friendly Mi'kmacs hadn't helped them, they would have perished.
Pictou is a Mi'kmac word word meaning 'sparking rock', since there are coal deposits near the surface. The names are fun along Nova Scotia, things like Pugwash, Tatamagouche, and Shinimicas.
In the little town of Pugwash we discover Thinkers Lodge. This Canadian heritage site honours a group of scientists and world leaders, who met here in to discuss world peace and nuclear disarmament in 1954. Joseph Ratbatt, a Jewish scientist who had escaped from a Polish ghetto and lost his family in the Holocaust, was the recipient of a Nobel Peace prize in 1995, for his lifelong dedication to preventing nuclear development and further Hiroshima events. He was the only scientist who left the American Manhattan Project for ethical reasons, recognizing that humanity was about to open another gateway to hell. We saw the medal in a lovely seaside home where some of the meetings and discussions had taken place.
It is with a certain sadness we leave Nova Scotia for our last visit. Yet we both leave with full hearts and happy memories, so very glad we have taken this one more big road trip.
We are presently in Charlottetown, where we shall stroll the historical downtown, see a play and visit other parts of this small, but beautiful red soiled province.
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