Cape Breton Island, Canada's Eastern Crown Jewel
By Bradley Nichol
4 September 2008
"I have seen the Andes and the Alps, the highlands of Scotland; but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all. (Alexander Graham Bell)
A man so well known, Alexander Graham Bell inventor of many things including the telephone, was not wrong when he uttered these words. For his inventive vision was not lost only on the practical. Mr. Bell could see the harsh beauty of a reckless coastline just as pirates and pillagers a thousand years before.
Mr. Graham Bell fell in love with the clean air and solitude of Baddeck, Cape Breton where he lived most of his life after being born in Scotland. Here he invented and loved his family. Here he set down the basis of his Scottish roots in the new world.
Disconnected, for the most part, even to this day...Cape Breton Island tells a story of forgotten wondernment and a strength of a people unwavering in their desire to remember the place they love. Stark, crisp, rocky and brutalized coastlines ravaged by the sea and carved perfection leave visitors who are fortunate enough to see....open mouthed and aghast.
I would like, without permission, to utter a few lines of a song well known to the people of Cape Breton Island.
"We are an Island, a rock in the sea
we are a people as proud as can be;
in soft summer breezes or wild winter wind
the home of my heart Cape Breton".
On an evening where the incredibly talented locals are entertaining their summer and early fall visitors from lands both distant and very far away...seldom a tear is not noticed on the cheek of a man or woman so old that you may simply think that they no longer understand or can hear.....but this tear is not for their age - or comprehension -or even deafness; it is for the children who have gone away and may never return. It is for the compassion and soul of these people I call both my brothers and my family who had to leave..."for the cities out west" and lands far away.
Cape Bretoners, as they are known, are a solid and hard people. I should know, for I am one. Yet, my harshness and tell it like it is attitude is smothered thickly in compassion as if wrapped like cotton candy, at some small fair in America, around a little stick that makes children and grandparents, for a moment, all the same age.
The accompanying photos attempt to display some of my preceding thoughts in a manner that provokes you all.
I will not keep writing, I will not make you wait.....I will ask you to come to Cape Breton Island, Canada's Eastern Crown Jewel.
1 Response
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On 26 October 2008 Sherry gave props:
I vote , yes. Lovely photo essay
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