Cape Breton Island Photographs

I traveled to Nova Scotia with my sister in July 1997. While I wanted to avoid NewYork's Summer weather, way back in 1976 I had promised myself to return because my family couldn't go beyond New Brunswick. My sister and I flew to Halifax and then drove to Cape Breton Island. (Driving can be expensive in Canada, what with gas and car rental prices.) The island is on the northern tip of Nova Scotia and juts into the Atlantic to help create the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Rugged, cool and beautiful. The area was originally settled by French Acadians, but in the mid nineteenth century received a large influx of Scottish and Irish whose accent can be heard in many parts of the island, especially near Sydney, a former mining city.

These photographs from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, were taken by me in July 1997. The shots include a few with a disposable Kodak panoramic camera. The prints were scanned into Photoshop and saved first as TIFFs and then Jpegs. The images were originally created with IPTC/NAA captions but another program trashed them. *sigh*. ThumbsPlus can generate HTML captions from the IPTC/NAA captions.

We traveled west-to-east, the opposite direction of most tourists. We started along a dull stretch of road towards Mabou, a small, friendly former mining town with a huge Catholic Church built in the mid-nineteenth century. There's a small restaurant, Mull's, that serves as the town's main restaurant. This place had the best chowder that we encountered in the entire trip. (Thanks to a kind web visitor who provided the name.)

prnschetism.jpg 63 Kb; 461 x 162 Bay near Chéticamp, on northwest side of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. [Panorama shot]	After Mabou we drove towards the French-speaking area of Cape Breton Island. The principal French-speaking town is Chéticamp. Fromers makes this place sound like some sort of paradise, but it's an awful tourist trap. The highway route has lots of tourist crap, like overpriced arts and crafts. The worst of this stuff was probably the logs painted to look like men in stove-pipe hats. (These logs looked strangely like recycled telephone poles.) These objets d'art were clearly made for the drive-through tourist trade. The kitsch was partially compensated by the unusual rocks and ledges on our way up the coast before reaching Chéticamp.

prnscbivuesm.jpg 42Kb; 461 x 162 Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia, Canada. View with guard rail. [Panorama shot]	We passed through the area and made a bee-line for Cape Breton Highlands National Park located at the northern tip of Cape Breton Island. The park has splendid scenery and extremely steep hills. (If you have a heavy foot and good car, you will almost certainly get stuck behind someone with a less powerful engine.) This part of Nova Scotia is supposed to look like the Scottish highlands. You decide. The panorama photograph here was taken on an overcast day with some cloudiness. Very atmospheric. Unfortunately my sister and I had to move more quickly than we wished. We had to make Bay St. Lawrence for that afternoon to go whale-watching

prnswhalessm.jpg 49 Kb; 461 x 162 Pilot whales outside Bay St. Lawrence on the northern tip of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. [Panorama shot]	Bay St. Lawrence had a lot of former fishermen giving whale watching tours or deep-sea fishing. We opted for the guy who did only whale-watching. (Ann doesn't like fish guts.) He was also the only guy with a hydrophone so we got to hear the pilot whales whom we followed for a few miles. We saw a pod of whales feeding and traveling from a mile outside the harbor to about 6 miles to the west. There was even a calf whom the captain estimated at two weeks. It was a lot of fun.	prnswhale3x5sm.jpg 90 Kb; 374 x 220 Pilot whales outside Bay St. Lawrence on the northern tip of Cape Breton Island.

prnsbay1sm.jpg 80K; 640 x 350 Bay on northeast side of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. [Panorama shot]	I've saved the best shots for last. We left Bay St. Lawrence rather quickly the next day and took a detour outside of the park to visit a pottery studio. (We agreed the stuff was the best we saw, but Ann insists it doesn't hold a candle to the pottery she bought when living in Ireland.) Most tourists never make it to this cove, but it was the most beautiful site on the entire trip. (The colors --which look like they come from a Caribbean island-- are fairly close.) The water is inaccessible unless you have mountain-climbing skills.

prnscbibay3x5sm.jpg 66K; 640 x 350 Bay on southeast side of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. [Regular shot]	I took this photograph along the better-known east coast of Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We encountered georgeous scenery and more tourists.

The thumbnail page was generated by ThumbsPlus. (Highly recommended. I bought my copy after generating the older page which I've since replaced with this! -PR)