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travel / great places / canadian snapshots / cape breton
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Cape Breton Islands
A Western Cape Breton Odyssey
by Mary Anne Ducharme
Something happens when you cross the Canso Causeway from
Aulds Cove, but precisely what is a mystery. Even the name
of the island you approach is puzzling, perhaps christened
by 15th century Basque fishermenfor "Capbreton" on the west
coast of France. Besides being used as a European fur-trading
and fishing outpost, it remained largely a wilderness until
the end of the 18th century. It was a prize of war in the
struggle for supremacy by France and England; it has been
both a part of Nova Scotia and a separate colony; it was a
refuge for Loyalists after the American Revolution; and it
was a land of new beginning for Scottish immigrants and for
Acadians returning after the Expulsion. It was the place of
coal mining boom, and of bust; of decline and emigration;
of cultural vitality and unparalleled beauty.
The rocky spine of Cape Breton Island juts north-easterly,
thrusting out into the savage North Atlantic. Over millennia,
the land became riddled with fault lines, and folded and contorted
itself into uplands and valleys. It was shaped and re-shaped
by ocean currents. It was worn down by counterclockwise Icelandic
winds, and clockwise winds from the Bermuda-Azores. Gulf of
St.Lawrence storms battered the west coast. The island in
winter has been scoured for centuries by what Cape Bretoners
call "The Big Ice," which drifts down on the Labrador currents.
Imprinted profoundly upon the mind of the first-time traveler
here are the massive granite headlands and the gentler woodland
hills. These are the planed-down old bones of Cape Breton
Island.
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Once a river valley, the Strait of Canso was carved out by
ancient glaciers that submerged the land, connecting what
we now call St. George's Bay to Chedabucto Bay. This labored
passing of the ice age created the island and at its heart
a saltwater lake called Bras d'Or, or Arm of Gold.
Your intuition is correct if you think this a different sort
of place as you drive across the Causeway past Cape Porcupine
and then over the swing bridge. Here, human history was influenced
largely by geography — and it still is.
It may not be immediately apparent to the new visitor, but
that narrow span of water called Strait of Canso was once
a formidable barrier. Often ice-clogged or storm-wracked,
it made passage dangerous, hampered the island economy and
isolated communities. After the Canso Causeway was constructed
in 1955 with over ten million tons of rock from Cape Porcupine,
a major pulp mill was soon established by Stora Kopparberg
of Sweden, and then a paper mill, and an oil refinery, and
a deep-water marine terminal at Point Tupper. The former heavy
water plant, the Nova Scotia generating station and a gypsum
processing plant have each added to the industrial base of
the area surrounding the Strait.
But the long habits of independent thought and the sense
of separateness created by the Strait of Canso continues to
manifest itself. Cape Breton remains very much a distinct
society from that of "The Mainland." Each little community
also has a unique micro-culture and heritage. A village finds
its identity because it looks out to the sea, or is by a river,
or is in the saucer of a particular valley among the hills.
When you come to be more familiar with these villages, you
note each has a particular rhythm and accent — colored by
those Loyalist ancestors, or those who came from Ireland and
the Hebrides, or from 17th Century France. Some of them, the
Mi'kmaw people, were here for 10,000 years, and their ancient
language has gifted the island with many beautiful place names
like Whycocomagh, which means "head of the waters," and Mabou
which means "shining waters."
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