East Coast 2022: Cabot Trail Loop - Baddeck

After a 3-day drive across Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to drop off our friends Yim and Murray in Dartmouth, N.S. to visit his mother, Rich and I departed on our own for a 5-day tour of Cape Breton Island and Louisbourg.  We would drive north to Antigonish, then counterclockwise around Cape Breton following the Cabot Trail, staying overnight at Baddeck, Ingonish, Cheticamp, Glenora and Sherbrooke (a rest point after visiting Louisbourg) before heading back to Dartmouth to pick up our friends for the journey home.

After having gorgeous weather for the three-day drive to Dartmouth and the two days that we spent there, our luck ran out.  It was pouring rain as we headed off towards Cape Breton and continued as we arrived in Antigonish.  Armed with our umbrellas, we marched determinedly up and down the main street, as I tried to take photos without getting too much water on my cell phone’s camera lens.  We ducked into the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library to use the restrooms and to wait for the rain to subside a bit.  I was impressed by the colourful murals on the walls, and the community art projects including Artsmarts, an initiative operated together by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Department of Early Education to promote art-based learning projects in schools.  Outside the library is a sculpture by Rudolph Henninger of two bookends that look like figures sitting with their backs against a set of books, with the inscription “Reading is Education.  Education is Freedom”. 

By the time we came out again, the rain had subsided a bit so we could take a closer look at the stores and street art.  There were many great murals to be found in Antigonish including the ones that harken back to Antigonish’s history.  On a corner building at 220 Main Street, on one side are two murals depicting the T.J.Sears Livery Stables where horses were kept to run a stage coach line and mail run between Antigonish and Sherbrooke.  The mural on the other wall is for the Antigonish Medical Centre and features an image of Dr. William A. Macleod who was also a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.  Above the three murals are trompe l’oeil paintings depicting townspeople looking out of windows, interspersed between real windows.  The mural on the side of iA Private Wealth advertises Bradshaw Insurance while a dragon mural on the wall of what used to be Wong’s Restaurant was restored in 2015.

There are many beautiful buildings in Antigonish. Had it not been so wet and dreary and if we had more time on our schedule, we would have spent more time exploring the town.  Just walking along Main Street, we saw the Town Hall, St. James United Church and Victoria Inn which has a fabulous, classic example of a turret in front.  I have always wanted to stay in a turret so if we are ever in this area again, this may need to be a priority.  On our way out of town, we stopped the small shop that is the source of Peace by Chocolate products that we purchased when we visited the Halifax waterfront.  Unfortunately, the shop was closed when we arrived.

Just before reaching Baddeck, we planned to stop for lunch at Charlene’s Restaurant in Whycocomagh, N.S. which is known for its seafood chowder.  We stood at the door for over 20 minutes while we watched the lone waitress scurrying around the packed restaurant, never even making eye contact with us, let alone assuring us that we would be seated soon.  It became clear to us that even if we did eventually get seated, this lunch would take way too long and would cut into our tight schedule.  So our impromptu lunch was one of the 13 bags of Covered Bridge potato chips that we bought from the Covered Bridge Factory on our drive to the East Coast.  Maybe it was just as well, since we would make up for the missed meal later in the day with the massive lobster supper that we had planned.

Baddeck is the first major town in Cape Breton if traversing it counterclockwise and is considered either the start or the end of the Cabot Trail depending on which direction you drive it.  It is the home of the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, a museum which celebrates the life and achievements of the inventor.  The museum’s rooftop viewing deck supposedly provides a distant view of Beinn Bhreagh (meaning “Beautiful Mountain”), the summer residence of Bell and his wife Mabel, on the tip of Red Head Peninsula across the Baddeck Bay.  Although we searched, we could not see the house, so luckily there was a photograph of it on display in the museum. On the grounds of the historic site is a stylized model of the Silver Dart, which was co-designed by Bell and others, and which in 1909 became the first airplane to be flown in the British Empire, following American flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903.

Although Alexander Graham Bell is mostly known for developing and patenting the first practical telephone, he was a prolific inventor, scientist, and engineer who performed many experiments and worked on a wide range of fields including optical telecommunications, aeronautics, and hydrofoils. This was clearly recognized in the museum where the telephone represents a very small portion of the displays.  He is quoted as saying “The inventor is not content with things as they are.  He wants to improve whatever he sees to benefit the world”.  Examples of his smaller inventions include a metal detector that attempted to locate the bullet lodged in President James Garfield’s body after an assassination attempt,  an artificial cooling system that was an early example of indoor air conditioning, and an anemometer attached to kite to measure wind velocity.

Influenced by his mother and later on his wife who were both deaf, Alexander became a teacher of the deaf and performed ground-breaking experiments related to speech and hearing.  His father Melville had created the “Visible Speech Phonetic Alphabet which represents the position of speech organs when articulating sound.  Feeling that it would help them better integrate in society, Bell was a huge proponent of teaching the deaf to speak and lip read, rather than rely on sign language.  One of his pupils was 15-year-old Mabel Hubbert, 10 years his junior, but who he eventually fell in love with and married.  “Alec”, as Bell was called by Mabel, was devoted to his wife and left her all but 10 shares of the Bell Telephone Company that he formed after inventing the telephone.  One display in the museum is devoted to the love letters that the couple wrote to one another.  In support of his work with the deaf, Bell invented the Manometric Capsule which taught deaf students the shape of sound.  Voice vibrations changed the gas pressure in the device, causing a different pattern of light to appear on the glass for each sound made.

The bottom level of the museum is devoted to Bell’s works in aeronautics and hydrofoils with life-sized replicas of both the Silver Dart and the HD-4 Hydrofoil.  The Silver Dart was the last of multiple aircraft designed by the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA).  The association was founded by Alexander and Mabel in 1907, with engineers and pilots as members including Glenn Curtiss, Casey Baldwin, John McCurdy, and Tom Selfridge. The group introduced key innovations to aviation including wingtip ailerons that control the roll of an aircraft, and tricycle landing gear.  The Silver Dart made the first controlled, powered flight in Canada in February 1909, flying from Bras d’Or Lake near Baddeck and in August of the same year, made the first passenger flight.  Around the same time, Bell and Baldwin also worked on experiments to create a hydrofoil watercraft.  The two created the “HD-4”, powered by two 350-horsepower engines that made it reach record speeds of 114kph.  These large models can also be seen from a viewing platform on the upper floor.

We were not that upset about missing out on a sit-down lunch earlier in the day because we knew that we had dinner reservations at Baddeck Lobster Suppers where we would eat locally sourced seafood.  We wanted the meal that featured all you can eat clam chowder and mussels, choice of lobster, crab, salmon or steak as the main course, plus dessert and coffee.  The restaurant had a suitable marine atmosphere, decorated with painted buoys and folksy fishermen carvings and large mural of a coastline with a lighthouse.  I bought a long-sleeved mock t-shirt with a lobster printed on it as a souvenir.

The meal was everything we hoped for as we gorged on tasty chowder and plates of mussels, almost not leaving enough room for the main course.  I chose a whole lobster while Rich went for the crab, which I find much more difficult to de-shell.  On top of all that, there was salad.  Needless to say, we were stuffed by the time dessert came … but we all know that dessert goes into a separate stomach, so somehow, we fit that in as well.  We downed the coffee that came with dessert since we were off to see a show after dinner and needed to stay awake.

Rich and I love live theatre and watch quite a few plays and musicals at home in Toronto.  Whenever we can, we try to incorporate watching a live performance as part of our vacation itinerary.  When planning our tour of Cape Breton, we came across Theatre Baddeck, situated in the Masonic Hall, which puts on several shows per season.  Luckily there was a show scheduled for the night that we would stay in Baddeck and I booked tickets to watch the play Lauchie, Liza and Rory by Cape Breton-born playwright Sheldon Currie.  This is a bittersweet, but sometimes uproariously funny love story set in Glace Bay,Cape Breton about twin brothers who fall in love with the same woman.  Lauchie is a quiet, staid, and dependable coal miner who lives with his mother and sister, while Rory is a sauve, roguish, charming gadabout who is off to parts unknown at the start of the play.  Lauchie meets the free-spirited Liza at a dance, clumsily woos her and convinces her to marry him.  When Rory returns and sweeps Liza off her feet, she regrets her initial decision but nobly stands by her commitment and marries Lauchie while wishing she could be with Rory.

This play is a two-hander with Patrick Jeffrey playing Rory and Lauchie, using posture, speech, demeanor, facial expressions, and hairstyle to instantly switch between the twin brothers.  Mary Fay Coady plays the prim sister Anne who wears glasses and the free-spirited Liza who does not.  Both also play other parts including townspeople and a priest.  Hilariously, both actors take turns playing the sharp-tongued mother, who is personified by a cardboard cut-out with a hole for each actor to place their face through.  As conversations rapidly take place between different combinations of the characters, sometimes mother is represented merely as a talking hand stuck through the hole of the cut-out to allow "3 people" to be in a scene.  The most skillful scene played out when Lauchie, Liza, Rory and Anne “sat” around a table playing cards and carrying on a conversation.  The characters switched at lightning speed as the glasses came on and off to flip from Liza to Anne, and the physical transformation between Rory and Lauchie was astounding.

After the mother passes away, the four end up living in adjoining homes with Lauchie and Liza in one house and Rory and Anne in the other.  Out of love and loyalty to Lauchie, Liza and Rory suppress their feelings while continuing to pine for each other.  Liza selflessly stays true to Lauchie until their child (played by Coady wearing a beanie hat) has grown up and left home before finally asserting her true desires.  The sadness and melancholy felt by the trio is heartbreaking.  It was wonderful that the story avoided common tropes of the illicit affair or big blowout fights, rather concentrating on the love and respect of family.  The play includes musical interludes where the two actors playing a guitar and fiddle.  This was a wonderful play with superb acting and one of the highlights of the trip for me.

I would have also liked to watch the next play on the schedule which was “The Hydrofoil Mystery”, especially after seeing the model of the hydrofoil at the Alexander Bell Museum.

The next morning, we had a chance to explore more of Baddeck before heading to our next destination.  We started with breakfast at The Freight Shed, a lakeside bistro located in a weatherboarded building with a beamed ceiling and a great covered outdoor patio that has a view of the Baddeck Harbour.  Keeping with the lobster theme of the previous night, we had lobster scrambled eggs on toast with roast potatoes and fruit.  This was a lovely way to start off the day.

Following breakfast, we had a quick stroll around the village.  Walking along the boardwalk, we came across the bronze sculptures of Alexander and Mabel sitting on a bench, gazing lovingly at each other.  Titled “The Bells of Baddeck”, the sculpture was created by Peter Bustin in 2008.  Bustin also worked on the sculpture of Samuel Cunard that we saw standing in the Halifax waterfront.  From the Baddeck Harbour, you can see the small lighthouse on Kidston Island on Bras d’Or Lake with boats moored around it.  The island has a lifeguarded beach which is operated by the Lions Club.

There are some interesting buildings around the village. A plaque in front of the Victoria County Court House (1899) commemorates the Silver Dart’s honour as the first aeroplane flight in the British Empire and acknowledges the members of the Aerial Experiment Association.  A beautiful, three-storied 19th century sandstone building is the Gilbert H. Grosvenor Hall, which serves as the post office, library, and interpretive centre.  The stairs of the Greenwood United Church are painted with Gay-Pride colours in support of the LGBTQ community.  The Telegraph House Motel was a boarding house dating back to 1857 and once housed the telegraph office.

We had fun wandering around the quaint shops in Baddeck including the Water’s Edge Inn which includes a wonderful Gallery of Fine Arts & Crafts that features works from artists across the Atlantic provinces.  The works range from folksy to whimsical to touristy.  The second floor of the gallery was a bit of a rummage sale and I found a 60s styled white and purple polka dot blouse for $10.  Other shops like Our Seaside Home had nautical themed home décor and knickknacks including starfish-shaped wall ornaments, whale-shaped mugs and butter dishes, and mermaids made of various materials.