Hmmm, my tentative plan was to next head north to drive the Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park but that didn’t make a lot of sense with two days of heavy rain (and possibly even some snow at the higher elevations) forecast. That’s somewhat of a problem when you are traveling in a place where most of what’s of interest is outdoors and there aren’t many ideal things to do on a rainy day.

So I decided to do things a different order than I had planned, first hitting the Celtic Music Interpretive Center in Judique for their Sunday afternoon ceilidh.  “What’s a ceilidh?” you ask? Traditional Scottish music and dance, sort of a weekend church fundraiser kind of an activity. I’ve been to a few before, including one in Vail, Colorado of all places and one when I was in Scotland. And Cape Breton Island is definitely one of the places for it being a most Scottish part of New Scotland.

Between the fiddling, the step dancing, and the various Scottish dances I think I understand the origins of many American traditions from the Scots-Irish settled heartland like Bluegrass music and square dancing. The various Scottish dances almost all involve rotating and exchanging dance partners throughout the dance rather than dancing with a single partner.

Although eventually a group of two younger couples with children came in, for a while I couldn’t help but thinking I was the youngest person there.  Gee, I’m at an age when I can go to a bar in a college town and think, “I’m the only old person here” and to trad culture events and think “I’m the only young person here”. And these people pretty much all looked like the people from my Presbyterian church when I was growing up. You may not be able to judge an individual’s ethnicity by his or her looks, but it’s a different story when you have a group of people of similar ethnicity. And they were all very friendly to the young guy. It would seem everyone on Cape Breton Island has distant family in New Jersey.

The next highlight was the Glenora Distillery a short distance north of Mabou. I arrived too late for tour and tasting but not too late for dinner, beers, and a shot of the house product while there was more evening entertainment. This place looks exactly like a significant production distillery in Scotland too, not a small back room operation. Nestled between the green hills in the mist and drizzle, I kept thinking this place seems more like Scotland than Scotland.

Cape Breton Island is centered around a large lake named the Bras D’Or, which is every bit as much a resort as the coastal villages. Baddeck is one of the main towns on the Bras D’Or and known as the home of inventor Alexander Graham Bell. I figured I’d go to Parks Canada’s Alexander Graham Bell NHS to pass some time on a day of wind driven rain. I was expecting the site to be his actual home, but it’s essentially a museum (or “interpretive center” as they say here) about his life and work with examples of his inventions in audio equipment and aviation. I also know Bell as the second president of the National Geographic Society from 1898 to 1903, a capacity in which he sometimes gets badmouthed nowadays for not conforming to the current eras politically correct version of how the world works.

I felt ready for my first Lobster Supper in the Maritimes. What drew me in was Baddeck Loster Suppers’ promotions for unlimited seafood chowder and mussels when you order a lobster. I do like lobster but rarely find it justifiable since there’s so little to eat on one (and also so much work to get to it), but if you package it in a way that I can get a full tummy on good food like mussels and chowder it becomes a different story. I’m used to mussels cooked a la mariniere or with other kinds of flavorings in the sauce, but the Canadian way of doing things is just naturally steamed mussels with a side of melted butter for dipping. I like the local style of chowder, though, creamy but not as thick as New England style clam chowder and heavy on fish and small shrimp.