Doing the Tourist Thing

We took a day off from our family history to visit historic Fortress Louisbourg on the Southeast section of the Island. The city of Sydney is on the way, so we stopped in for a visit with an old buddy who I used to work with at the Coast Guard College. Zad is still working there, and made us quite welcome. He still indulges his passion for model railroads, and has several lines of track running around the perimeter of his basement, and through the walls, including the bathroom.




Zad shows off his trains









We had a very good visit with him, and he took us for a short drive around town to see the sights. The infamous Tar Ponds are being reclaimed into parkland, and even have an Interpretive Centre, which kind of makes me wonder - but we didn't stop, so perhaps I shouldn't judge such a thing as a Tar Ponds Interpretive Centre. We also visited the Cruise Ship Terminal, where the next Big Item for my list is located.......the Big Fiddle! Very appropriate for Cape Breton.







Flinging around the Giant Fiddle









Zad had a lobster supper party to attend, and we had the Fortress to view, so we continued south. It is a Canadian Historic Site, and well worth a visit. Careful research and reconstruction have gone into its creation, and it now houses a wonderful reproduction of much of the old French Fortress, including staff who are dressed and act appropriately for the year of 1744, when French North America was in its heyday, and the fortress was a bastion of their power for the area.



The French still control Louisbourg










We enjoyed it a great deal, and could have spent more than the three hours we spent exploring the exhibits and sights. We got back to our Kozy Kabin by early evening, in time for a barbecue before bedtime.
The next day, Sunday, we spent the morning getting all of our laundry done in preparation for the next leg of the trip, and resorting the gear. After lunch, we drove out to Middle River, where Peggy had organized a strawberry shortcake social at the Community Hall, in order that the Kiwi Cousins, Relna and Robyn, could meet some other cousins. In addition to numerous McKays, Campbells, Camerons, McLeans, etc....from the area, some even showed up from Saskatchewan, Ontario, Oregon, and many other parts of the continent. People were swapping family trees, and stories, and in the midst of it all, it became a kind of a ceilidh (pronounced KayLee), which in the old days (and, I guess, even now) families and neighbours would get together to visit, and someone may tell stories, someone may start some singing, fiddle, guitar, or bagpipe music, and the event turned into dancing, visiting, and entertaining. A young couple played some wonderful celtic tunes with a fiddle/guitar, and later another young woman took up the fiddle. Some of the neighbours demonstrated their prowess at square-dancing, as well.




We had a foot-stomping good time in Middle River Community Hall









We had a very nice time, and left in time to do supper back at the cabin. This is our last full day in Cape Breton, as we will be leaving for Newfoundland the next evening.
Monday we woke up to rain, fog, and occasional embedded thunderstorms. Time to update the blog, and then off to the court house for a bit more searching of data, then to Sydney for the oil change, and a bit of research at their land records office and the library. The next installment of the blog will be from Newfoundland, unless we can get internet connections on the ferry. By the way, I don't think I mentioned it - we got a message from Atlantic Marine, the ferry people, who advised that the ferry we'd booked on wasn't going, and we were on a different (older, slower) one, so our 14 hour ferry crossing would now be 17.5 hours. Compared to what our ancestors did, with weeks/months in cramped quarters on a smaller boat, we can't complain.