Work Through Time Story Map
- Little Judique The dirt roads in Little Judique were at one time hard on the hooves of horses passing over them. Naturally this made much work for Hughie Beaton, the local blacksmith. Not only did he shoe horses, but he built wagon wheels, coffins and was the only place for miles one could get a haircut.
- Bras d’Or For many years, the Bras d’Or Lakes have been an important resource in the livelihood of Mi’kmaq fishers. Although the eel stocks are threatened today, Barry Bernard fondly recalls early experiences of fishing on the Bras d’Or.
- Boularderie Upon arriving in Boularderie, the Munros faced two major challenges: they had no place to live and there was no school. Just one year later, Alexander and Catherine had built a home and school and had enrolled one hundred and ten students in the Boularderie Academy.
- Mill Creek When the first schoolhouse in Mill Creek burnt down in 1931, the community was quick to act. By 1932 a new school had been built close to where Mill Creek Hall stands today.
- Sydney Forks Phillip Ingouville and his daughter Ann, long time friends of Douce and Phillipe Belhaché, often stopped in with Douce for dinner and tea before returning to their home in Sydney Forks.
- Port Hastings After the death of her husband and daughter, Douce Belhache elected to remain in Port Hastings rather than returning to the Channel Islands. The first female, entrepreneur known in this part of Nova Scotia, Douce assumed full responsibility and ownership of her husband’s shipping business.
- Sydney While at Holy Angels High School, Terry MacLellan chose to study speech training and was involved in a number of drama endeavours. Both of these early pursuits would server her well in her long career as a radio host and broadcaster with CJCB.
- Louisbourg Born to wealth and privilege, Katharine McLennan was educated through travel in Canada, the United States and Europe, and by private tutors. Until her early 20s, she led a sheltered life of travel with her family in the winter, and summers spent on the McLennan estate – Petersfield.
- Dominion The Dominion Coal Company often employed many of the same ethnic group at one colliery. Many Newfoundlanders for example, worked and settled near the Number Two Mine in Dominion.
- Glace Bay In 1901 Glace Bay was the 46th largest population centre in Canada. By the end of the coal and steel-related growth period, Glace Bay had become 22nd largest municipality in Canada.
- Dingwall Swordfishing was such a lucrative industry in the 1930s and 1940s that boats from as far away as United States would arrive in the communities North of Smokey to take part. Although most of the harbours were booming with activity, Dingwall Harbour was especially busy.
- Ingonish Construction for the gypsum mine in Ingonish Beach began in May 1924. The Aspy had to cut through over a foot of ice in order to land the cement for the construction.
- Irish Cove Cash’s carding mill was purchased second hand in 1883 by Frank Cash, an Irish immigrant who settled in the community of Irish Cove, Cape Breton in the early 1800’s. It operated until 1946 after being taken over by Cash’s son Tom.
- Mabou The census of 1851 shows that six weaving and carding mills were operating in various parts of the island. One of the more well-known of this period was Glendyer Mills near Mabou, where dyeing and fulling services were available as well as the carding.
- Louisbourg Work on the line from Norway Junction (Reserve) to Louisbourg began in 1874. With the completion of the rail line to Louisbourg and the construction of a shipping pier on the southeast side of the harbour at Havenside, the original S&L Railway cast a tall shadow over the ruins of the bygone fortress town.
- Port Morien From the roadbed up, the S&L was built and equipped in a manner that suggested permanence. The new route from Sydney to Louisbourg was 37 miles long and came within striking distance of most mining areas in the Cow Bay (Port Morien) and Glace Bay basin.
- Whitney Pier Since 1900, the steel industry has influenced the economy and social life of all Cape Breton, and especially Sydney. But Whitney Pier was the district most affected by steel. In fact, its growth as an urban industrial community was inextricably tied to steelmaking, and the ups and downs of the industry have directly affected its development throughout the century.
- Whitney Pier On “Black Friday,” October 13th, 1967, Hawker-Siddeley announced that it was closing the plant. The protest that followed is part of the folklore of Industrial Cape Breton. Men, women, and children, students, singers, clergy, and even politicians rallied to “Save our Steel.”
- Port Hood The Port Hood Greetings was printed on Wednesday of each week. A part (one side of the sheet) was done on Tuesday, but Wednesday was the big day, as the ink dried sufficiently to be handled and all available hands were called upon to do the folding, wrapping and labeling. The Greetings was published by D. W. Jones until 1930 when it was sold to the News Publishing Co. of Truro.
- Arichat Sailing out of Canso, John and Charles discovered a large Southern entrance to a harbour in Chedabucto Bay. It was here, in Arichat Harbour, that Charles found and named Jerseyman’s Island, and developed a plan to set up a fishery from that site.
- D’Ecousse In the early 1900s, Jersey Island merchants established businesses at D’Escousse which coincided with the village’s flourishing port activities. As a thriving port, D’Escousse faced the shoreline and many of its stores and industries were in close distance to waterfront wharfs.
- Gabarus The telegraph office in Gabarus was one of many in Cape Breton in the early 1900s. Telegraph service began in Nova Scotia with the establishment of the world’s first government-owned offices in Halifax, Truro and Amherst in 1849.
- Port Hastings Telegraph services in Port Hastings were essential to communication both within and beyond the island. Beginning in 1818 and continuing for nearly 80 years communications between mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island were the responsibility of the MacMillian family.
- Main-a-Dieu The boats of Main-à-Dieu & area have a history as rich and varied as the fishermen aboard them. While the area’s infrastructure, economy and culture were modernizing mid-century, preparing the ground for the technological revolutions in fishing that were just around the corner, a group of boat builders was quietly making the area famous for an old-fashioned trade.
- Rankinville Joe and his wife Flossie live in Rankinville, on a small rural dirt road on the outskirts of the village of Mabou. Originally form Holland, Joe and his family have been raising dairy cows for more than fifty years.
- Port Hawkesbury Joe van de Hoogen was only eleven years old when his family of eleven boarded the Maasdam on March 22, 1956 and sailed across the stormy Atlantic to Nova Scotia. The Maasdam arrived in Halifax on April 1, 1956. The van de Hoogen family went through immigration in Halifax and boarded a train for Port Hawkesbury the following day.
- Neil’s Harbour William (Billy) G. Budge was born in 1948 in the small fishing village of Neil’s Harbour on the northern tip of Cape Breton. In 1955 his father accepted the position of lighthouse keeper on St. Paul Island, a rugged and forlorn mountain in the sea.
- St. Paul Island Early seafarers called St. Paul Island the “Graveyard of the Gulf” due to the vast numbers of ships and countless lives that were lost along its shores. When Billy moved to St. Paul Island with his parents and younger sister, they lived at the southwest light station in almost total isolation. They quickly learned to cope in a world without neighbours, electricity, schools, or mainland comforts.
- Big Intervale Anne Morrell Robinson lives in Big Intervale, Cape Breton, where she has been making quilts at her Kingross studio for over thirty years. An internationally renowned and award-winning artist, Anne has created quilts for both public places and private homes.
- North East Margaree After moving from Pennsylvania in 1971, Anne Morrell Robinson and her family settled for the first few years in North East Margaree and began raising farm animals.
- Chéticamp In Chéticamp, as everywhere else no doubt, the cold floors in winter encouraged women to make rugs in order to protect their feet from the cold and be more comfortable. In response to an obvious need, the Acadian women had to have been making rugs as far back as the earliest days of Acadia and they must have brought with them from France the technique of rug making.
- Whitney Pier Women began to arrive in Whitney Pier in large numbers after World War I, wives and children coming to be reunited with fathers and husbands. It is the arrival of women and children and their subsequent settlement as families that mark the establishment of Whitney Pier as a “community.”
- North Sydney Into the twentieth century North Sydney became the hub of Cape Breton Island for ocean-going vessels, including fishing fleets, warships, convoys, and coal tramp steamers from around the globe. In 1898, the Reid-Newfoundland Company chose the town as the Canadian mainland terminal for a ferry service to Newfoundland.
- Port Morien Thomas and Blowers Archibald foresaw the coming of steamships and shifted their chief business endeavours to coalmining, owning and operating the Gowrie Mine in Cow Bay (Port Morien) and holding shares in several other mines across Cape Breton.
- Eskasoni Eskasoni is the largest First Nation community east of Montreal and covers forty square kilometers. It was the home of Rita Joe, renowned poet of the Mi’kmaq, whose poetry brought joy to the hearts of many.
- Potlotek The First Nations community Potlotek (Chapel Island) is located just ten kilometers from St. Peter's. In his poem, Alexander standing in the tall grass on Chapel Island, Lindsay Marshall pays tribute to the man responsible for cutting the tall grass for those coming to celebrate the feast of St. Anne.
* please enable your browser to render images for best viewing this map
- Little Judique The dirt roads in Little Judique were at one time hard on the hooves of horses passing over them. Naturally this made much work for Hughie Beaton, the local blacksmith. Not only did he shoe horses, but he built wagon wheels, coffins and was the only place for miles one could get a haircut.
- Bras d’Or For many years, the Bras d’Or Lakes have been an important resource in the livelihood of Mi’kmaq fishers. Although the eel stocks are threatened today, Barry Bernard fondly recalls early experiences of fishing on the Bras d’Or.
- Boularderie Upon arriving in Boularderie, the Munros faced two major challenges: they had no place to live and there was no school. Just one year later, Alexander and Catherine had built a home and school and had enrolled one hundred and ten students in the Boularderie Academy.
- Mill Creek When the first schoolhouse in Mill Creek burnt down in 1931, the community was quick to act. By 1932 a new school had been built close to where Mill Creek Hall stands today.
- Sydney Forks Phillip Ingouville and his daughter Ann, long time friends of Douce and Phillipe Belhaché, often stopped in with Douce for dinner and tea before returning to their home in Sydney Forks.
- Port Hastings After the death of her husband and daughter, Douce Belhache elected to remain in Port Hastings rather than returning to the Channel Islands. The first female, entrepreneur known in this part of Nova Scotia, Douce assumed full responsibility and ownership of her husband’s shipping business.
- Sydney While at Holy Angels High School, Terry MacLellan chose to study speech training and was involved in a number of drama endeavours. Both of these early pursuits would server her well in her long career as a radio host and broadcaster with CJCB.
- Louisbourg Born to wealth and privilege, Katharine McLennan was educated through travel in Canada, the United States and Europe, and by private tutors. Until her early 20s, she led a sheltered life of travel with her family in the winter, and summers spent on the McLennan estate – Petersfield.
- Dominion The Dominion Coal Company often employed many of the same ethnic group at one colliery. Many Newfoundlanders for example, worked and settled near the Number Two Mine in Dominion.
- Glace Bay In 1901 Glace Bay was the 46th largest population centre in Canada. By the end of the coal and steel-related growth period, Glace Bay had become 22nd largest municipality in Canada.
- Dingwall Swordfishing was such a lucrative industry in the 1930s and 1940s that boats from as far away as United States would arrive in the communities North of Smokey to take part. Although most of the harbours were booming with activity, Dingwall Harbour was especially busy.
- Ingonish Construction for the gypsum mine in Ingonish Beach began in May 1924. The Aspy had to cut through over a foot of ice in order to land the cement for the construction.
- Irish Cove Cash’s carding mill was purchased second hand in 1883 by Frank Cash, an Irish immigrant who settled in the community of Irish Cove, Cape Breton in the early 1800’s. It operated until 1946 after being taken over by Cash’s son Tom.
- Mabou The census of 1851 shows that six weaving and carding mills were operating in various parts of the island. One of the more well-known of this period was Glendyer Mills near Mabou, where dyeing and fulling services were available as well as the carding.
- Louisbourg Work on the line from Norway Junction (Reserve) to Louisbourg began in 1874. With the completion of the rail line to Louisbourg and the construction of a shipping pier on the southeast side of the harbour at Havenside, the original S&L Railway cast a tall shadow over the ruins of the bygone fortress town.
- Port Morien From the roadbed up, the S&L was built and equipped in a manner that suggested permanence. The new route from Sydney to Louisbourg was 37 miles long and came within striking distance of most mining areas in the Cow Bay (Port Morien) and Glace Bay basin.
- Whitney Pier Since 1900, the steel industry has influenced the economy and social life of all Cape Breton, and especially Sydney. But Whitney Pier was the district most affected by steel. In fact, its growth as an urban industrial community was inextricably tied to steelmaking, and the ups and downs of the industry have directly affected its development throughout the century.
- Whitney Pier On “Black Friday,” October 13th, 1967, Hawker-Siddeley announced that it was closing the plant. The protest that followed is part of the folklore of Industrial Cape Breton. Men, women, and children, students, singers, clergy, and even politicians rallied to “Save our Steel.”
- Port Hood The Port Hood Greetings was printed on Wednesday of each week. A part (one side of the sheet) was done on Tuesday, but Wednesday was the big day, as the ink dried sufficiently to be handled and all available hands were called upon to do the folding, wrapping and labeling. The Greetings was published by D. W. Jones until 1930 when it was sold to the News Publishing Co. of Truro.
- Arichat Sailing out of Canso, John and Charles discovered a large Southern entrance to a harbour in Chedabucto Bay. It was here, in Arichat Harbour, that Charles found and named Jerseyman’s Island, and developed a plan to set up a fishery from that site.
- D’Ecousse In the early 1900s, Jersey Island merchants established businesses at D’Escousse which coincided with the village’s flourishing port activities. As a thriving port, D’Escousse faced the shoreline and many of its stores and industries were in close distance to waterfront wharfs.
- Gabarus The telegraph office in Gabarus was one of many in Cape Breton in the early 1900s. Telegraph service began in Nova Scotia with the establishment of the world’s first government-owned offices in Halifax, Truro and Amherst in 1849.
- Port Hastings Telegraph services in Port Hastings were essential to communication both within and beyond the island. Beginning in 1818 and continuing for nearly 80 years communications between mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island were the responsibility of the MacMillian family.
- Main-a-Dieu The boats of Main-à-Dieu & area have a history as rich and varied as the fishermen aboard them. While the area’s infrastructure, economy and culture were modernizing mid-century, preparing the ground for the technological revolutions in fishing that were just around the corner, a group of boat builders was quietly making the area famous for an old-fashioned trade.
- Rankinville Joe and his wife Flossie live in Rankinville, on a small rural dirt road on the outskirts of the village of Mabou. Originally form Holland, Joe and his family have been raising dairy cows for more than fifty years.
- Port Hawkesbury Joe van de Hoogen was only eleven years old when his family of eleven boarded the Maasdam on March 22, 1956 and sailed across the stormy Atlantic to Nova Scotia. The Maasdam arrived in Halifax on April 1, 1956. The van de Hoogen family went through immigration in Halifax and boarded a train for Port Hawkesbury the following day.
- Neil’s Harbour William (Billy) G. Budge was born in 1948 in the small fishing village of Neil’s Harbour on the northern tip of Cape Breton. In 1955 his father accepted the position of lighthouse keeper on St. Paul Island, a rugged and forlorn mountain in the sea.
- St. Paul Island Early seafarers called St. Paul Island the “Graveyard of the Gulf” due to the vast numbers of ships and countless lives that were lost along its shores. When Billy moved to St. Paul Island with his parents and younger sister, they lived at the southwest light station in almost total isolation. They quickly learned to cope in a world without neighbours, electricity, schools, or mainland comforts.
- Big Intervale Anne Morrell Robinson lives in Big Intervale, Cape Breton, where she has been making quilts at her Kingross studio for over thirty years. An internationally renowned and award-winning artist, Anne has created quilts for both public places and private homes.
- North East Margaree After moving from Pennsylvania in 1971, Anne Morrell Robinson and her family settled for the first few years in North East Margaree and began raising farm animals.
- Chéticamp In Chéticamp, as everywhere else no doubt, the cold floors in winter encouraged women to make rugs in order to protect their feet from the cold and be more comfortable. In response to an obvious need, the Acadian women had to have been making rugs as far back as the earliest days of Acadia and they must have brought with them from France the technique of rug making.
- Whitney Pier Women began to arrive in Whitney Pier in large numbers after World War I, wives and children coming to be reunited with fathers and husbands. It is the arrival of women and children and their subsequent settlement as families that mark the establishment of Whitney Pier as a “community.”
- North Sydney Into the twentieth century North Sydney became the hub of Cape Breton Island for ocean-going vessels, including fishing fleets, warships, convoys, and coal tramp steamers from around the globe. In 1898, the Reid-Newfoundland Company chose the town as the Canadian mainland terminal for a ferry service to Newfoundland.
- Port Morien Thomas and Blowers Archibald foresaw the coming of steamships and shifted their chief business endeavours to coalmining, owning and operating the Gowrie Mine in Cow Bay (Port Morien) and holding shares in several other mines across Cape Breton.
- Eskasoni Eskasoni is the largest First Nation community east of Montreal and covers forty square kilometers. It was the home of Rita Joe, renowned poet of the Mi’kmaq, whose poetry brought joy to the hearts of many.
- Potlotek The First Nations community Potlotek (Chapel Island) is located just ten kilometers from St. Peter's. In his poem, Alexander standing in the tall grass on Chapel Island, Lindsay Marshall pays tribute to the man responsible for cutting the tall grass for those coming to celebrate the feast of St. Anne.
© C@P Society of Cape Breton County, 2009
