Cape Breton Island – Laurie Apgar Chandler

Fiddling around – Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada (July 23)

Basement kitchen in the Jost House, circa 1786, where I learned that stained glass was shipped here in barrels of molasses and how to test for the proper temperature of the beehive oven with a smoking feather!

Sydney, on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island, welcomes port visitors with a giant fiddle that would dwarf our LL Bean boot back home. It pays tribute to the role of fiddle music, brought here by Scottish immigrants and later influenced by other traditions, including the native Mi’kmaq.

Anticipating a great concert of Celtic music this evening on the ship.

Wentworth Park at the far side of the downtown lies on land originally claimed by the Admiralty to supply wood for the British Navy. Its evolution later included grist and wool carding mills and today brides and grooms being photographed and a young crowd of locals.

I love to visit churches, so you’re sure to see plenty of them. St. George’s Anglican Church served the British engineers who laid out the town in 1784.