Travel date: July 6, 2018
Before this trip, Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born inventor who later became a US citizen, might not have been the first person to spring to mind when I thought about Nova Scotia, Canada. But the Bell family built a summer estate on Cape Breton Island in 1885 and, by the end of Bell’s life, they were spending most of their time there, and he worked on many of his inventions there.
And he invented so many things! Not just the telephone! So many things that he needs a whole National Historic Site to tell you all about them.
The Bell house is still standing, across the water from the historic site, but it’s still a private residence owned by the Bell descendants and not open for tours. The historic site is basically a museum about Bell’s life and work, with a lovely setting in the town of Baddeck, overlooking Bras d’Or Lake.
Admission is $7.80CDN for adults, free for kids (or free with a Parks Canada Discovery Pass, which we had and made very good use of on this trip). There are a number of extra programs that charge additional fees as well.
We pretty much spent the day here, although you could hit the highlights in a couple of hours. If you want to do a deep dive, there are plenty of extra tours and activities to keep you busy after you tour the museum galleries.
But the exhibits themselves are extensive and fascinating, with lots of hands on stuff to keep kids entertained:
There’s a whole room for young kids at the site, and Abe had a great time there. There are toys and games available all the time:
But they also have (at least in season) science demonstrations several times a day, and Abe loved this. The idea is that Bell did similar experiments in the evenings with his own kids and grandkids.
As with most things at Canadian National Parks, these presentations were bilingual. Now Abe is fluent in French, after all that time at Canadian parks! Just kidding.
There’s also an Xplorers program for kids to do here.
And….lots and lots of kite stuff! Alexander Graham Bell was really into kites. I think my sense of just how much kite stuff there is to do is a little skewed, because we did more than we meant to. Dave accidentally signed us up for the kite workshop designed for young kids instead of the tetrahedral kite workshop we’d had in mind. So we did both! The younger kids workshop was $4.90/person and involved making and decorating a very basic kite:
The tetrahedral kite workshop was $9.60 per kite (we just made one for all of us to share) and was considerably more involved:
Sadly, it was not a great day for flying kites outside, but there is plenty of room to do so:
There are a number of other tours and presentations available as well, if kites, kites, and more kites isn’t your thing.
And the town of Baddeck has several restaurants when you’re ready to break for lunch. We had pizza and….well, let’s just say Nova Scotia pizza isn’t the best pizza we’ve ever eaten.
oh, by the way! The new Moon Guide to Atlantic Canada is being released tomorrow (or it’s out now if you’re not reading this the first day it’s published). And I have a picture in it, on the inside back cover. Of the Cabot Trail! So you should order a copy right away!
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