Notes from Cape Breton

A journal by an American living in Canada

*Looking west from the Highlands across the Baie St. Laurent. (2017*)

In 2017, I became a part-time resident of Cape Breton, an island at the top of Nova Scotia. Six months of the year, we reside about six miles from the western shore between Inverness and Margaree Harbour on the sunset coast.

Coming here to live is like stepping back in time, and for the most part, it’s stepping back into the good parts of what it was like fifty years ago or even earlier. People depend on each other and they know it, so they are less likely to think of others as dispensable as we often do in the States. Canada is far from perfect, mind you – people are people everywhere – but the quality of daily life here is so far ahead of us in terms of simple common decency that it stands out. Are there negative differences here? Of course there are, with real problems. I’ll explore some of them here and continue to look for what’s different, and good, about Cape Breton.

These essays talk about what it’s like to live here as an American, what we get up to on the homestead, around the island and in the Atlantic provinces, and most importantly, who the people are that call this special place home.