August 17, 2019 – Baddeck, NS

Today we were planning to spend some time at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum here on Cape Breton Island.  We walked around a little in the lobby and gift shop, but decided not to spend the time waiting line to go through the larger museum. Instead we went back for another late lunch at The Freight Stop Restaurant on the city docks. It was just as good this time!

We saw an awesome, beautifully restored old yacht parked at the dock.  It was registered in Newport, and the hull was so shiny that it shows water reflection in the pictures. It was a magnificent vessel! I wish we could have gone aboard to check it out.

Bell was a Scottish born inventor that initially emigrated to Canada before moving to the US. He is quoted as saying,  “I have travelled around the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all.”  I’m not sure I would agree, but it’s certainly one of the moist beautiful places we have been.  Bell must have really liked it…..he built two homes here, including a spectacular home (Keltic Lodge) on a rocky cliff overlooking the Atlantic ocean in a very remote area….but the views were awesome. Bell founded what is now AT&T, and put the first Bell Labs facility in Nova Scotia. AT&T Bell Labs quickly gained a reputation as one of the premier research facilities in the world. By the mid 1980’s, AT&T had grown so big that the government declared it a monopoly and forced it to breakup into several  regional “Baby Bell” operating companies e.g. Western Electric, Southwestern Bell, etc.

Memorial and Plaque commemorating first airplane flight by a British citizens in the British empire in 1908……5 years after the Wright Brothers!

That’s all for today…..