#cape breton island

[travelbinge]

By Johnathan R

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

[corvidist]

Director faces off against wretched beasts then leaves - Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

[susiestamps]

CA 2020 $2.71 Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

[rhiann0n]

[rabbitcruiser]

Bagpipe Appreciation Day

Today we celebrate the bagpipes! The instruments have long been associated with the Scottish Highlands, although they have come from many different places, and there are many variations of them. They have also been used in many different contexts.

The main components of the bagpipe are the bag, chanter, and drones. The bag is usually made of animal skin or rubberized cloth. It is inflated either by having air breathed into it through a blowpipe or by using a bellows. Air can then be fed throughout the instrument to make the sound, by placing arm pressure on the bag. The bag allows sound to be continuous while giving players the chance to take breaths, as well as for several tones to be played at the same time.

The chanter, or melody pipe, has finger holes that let a player make notes to form melodies. The other pipes, called drones, may have single or double reeds. They play single, constant notes that accompany the melody. They are tuned with the chanter by lengthening or shortening their extendable joints. The pipes are in wooden sockets, or stocks, which are tied into the bag.

Initially, folk instruments, bagpipes have remained as such, but also have been used in battle, at parades, funerals, weddings, and royal occasions. They were probably first used by pastoral sheep and goat herders, who played them to pass time while watching their flocks. They made them with easy-to-come-by materials such as skin, bones, and reeds. These instruments would quickly decay, so there is no physical evidence of them.

Bagpipes may have been used for centuries before any record of them was made. Most believe they were invented in the Middle East, and that the sheep and goat herders that used them were in Mesopotamia. There is some indication that they were used in ancient Egypt. A Hittite wall carving from around 1000 BCE shows a form of a bagpipe, and they are mentioned in the Bible in the book of Daniel. A bagpiper is also possibly depicted on an Alexandrian terracotta figure from around 100 BCE.

From the Middle East, bagpipes likely traveled to Greece, where they were known as "askaulos," meaning "wineskin pipe." They are mentioned in one of Aristophanes's plays from about the fourth century BCE and appear in other Latin and Greek references from around 100 CE. After the Romans invaded Greece, the bagpipe was adopted throughout the Empire just as other Greek culture was. They were mainly used by plebeians, but even Nero was known to play one. They were also used by the Roman infantry, while the Roman cavalry used the trumpet.

The British Isles became the most popular home for bagpipes. Invading Romans may have brought them there, or they may have later arrived by trade. They were mentioned in English author Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s. Some think they were imported to the British Isle of Scotland from the Romans, while others believe they came from England, Ireland, or developed in Scotland on their own.

Original Scotland pipes probably had one drone, with a second drone likely added in the mid to late sixteenth century, and a third drone likely added in the early eighteenth century. Scottish Highlands bagpipes had two tenor drones and one bass drone. It was there that bagpipes became more popular than anywhere else in Scotland or the world. In the Highlands, players were influenced by Celtic legends as well as by the wild nature of their surroundings. The players held an honored position in their clans. There are references to Scottish Highland bagpipe players by the fifteenth century, who played at weddings and festivals and even replaced organists at church. During the mid-sixteenth century, at a time when bagpipe music was descendent through most of Europe, it was ascendant in the Highlands. The MacCrimmon family did much to nurture its growth. A classical musical form that used the bagpipes sprang up there; it was called piobaireachd and predated the piano and its classical music by about a century.

Originally pastoral and festive, the military began using the bagpipe in the eighteenth century and accompanied it with drums. Battlefields were loud, so instruments were used to communicate. Bagpipers from clans—who were often at war with each other—would inspire soldiers before battle, and played during battles to signal movements, attacks, and retreats. When the Scottish uprising of 1745 failed, military training was banned. Thus, the bagpipe could no longer be used in this context anymore, although it was not banned for other uses.

In the Scottish Lowlands, pipers held important positions in communities. There were town pipers, and those who played dance music and songs at weddings, feasts, and fairs. The soft sounding Scottish Lowland bagpipe was played from about 1750 to 1850; it had a bellows, and three drones in one stock.

When England and Scotland united in the early eighteenth century, bagpipes were brought all over the world to British colonies, to places such as Africa and Ceylon. In many places, there already were indigenous bagpipe type instruments, which had been used for folk music and military purposes. Some examples are the tulum of Turkey, pilai of Finland, zampogna of Italy, mashak of India, mizwad of Tunisia, tsampouna of Greece, volynka of Russia, gaita of Macedonia, and the Bedouin habban.

There are many variations of the bagpipe popular today, such as the cornemuse of central France, the aforementioned zampogna of Italy, and the Irish union pipe. The most popular is probably Scotland's Great Highland bagpipe. Today we celebrate all types of bagpipes, and their importance to culture and in bringing us music!

How to Observe Bagpipe Appreciation Day

Playing the bagpipe is probably the best way to celebrate the day. Perhaps you already have one and know how to play it, or maybe you still need to get one and learn. Listening to artists who feature a bagpipe is a great way to celebrate the day, as is listening to bagpipe versions of popular rock songs. You could also read a book on the history of bagpipes, or a book on Highland bagpipes. If you feel like seeing some bagpipes firsthand, you could visit the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, or plan a trip to the Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum, or the International Bagpipe Museum.

Source

[muttball]

Bigleaf Lupine

[myobt]

Repost: Mermaid Tears From Nova Scotia!

Continue reading Repost: Mermaid Tears From Nova Scotia!

[captainmartinisblog]

Terra Firma!

Friday 21st June 2024 – Sydney, Nova Scotia.

After the party yesterday, Dinner in the main Restaurant was surprisingly subdued. I’m not sure where everyone was but at least service was quicker; we were in and out in 75 minutes!

Oysters Rockefeller were on the menu; one of my favourite dishes. I wasn’t so keen on the Pesto Risotto in my main course though but the Herb Marinated Jumbo Shrimp were nice. Oddly (me not being much of a dessert person), the Citrus Symphony (parfait, two types of meringue and citrus marmalade) lived up to its name and was a great refresher.

Today we finally arrived in Sydney, Nova Scotia and most of Viking Star’s passengers I suspect breathed a sigh of relief, able to step on dry land for the first time in 6 days!

Founded in 1785 by colonists fleeing the aftermath of the American Revolution, Sydney became a centre of development from coal-mining in the 18th Century. However, while the decline of coal and steel during the 20th Century was replaced by tourism in Cape Breton Island, Sydney was largely overlooked as a tourist centre until some years ago, when they invested in a new Cruise Terminal, outside which stands the World's largest ceiledh fiddle, in celebration of the area's Celtic tradition!.

Sydney was once the capital of Cape Breton Island until 1820 when Cape Breton Island was merged into Nova Scotia and the capital moved to Halifax (where we will be tomorrow). There is some history here though and today, Angie and I took the ‘free’ excursion to the Fortress of Louisbourg.

Developed by the French as a fortified town to protect rich fishing grounds from 1720-40, it was laid siege to and won by the British in 1745, then given back to the French in 1748, only to be captured again 1758, following which, it was systematically destroyed and its stone shipped elsewhere.

The present buildings on the site are reconstructions and represent around 20% of the original town as it was in 1744 just before the first siege.

We had an interesting tour, including a musket-firing demonstration by a Canonier and a typical hot chocolate drink enjoyed by the better off of the town. And in one of the buildings there was an enormous model of Fortress Louisbourg made entirely out of Lego!

Blessed by unseasonably warm weather today, with temperatures up to 23 degrees, there was an ‘Officers’ Sailaway Party’ on the pool deck – with more free drinks served by some of the senior officers. I had a ‘Rock Lobster’ (Rum, Banana liqueur, Malibu, Orange Juice, Pineapple Juice & Grenadine) as well as ‘Sex on the Beach’ (Vodka, Peach Schnapps, Orange Juice, Cranberry Juice)! I then went for a lie down……

[ultradannyboyblog]

Ellie, Some Things You Might Want To Know

Ellie, Some Things You Might Want To Know

Bill (Bopper) Fogarty and Ellie Fogarty Dear Ellie – There are some things about your dad and his dad that you should know – and although we have never met, I already know from your photo that you inherited your good looks from your mom Jen and Grandma Marj!   Background I first met your family in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in July 1989 when I moved to the Maritimes from Vancouver, British…

[vox-anglosphere]

Our thoughts are with the Maritimes after this week's epic snowfall.

[speilsese]

Copy & paste this in Google Translate Auto Detect & into English:

Chuidich na beòthachaidhean sin mi gus mo leasachadh mar an neach a tha mi. Ge bith dè an ìre de Inbheach, Jock, Janegirl no Nerd a th’ annam. Bidh mi an-còmhnaidh a’ comharrachadh mo thraidiseanan mar an teis-meadhan airson cò tha mi -Nate St Aidan- mar Fhrangach-Quebec, Acadien, Gàidhlig, ('s dòcha Metis) Neo-nàiseantach, Neach-iomairt, Ceannard & dìonadair.

Bidh mi a’ coisrigeadh a’ mhìorbhail seo a thaobh far am biodh daoine beòthail nan robh cothrom aca air beatha nas fheàrr no eadar-dhealaichte ann an Atlantic Canada. Dìreach mar a tha Glooskap & alt beul-aithris a’ fuireach an seo am measg cridheachan is subhachasan sgeulaichean.

[zal-cryptid]

[jakethesequel]

Just read Ducks, by Kate Beaton

last night. I bought it a few weeks ago on a whim, with a Christmas gift card. I read Hark, a Vagrant! when I was younger, so I recognized the author, and decided to check it out even if just to support a fellow local comic creator. I was vaguely aware she had released a book about the oil sands to great reviews, but hadn't looked much into it. Finding out it was a memoir, and that she had worked on the oil sands to pay off her art school debt, interested me enough to buy it.

Nevertheless, it just hung around on my shelf for weeks. That's often the way it is with me, I have a constant backlog of books waiting to be started, and even more waiting to be finished. But I've been trying to make more time for reading in my life, so I cracked it open last night, hoping to read for maybe ten minutes before bed.

I read the whole book. All 400-some pages of it. Before I finally went to sleep, I cried.

A work of art making me cry is a very rare thing. Maybe the estrogen treatment makes me more emotional, but it still came as a shock. But, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. The memoir is incredibly close to so many facets of my own life, it was nearly impossible to detach my feelings.

The very format of the book is in service to its emotional impact. The sign, in my opinion, of a master comic artist is not just to tell a great story through the medium, but to know how to use the medium to enhance a great story. Beaton does wonderfully. Most of the book is formatted in 9-panel grids, on book-size paper rather than a TPB's ~6.67x10.25in pages. It does wonders to enhance the claustrophobia of living in either the Maritimes or the Alberta work camps, and makes it all the more intense when panels expand outward for emotionally critical moments. Especially when Beaton devotes to a single or even double page spread to the landscapes of her journey, from the sad and beautiful shores of Atlantic Canada to the eerie marvel of Northern Alberta oil fields.

Beaton is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; and I'm from Prince Edward Island. Very similar places, all things considered, though PEI at least has the benefit of being its own province. The privilege of hosting the Confederation conference, I suppose. We're islands on the exact same latitude in the exact same bay, only separated by the Northumberland Strait.

We have the highest concentration of Scottish people in the world outside of Scotland, to the point that there's even a small minority of Gaelic speakers, and thats bleeds through into those who haven't lost their accents. (Of course, we all seem to get it back when we get pissed off.) I recognize every little quirk Beaton puts into the dialogue, and from it I know how a character would say any other word. PEI has a higher concentration of Scots than Nova Scotia as a whole, though I'd not be surprised if Cape Breton specifically was higher than us.

We're both fuck poor, but the whole Atlantic region is, really. Beaton calls Cape Breton "the have-not region of a have-not province," and that strikes pretty true. I didn't grow up in what you might consider the have-not region of PEI (though you might say my mother did), but to tell the truth, there isn't much even in the more populated part of PEI. Our provincial capital is most other places' small town, and even then, it isn't built for the Islanders. It's built for the tourists, like the rest of the Island.

Halifax, Nova Scotia is probably the closest we have to a proper city in the three Maritime provinces. That is to say, it can almost support its population on its own. And still, it's the least affordable city for young people to live in the whole country. An average deficit every month of $1290 (956USD). So it's no oasis. It's not entirely right to say it's supporting its population on its own, either, considering it hosts the country's largest military base.

Cape Breton's main industries are seafood, coal, steel, and what little Atlantic ocean shipping that wants a port a little bit closer to Europe than Halifax is already. But like the book shows, most of those industries are getting smaller and paying less.

Here in PEI, pretty much all we have is seafood, potatoes, and tourism. Farming and fishing is honest work, but hard on the body, and often difficult cut a profit unless you own the farm or the boat. And good luck with that, there's only so much to go around on an island. When a farmer or fisherman dies without heirs it usually gets bought up by a corporation anyway. Tourism -- fuck the tourism. A majority of our hospitality industry is run by members of the same goddamn rich family. The rest is government, like the national park. That fucking tourism industry takes every cent of public money to make the place look quaint and perfect for tourists to have a beach day without thinking about the people who live here. It's a fucking sham.

"Our main export is people" is a quote from the book, but also a truism I've hear time and again in the Maritimes. There's nothing for us here. Most of us, as the book mentions, don't really want to leave, we love the land and the sea. But we can't afford to stay.

I went to school in Arizona for a year. It's an incredibly beautiful place. But I think any east coaster, especially an Islander, feels inherently disoriented when landlocked. The sea is a constant, an even better navigator than a compass point. Taking it away feels like losing one of your senses. There's a scene in Ducks where the author stands in the Atlantic water before leaving for Alberta, and it reminded me of when I came home from Arizona. I'm not big with exercise, and I'm not huge on swimming because of body image stuff, but I made sure to go out and swim that summer, to walk out and just float effortlessly in the salt. It was rejuvenating, it felt like I was beyond myself, like I was a part of the island, in the way seaweed is.

Now that I'm back, I'm training to be a welder. Arizona didn't work out for a variety of reasons. I told myself before I started training that I'd never work in the oil industry. I can't justify it knowing the environmental impact and harm to indigenous people. But I'm very familiar with the process Beaton describes, people leaving home for the work camps so they can make money they'd never be able to here. I can't say it isn't tempting, considering my lack of money, apartment, car, anything. Hell, some places I wouldn't even have to finish my training. They'd take me as an apprentice and train me on the job. But I can't.

Still, I can't avoid its prescence. It's mentioned in classes all the time, which is no surprise. I'm sure half my classmates will be off there afterwards, it'd be insane for the instructors not to mention the most likely employ. It's mentioned by people when I say I'm learning welding. It's even been proposed by my environmentalist mom and stepdad, which surprised me. Even when I do find work, there's always going to be the knowledge I could be making more money with less work if I just sold my soul. I imagine I'll think about it with every bill.

CW Sexual Assault, Misogyny, Transphobia

I've never been sexually assaulted, so I won't speak too much about that element of the book, except to say that it's portrayal was incredibly moving.

I don't pass -- equally by choice as by circumstance -- so I am not a target for violent and aggressive sexual interest. But I am painfully aware of what the men around me think and say. I hear them just inside earshot. I see the graffiti on their locker doors. I know many of them, if they went out to the fields, would be no better than the men in Beaton's memoir.

I also know what it's like to feel unsafe as the minority in and around work in trades. To have to be always on your toes around the cis men that surround you. I'm forced to be aware of the height of every bathroom stall, to make sure I don't pull my underwear down far enough that someone might see. I'm lucky work clothes are ambiguous and baggy enough to grant plausible deniability. I still have to remind myself to keep my jumpsuit zipped up as often as possible, because I don't want to know what would happen if one of the guys saw a bra strap by the neck of my shirt. Or even just the outline of my bra through my shirt. They can be extremely perceptive when they aren't busy being ignorant. It's a dangerous world out there, if you aren't the social norm.

/CW

What I'm trying to get at is that this book is an intensely personal read, and strikes at the emotional core of fundamental subjects in my own life. To describe the feeling of reading it, it was like a conversation with your sibling about shared trauma you both previously left buried. Of course, I'm not actually that close with my sibling. But I am that close with this book. It felt like kin. Long-lost family, from just across the Strait.

[rhiann0n]

I may not enjoy the people that live around me, but the views are beautiful and make it worth while.

Views from the top of Cape Smokey, Ingonish Beach, Cape Breton Island.

[rabbitcruiser]

As per the British North America Act, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia joined into confederation on June 1, 1867 to create the modern nation of Canada.

[muttball]

Fortress de Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

It was captured by British colonists in 1745, and was a major bargaining chip in the negotiations leading to the 1748 treaty ending the War of the Austrian Succession. It was returned to the French in exchange for border towns in what is today Belgium. It was captured again in 1758 by British forces in the Seven Years' War, after which its fortifications were systematically destroyed by British engineers. The British continued to have a garrison at Louisbourg until 1768 but had abandoned the site by 1785. Wikipedia