Cape Bretoners are accustomed to coincidental connections because their homeland offers such fertile ground for them. The combination of summer residents, occasional visitors, and the vast Caper diaspora has seeded the planet with people eager to rekindle their connection to the island. The late Whitney Pier ship chandler Newman Dubinsky made a point of wearing a Cape Breton tartan ball cap on his frequent travels overseas, because of the conversations it was sure to spark. For different reasons, blogging can have the same effect. My ex-sister-in-law, Myra Barss, is in New York, clearing out her parents' house. She emailed a dealer...

11 July, 2010

Estonian travel buff Ahti Heinla used the distribution of photos on Panaramio to create a world heat map of touristiness. Yellow indicates high touristiness, red medium touristiness, and blue low touristiness. Areas having no Panoramio photos at all are grey. The analysis takes account of both the number photos and the number of authors in a given area. Here is a lo-res blowup of the Nova Scotia section. Note that despite the Nova Scotia Government's decades-old policy of promoting boring and exciting parts of Nova Scotia equally to tourists, visitors still flock to Cape Breton. ...

24 May, 2010

A resident of England, who spends much of his time in Nova Scotia working on Seaside's rural high-speed Internet project, writes from Tel Aviv, where he is attending a wedding: An Irish fiddle band is providing the music for the wedding. The band members are all Israelis. I was chatting with one of them, and he asked what I did. I told him about Seaside and spending half my life in Canada. "I'm going to Canada in the autumn," he said. "I'm going somewhere called Cape Breton, for a festival called Celtic Colours." So a Londoner visiting Israel meets an Israeli playing in...

21 May, 2010

Explore, Canada's outdoor magazine, has added a feature on Pollett's Cove in northern Cape Breton to its website. Moneyquote: When you research and read about Pollett's Cove on Cape Breton Island, NS, you realize it's one of those special places that consistently puts it at the top of favourite lists among the hikers and backpackers who have conquered it, regardless of where they've been in the world...

19 August, 2009

Cape Breton's young, tech-savvy, music aficionados discuss the provincial election's impact on their favorite industry. Hint: fiddles haven't been mentioned....

31 May, 2009