Cape Breton Places & Foods

Nova Scotia stretches 500 kilometres on a southwest-northeast axis from Cape Sable to Cape North, the shape of the province is often compared to that native delicacy, the lobster, with Cape Breton Island representing the outstretched claws, preparing to nip unsuspecting Newfoundland across the Cabot Strait.

The outstanding geographical fact about Nova Scotia is not the land, but the sea. The province is virtually an island connected to the rest of Canada by the narrow Isthmus of Chignecto. No point of land is more than 55 kilometres from the coastline. Cape Breton is an island joined to the mainland by the Canso Causeway. It is the sea that has carved the wild and ragged shoreline of the Atlantic coast and the sea that creates the wondrous tides of the Bay of Fundy. It is the sea upon which the first European settlers arrived and the sea from which they pulled their livelihood in once bursting nets. It is the sea for which they built ships to sail to other seas, bringing back goods rare and precious and tales even stranger. Not surprisingly, it is to the sea that Nova Scotians today are looking for new sources of wealth from offshore oil and gas.

The province can be divided into three distinct physiographic regions - the lowlands, the uplands and the highlands, which in tum may be subdivided into distinct sub-regions. The lowlands include the fertile Annapolis Valley, the low-lying areas around the Northumberland Strait and large parts of Cape Breton Island. The geology is primarily sedimentary and it is in these areas that most of Nova Scotia's rich coal seams are located. These coasts tend to be low and flat, and there are few good harbours. The shoreline is characterized by sandbars and occasional dunes. Bathers can often wade many hundreds of metres on these sandbars when the tide is out.

The Atlantic uplands comprise an area equal to half the province, running from Cape Canso, Guysborough County, to the extreme southern tip, including all of Yarmouth, Shelburne, Queens and Lunenburg counties, and most of Digby, Halifax and Guysborough counties. The uplands are a mass of Pre-Cambrian hard granite and quartzite, interspersed with belts of weaker slate. l'he area has been heavily glaciated with the result that much of the soil has been scraped away and redeposited in numerous glacial formations, the most famous of which is the drumlin that forms Halifax's Citadel Hill.

The coastline of the uplands region is deeply indented, forming many good harbours, some of which are considered outstanding. Hundreds of islands dot the landscape along the entire Atlantic coast, most notably at St. Margarets Bay and Mahone Bay. Reefs and shoals abound, accounting for the many lighthouses erected along this coast. In many ways the Atlantic uplands coast epitomizes the North Atlantic coastline with its bare granite sheets plunging headlong into the raging surf to produce an awesome cataclysm between land and sea. When people think of Nova Scotia, they usually envisage the rocky granite shores of the uplands.

The highlands are those parts of the province where metamorphosed igneous and sedimentary rocks have either intruded through the preexisting lowland sediments or resisted erosion to a better degree than the surrounding softer rock. The Cape Breton Highlands are the most notable example. The Cobequid Mountains of Cumberland and Colchester counties, the Antigonish highlands, and the North Mountain, which runs parallel with the Fundy shore from Cape Blomidon to Digby Neck, are the other Nova Scotia highlands. Appearing as sharp ridges when viewed from below, the highlands are actually flat tablelands. This may be observed first hand in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. At Ingonish, and at Cheticamp, the Cabot Trail rises to the tablelands, several hundred metres above the sea level.

The outstanding feature of the highlands is rectilinear coastlines. In contrast with the hundreds of bays and peninsulas of the Atlantic coast, the shoreline of the Bay of Fundy and western Cape Breton are virtually straight. Here, uplifted highland cliffs that soar up hundreds of metres directly from the ocean create stretches of spectacular landscapes. Less well known, but no less spectacular, are the cliffs of the Bay of Fundy coast, which are interspersed with fossils and unusual minerals.

2 Comments »

1. While at sobey’s here in cambridge ontario to my excitement I found mom’s iced pound cake….I hope sobey’s will keep selling this product here since there’s nothing better after dinner than pound cake with ice cream and tea like we did when I lived back home 10 years ago…..

   Comment by Gerry — February 9, 2008 @ 2:45 pm

2. LOL - ya my mother tried that for a while, but hers kept ending in the trash bid!

   Comment by admin — February 9, 2008 @ 5:26 pm

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