Sydney, Nova Scotia

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Our day in Sydney started and ended with less than stellar weather, but at least we remembered our umbrellas this time. Our bus tour was to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum and the village of Baddeck where he lived for 37 years. Our tour guide was again filled with information about Cape Breton Island, the island part of Nova Scotia. She told us about the early coal mining operations, the steel business, and all of the various statistical data on the people, the animals and the land and lakes. We had some stops for photo ops on the hour long drive to the museum. We knew Bell had invented the telephone and the gramophone, but the scope of his interests and inventions was immense. He maintained a primary home in Washington, DC, but with Mabel, his wife who became deaf at age 5, he bought 400 acres on the Bras d'Or (Golden Arm) Lake and built a house for family and friends and a place where he could conduct his experiments away from the stress of DC. We barely touched the surface with our one hour visit to the Museum. Both Alexander and Mable Bell were intent on doing good for the village of Baddeck. They employed 150 people to run the estate when they were there, they established an Academy for the Baddeck children and promoted women's issues in the community. Alexander spent his early years teaching the deaf and continued to focus on inventions which would help them, but he also was very involved in aviation and the idea of speed-boats, especially hydro-foils. Mabel was already wealthy when they met and she took all of the stock in Bell that Alexander gave her for a wedding gift and multiplied it and invested it, always allowing Alexander the ability to follow his inventing ideas. When Alexander died they buried his remains on the property and when she followed him 5 months later her ashes were placed next to his. Again, we were cutting it close time wise for getting back on the ship and had further to go than the passengers of the Crown Princess (4000 strong??) which was docked at the only berth. The tender was waiting and we got drier seats this time. We have pulled up anchor and are almost 3 hours into our trip to Halifax. The captain has warned against high winds for the night and the ship is certainly rocking around. Our cabin this time is on the 6^th deck up front, with a nice balcony we haven't been using. The seas are so high as I write this that occasionally we hear the water hitting our sliding glass doors – that's the 6^th deck and quite a way back from the bow of the ship. There will probably be some restless nights around the ship tonight.