Experience the best of Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island forms the north-eastern part of Nova Scotia, joined to the mainland by the Canso Causeway. At its centre lies Bras d'Or Lake, a large inland sea of sheltered coves, and its northern plateau is protected as Cape Breton Highlands National Park, where the Cabot Trail loops along cliffs and over mountains above the Gulf of St Lawrence and the Atlantic.

Scottish settlers gave the island its fiddle music and Gaelic songs, kept alive at ceilidhs and at the Gaelic College in St Anns, while Acadian villages such as Chéticamp on the west coast are known for hooked rugs and French-Canadian cooking. The Fortress of Louisbourg, a partial reconstruction of an eighteenth-century French port, stands on the eastern shore, and Baddeck, on Bras d'Or Lake, has a museum about Alexander Graham Bell, who built a summer estate there. The Mi'kmaw people have lived on the island far longer than any of these.

Lobster, scallops and haddock chowder are the staples, and Cape Breton oatcakes, a Scottish inheritance, are eaten with butter and tea. The hills turn red and gold in October, when a Celtic music festival fills community halls across the island.