Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Lighthouse along shore of Bras d'Or Lake in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Traveling often means discovering things that are sometimes unexpected. I’m not talking about such things as teenagers not functioning as humans before noon, or when your wife mentions that a restroom would be welcomed ‘soon’ which translates to means 'right now’ when the nearest town is an hour away.

No, those things are just facts.

It is those moments when traveling when one person turns to the other and utters, “Wow, check that out.”

Laureen, my lovely wife, and I had one such experience as we entered the town of Baddeck in Nova Scotia.

Baddeck is a quaint town sitting along the shores of Bras d’Or Lake. Despite its French spelling, the name is said to have originated from the native Mi'kmaq meaning ‘the long saltwater’, which stretches all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the wharfs along the water in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Baddeck looks like a Hallmark setting. A beautiful wharf with fishing boats, trees, and green grass stretching to the shoreline, fancy restaurants, vintage hotels, and a princess gazing into the distance for her prince.

Laureen told me that it was not a princess but a woman who dropped her phone into the water and was yelling at her husband to get it. But, I will stand by my story - her blonde hair was flowing majestically in the slight breeze as she scanned the horizon for her White Knight.

I’m a romantic, all truth be told.

The original Post Office in Baddeck where Bell would mail his correspondence

The town of Baddeck was founded in 1908, but the history goes way back to the 17th century when French missionaries started a settlement in nearby St. Anns in 1629, twelve miles to the north.

It is rumored the French declared, “Les Anglais ne connaîtront jamais cet endroit.”

Well, the English did find the area during the 18th century when the French were forced to give the whole territory to the British Empire.

It is also rumored that the French may have said, “Au diable les Anglaises.”

So, as Laureen and I entered the town to locate our hotel, we passed a large sign that suggested we may enjoy visiting a certain museum. 

And this is where that unexpected thing when traveling happens: it was the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.

And as any good American, even though technically we were still in America, you know what I mean.  I was flabbergasted.

“They need tourism in Cape Breton so badly that they stole our inventor of the telephone?” I asked Laureen.

What next? This is where Sasquatch is seen more frequently than in the state of Washington, or Area 51? And he is really guarded by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

Turns out that Alec, as he liked to go by, had traveled to the Baddeck area years in the past and had fallen in love with the town.

The young Bell had started his life in Scotland but due to health problems, including the death of his two brothers to tuberculosis, his mother and father decided to move to the United States for a better climate.

It worked, and the young man soon became an inventing genius.  

At 18 years of age as he was working for a man who sold corn, Alec developed a method of instead of having manual labor shuck the stalks, a machine could do it.

It worked and Alec is credited with the saying, “Ah, shucks.”

As the years wore on Alec became more and more a man of invention. His father worked with various methods of assisting those without hearing actually to communicate and Alec made that part of his life goal. He became a speech teacher helping those, including Helen Keller.

In fact, his wife was a former student of his who was barely capable of hearing - but due to the extraordinary work from both his father and himself, Mabel was able to speak and read lips to the point that most did not realize she had any hearing issues.

It should be pointed out that Bell’s own mother was deaf but learned how to speak through the research and study by her husband who handed this down to his son.

Bell established the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890 and is still doing wondrous things to this day for the hearing impaired.

So, we wandered into the Alexander Graham Bell Museum and were blown away by what we learned.

The Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

In 1876, when Bell famously yelled into the telephone mouthpiece, “Watson, get me a ham sandwich.”  Life changed for the entire planet.

And that set Bell into the history books, which also made him a fabulously wealthy man.

A point learned at the museum was that Bell did not care that much about money. He enjoyed the benefits for humanity but when one of his inventions, and he had countless, went public he dropped interest and moved on to the next idea.

Missing Scotland, Bell convinced his wife that they needed to find a place that would bring that sense of home back to him.

They traveled here and there, with his newfound funds, and happened to stop by Baddeck on one of their adventures.

With the lure of the green hills, tall trees, huge estuary, and rivers, this was the place for him. 

Mabel and Alec settled on a point called Megwatapatek, named by the Mi’kmaq meaning ' Red Head’ due to the reddish sandstone rocks at the end of the peninsula.

The Bells purchased 600 acres and built a beautiful home there and other residences for family members. The property is still owned by the descendants and no non-family members are allowed unless they are guests.

Looking across Bras d'Or Lake at the Bell estate

I tried, even showing my press pass. 

I did not know how cold the waters of the  Bras d’Or Lake were in late June until the security personnel tossed me into them.

The museum was enlightening into the life of Alexander Graham Bell.

Most think of him only as the inventor of the telephone, but he was so much more.

He had a total of 18 separate patents and 12 he shared with other brainiacs which included devices to assist the deaf, phonographs, multiple telegraphs at one time, photographs, metal detectors, and so much more.

We spent hours within the large museum marveling at this and that. All the inventions Bell was involved in were amazing. His wife once said that got his greatest creative ideas by floating in the waters by their house in Baddeck while smoking a pipe, an event that could fill an entire day.

A mockup of Bell's private study in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

He always carried a small notebook and scribbled notes in it constantly.

I suggested Laureen take that stance when I was floating in our pool at home with a cold adult beverage but her eyes rolling stopped that idea.

Bell even got into human flight.

He loved kites and often over the peninsula where their home was, the folks in Baddeck may have seen a dozen various colored and shaped kites skirting the breezes above their land.

The fight for dominance of who could put a human into the air was intense - some guys by the name of the Wright Brothers were doing it but everything was in secret, but Bell believed in publicity.

So, on February 23, 1909, Bell along with a host of like-minded fellas, launched the Silver Dart into the air off the shores of the Baddeck estate, creating the first powered heavier-than-air craft in Canada with a human.

A few years later, Bell and those engineers around him came up with the first hydrofoil concept of a plane that could take off and land on water.

On September 9, 1919, the vehicle took off from the waters of Bells Home and reached a speed of nearly 71 miles per hour.

A replica of Bell's hydrofoil on display.

Though through the years the concept would become indispensable for the military, when the First World War was done, there was not much interest in Bell’s idea.

It was decades later that the military realized Bell was far ahead of almost everyone and now hydrofoils are utilized by all branches of the service.

 In a fitting farewell for one of the United States' most prolific inventors, during his funeral after his death on August 2, 1922, every phone in North America was silenced in tribute to the inventor.

Even in death, Alexander Graham Bell was to be noticed.

For further information: Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site (canada.ca)

John  can be reached at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

Orphan Trains

 

It's that time of year for the Hallmark Chanel, and all their sappy holiday love stories. Turn on the television, grab some popcorn, and don't forget the tissues. Oh yes, if you happen to watch one of these movies, primarily filmed in Canada, by the way, you will usually shed a tear or two.

Hate to admit, but John has been seen reaching for the box of Kleenex, once or twice during these holiday films.

The plots are all the same. Woman meets man of her dreams, they fall in love, and then something comes between them, leaving her to wonder if he is truly the man of her dreams. Finally, the last ten minutes of the show - the couple realizes that they are meant to be together.

Of course, the plot can vary. It can be a man who meets the woman of his dreams - same scenario and same results. Just didn't want to be gender biased here.

So, we were watching one of these tissue grabbing films not long ago - this being the season and all, when suddenly the phrase orphan train was used.

The film, actually a series, was called 'Love Comes Softly.' It was sappy, but at the same time pretty entertaining and had a great moral. Don't all Hallmark films - as well as their cards?

The setting was the old west and the phrase was something neither one of us had heard before.

"Orphan train?" Laureen questioned.

"I could make something up, but never heard the term."

Obviously, research was afoot - thanks, Sherlock.

Turns out that the term was not widely used during this time, but caught on later. It seems around 1830, the numbers of homeless children in the eastern part of the United States were growing at an alarming rate.

Typhus, yellow fever, and the flu were running rapidly through neighborhoods, taking parents and grandparents in its path. Medicine wasn't what it is today, so the children were often left to fend for themselves when their entire households would succumb to whatever disease landed on their doorstep.

Also, many children were deserted due to poverty or perhaps a parent's addiction. In other words, no one was looking out for the most vulnerable in society.

Stealing from Dickens' term street urchin, as an explanation for these hordes of children wandering the streets in search of sustenance. 

The Children's Aid Society was founded in 1853, by Charles Loring Brace. Room and board was offered to homeless boys as a way to provide temporary housing. The plan was to find jobs for these homeless youth but soon, the society was overwhelmed with the unfortunate children with nowhere to turn.

With the nation developing westward, Brace came up with the idea of perhaps offering these boys, and girls up for adoption. He had hopes that with the country expanding, families may be interested in adopting a healthy young child to help around the farm. Brace's hope was that good solid families would jump at the chance to embrace a child as their very own. This way, the children would be able to leave the crowded cities that left them often as victims of terrible and immoral crimes - they would have the chance of a better life with families who loved them.

The system worked in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and rural New York. Now, Brace decided to expand to the Midwest which was flourishing with pioneers heading out to make their own destiny.

In 1854, the plan expanded with the use of trains, to transport children across the nation. Brace felt that 'his' children would find the nurturing they would need to grow into independent and useful citizens for a growing nation.

The actual term, Orphan Train, wasn't actually used until after the program ended in 1929. Terms like, Mercy Trains, Baby Trains and the like were the more common description of these trains heading west with their precious cargoes.

In fact, less that half of the children who ever rode one of these trains were actually orphans. Twenty-five percent were just children abandoned by their parents on the streets of New York, New Jersey, and other eastern cities. The others, were boys and girls who just wanted a life away from the crime and sadness of those same cities, believing there may be a brighter life awaiting them out west.

Some of the children found a better life, but some were no better off than slaves. People would come to local courthouses, and the children would be paraded up the steps of the courthouse so those interested could get a good look at them.

In fact, the phrase 'up for adoption' is derived from this practice of having the children up on the steps of the courthouses.

Some interested parties would come up to the children, check their teeth to ensure there wasn't gum disease, pinch their cheeks to see if a healthy color would return, and other degrading physical intrusions.

The idea seemed like a wonderful way for children to escape the horrors of life on the streets, but there were many detractors who believed it was a perverted way to exploit these children.

Babies were easy to place in homes, but when a child was in their teens, many potential 'parents' thought they would be too set in their ways and be more than a handful.

So, the jury is still out if this practice served its purpose of helping those children in need. In her best selling novel, orphan train, Christina Baker Kline weaves a fictional tale about one of these children who lived this life. There were good times, as well as bad times for these children of the trains.

The last train left New York City on May 31st, 1929 for the state of Texas. This was during the Great Depression and the horrendous Dust Bowl, overtaking the Midwest.  After a seventy-six year run, the trains were finally halted for this venture. Public opinion had changed about orphans, and poor people in the United States. Families, no matter how poor, should stay intact, and there were other government avenues for these folks to approach, instead of just abandoning their child to the streets or crowded trains.

An interesting fact - according to the New England Historical Society, one out of every twenty-five Americans has a personal connection to an Orphan Train rider. 

So, next time you settle in for the evening with a Hallmark film, look for those things that are new and get to researching. It's great when we learn something new - especially for the old grey matter.