Canada's Celtic heartland — the Cabot Trail, Celtic music, and the world's most scenic coastal drive
Cape Breton Island is the northern part of Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Canso Causeway and home to some of Canada's most dramatic scenery. The Cabot Trail — a 298km coastal highway that hugs sea cliffs and plunges through the Cape Breton Highlands National Park — is consistently rated one of the world's great drives. The island's Gaelic heritage runs deep: Cape Breton has more Gaelic speakers per capita than Scotland and a Celtic music scene centred on Inverness and Cheticamp that rivals anything in the British Isles.
Cape Breton was home to the Mi'kmaq people for thousands of years before Cabot's 1497 landfall. The French established Fortress Louisbourg (1713), the largest fortification in North America, which changed hands between France and Britain three times before being demolished in 1760. The Highland Scots who arrived after the Clearances from 1800 onwards found a landscape that reminded them of home and transplanted their language, music, and social traditions so thoroughly that Cape Breton Gaelic is now considered a distinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic.