Meandering to Quebec & The Maritime Provinces travel blog

Our Lady of Sorrows Shrine in Mabou

Pretty stained glass window

The lovely woodwork and interior of the tiny church

St. Mary's in Mabou

At the Glenora Distillery in Glenville

The stream from which the water is drawn for the mystical malt.

The Ivy-clad Glenora Inn

Gail & Joe on the wooden bridge waiting for our tour of...

Exhibits in the display gallery.

The Mash Mixing Tub

And one of several brew tanks

The Distillers

The Spirit Safe; the distilled alcohol goes in here

Examples of whiskey bottles in the exhibit gallery

Memorial to Scottish Settlers

At Inverness Beach

Howard on the boardwalk catching some pictures.

The gang at Inverness Beach

Looking north toward Cape Breton Highlands

At Whale Cove Road look-out

Sunset views from the RV Park at Port Hood

Sunset happens here at about 7:30 ADT

A couple of more shots

I met a really nice couple while I was taking these; they...

The last sunset picture for tonight.


Despite where we are in a pretty quiet community, it wasn’t that quiet after all last night. It’s Labor Day weekend here in Canada too and some fireworks/bottle rockets disturbed our sleep a little after midnight. We calmed Foxy down and the rest of the night was uneventful.

It was a glorious Saturday morning so we headed out from Port Hood north on the Ceilidh Trail; for my non-Irish friends, that’s pronounced “Kay-lee”. A Ceilidh was generally a night of music, song, and dance usually at someone’s home and all the friends and neighbors were invited. At Mabou, we took a photo op stop at the tiny Mother of Sorrows Pioneer Shrine. The little church was built in the late 1920’s about 4 miles away on Indian Point as a memorial to the courage and faith of the early settlers. When the church fell into disrepair, it was moved to this location in 1967 and restored and repaired. The interior is strikingly beautiful like a miniature cathedral, finished with douglas fir tongue-and-groove woodwork, a silent tribute to the builder, Thomas Burke.

St. Mary’s Church didn’t look as if it was an active church anymore, although the signs indicated mass times. The towering spires were enough to lure me off the road for a picture even though the structure and surrounding grounds conveyed the appearance of neglect.

At Glenville, we took a guided tour of Canada’s only single malt whiskey distillery, Glenora Distillery. The guide was very knowledgeable and gave us an insiders glimpse into the art of creating a world-class whiskey. Three ingredients are necessary; water which they get from a stream that runs through the property, barley which they buy from Saskatchewan, and brewer’s yeast which they import from South Africa. We all got a taste of the mystical brew at the end of the tour and we even splurged and bought a bottle to take home.

Inverness is a good sized community and looked like the best place for lunch; we filled the holes in our stomachs with reasonably good, although not great, food. To work off the calories, we took a walk along the extensive boardwalk which meanders along the sandy beach.

We went on a bit further north through St. Rose and Chimney Corner to the turnoff to Whale Cove Cemetery. From the coastal bluffs, we could see the Cape Breton Highlands, Margaree Island offshore has a Canadian bird sanctuary, and Margaree Harbour church spires ahead. Margaree Harbor marks the northern end of the Ceilidh Trail and the beginning of the Cabot Trail. We’ll do the Cabot Trail another day. We turned back from here and scouted out a restaurant for Sunday brunch in Port Hood.

We had a great day and crashed out for the evening to relax at home. I took a few more pictures of the sunset which I'll post if they are decent.

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