A REMARKABLE MAN

BADDECK and BELL

Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia is a community of only 1100, but it   is one of the largest villages on Bras d’Or Lake (locally pronounced bra door). Several small low-rise hotels are inconspicuously nestled among the awe-inspiring scenery. The lake is large and from certain vantage points one can catch a glimpse of Alexander Graham Bell’s beloved home, Beinn Bhreagh.

One of Beddeck’s most famous residents, Bell built his 37-room, 11-fireplace home in 1892-93 on 450 wooded hillside acres   overlooking the lake, whose name means arms of gold.  Bell spent his last 37 years at Beinn Bhreagh and died there at age 75, in 1922, from complications of diabetes.

A visit to the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, built on 25 beautifully landscaped acres on the eastern end of the village, revealed much I did not know about this famous inventor, teacher, and  humanitarian.

Known for the invention of the telephone, I had  no idea he was  involved in so many other endeavors. His mother was partially deaf and his wife was totally deaf.  It is said that his mind explored the world, but that his heart was with the deaf. His lifelong ambition was to help people communicate with each other regardless of barriers. He was a teacher of the deaf in Boston, and he met and mentored Helen Keller. Born in Scotland in 1847, he was to travel the globe during his lifetime. I couldn’t help but reflect on how arduous that would have been in his day!

At age 15 Alexander was sent to his grandfather in England for a ‘proper education’. Two brothers died of TB when Alexander was 23. He loved children and at night when he couldn’t sleep he would get up and write children’s stories.

            Bell applied for the phone patent in 1876 and spent 20 years defending it. He married Mabel Hubbard in 1877. Just before her marriage,  Bells  father told Mabel, “He is hot headed but warm hearted, sentimental, dreamy, and self absorbed but sincere and unselfish. Ambitious to a fault he is apt to let enthusiasm run away with judgement. With love you should have no trouble harmonizing. I’ve told you all of his faults and the catalog is wonderfully short.”  She was wealthy in her own right, but Bell gave her all the stock in the phone company.

He was quite involved in the airplane and conferred in 1903 with the Wright Brothers. In 1908 Bell managed to put a man in the air on a kite, and two years later got his first plane, June Bug, in the air. That same year, 1908, his second plane, Silver Dart, flew 790 meters. It was Bell’s wife, Mabel, who financed his aviation endeavors. She died in Washington, D. C. just five months after her husband of 45 years had died.

Bell also had his hand in the creation of the hydrofoil and iron lung among many other things. He was a remarkable man with a most creative mind.

Baddeck is a quiet quaint little village in a gorgeous setting. The museum is very well done and certainly worth a visit, but allow plenty of time to learn many things about this remarkable man.