Tag: Marconi

Raiding the Beaton Institute archives for my past

If you have an interest in Cape Breton, you owe it to yourself to check out the The Beaton Institute’s website. It is filled with great images of Cape Breton. That’s what I was doing earlier this year.

One of the things I found there that reminded me of my life in Glace Bay is the hospital in this picture:

I lived not too far from the Glace Bay General Hospital (above) and I used to cut through the grounds of it to get to high school or go to play hockey at the Miners Forum. I remember playing soccer with friends on the grass in the front of the hospital. I remember going to get inhalation treatments in the basement for my sinuses. It was a cool old place.


One of the jobs I had when I was younger was going into Sydney and cleaning the Nova Scotia Power Trucks (shown above). It was a cool job I did with some friends of mine. We would drive the trucks out (somewhat like this), wash them, then return them to the parking lot. It was hard work, but good and memorable.


Finally, I love this photo of Marconi in the Marconi Station in Glace Bay. Here he is making communications history!

The history of technology and telecommunications is also a history of Cape Breton


Cape Breton is known for many things, including a great deal of history. One part of that history that I wish were played up more is the part it played in telecommunications at the beginning of the 20th century. I thought of that when I read about how a Cape Breton town (North Sydney) knew about the end of WW I before the rest of North America. It knew about it because of the Western Union offices there. It was a leader at the time. Sadly that Western Union building in North Sydney was torn down.

While that place is lost, there are still other sites on the Island that recognize that history of technology. There is the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck that is worth visiting. And while it is small, The Marconi Museum in Glace Bay is also good. There are some fine museums in Cape Breton: if you are going there to there to see that sort of thing, make sure you include those two.

Cape Breton had a significant role to play in the history of world telecommunications. That role should get recognized and more museums should be made to promote that era, in my opinion.

For more on North Sydney, see:   wikipedia North Sydney Nova Scotia.

(The image above is the Marconi National Historic Site of Canada in Glace Bay, linked to at goCapeBreton.com)