Whisky Galore!

Glenora Distillery gets its water for the whisky (it's called the 'water of life' in the Gaelic) from this clean-running stream right outside the front door.

There's only one single malt whisky distiller in Canada and we were standing in the still room, sampling the 10-year-old product. It tasted okay, though I'm certainly no aficionado of single malts. My only previous experience was at the home of a Florida couple in Bradenton. Our host, Tom, had found the “perfect” single malt, he said. And he wanted to share it with us. Talk about casting pearls before swine! I tilted the glass back after the proper swirling and sticking my nose into the top to capture the aroma. I remember it being a smooth, well-developed, mature taste.

Glenora's 10-year-old single malt was more astringent, with a bit of a hint of licorice. It also lacked color but that's probably because it was pretty young. They were offering a fill-your-own 750 ml bottle in the gift shop where you could turn a spigot on a whisky barrel on a 20-year-old version. But that would cost $400 for the bottle.

Glenora last year won a 9-year legal battle with the Edinburgh-based Scotch Whisky Association attempting to stop Glenora from using the word “Glen” in its name. The association said that glens are only to be found in Scotland and this inference of Scottish-ness was put on the label to fool people into believing the single malt was Scotch. The distillery had fought this piece of nonsense all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada which dismissed the case without merit and told the Scotch Whisky people they had to pay the costs of the court action which probably made those Scotsmen smart.

Glenora , as a result of the win, brought out a limited edition of their whisky, calling it “Battle of the Glen” which, I thought, was a smart piece of marketing.

Ceilidhs are a dime a dozen on the west coast of Cape Breton... well, not exactly a dime. But they still are a cheap form of entertainment, ranging from $5-8 for tickets. A ceilidh is a get-together for music, usually in a kitchen, a church basement or a local fire hall. We have been taking advantage of the plethora of ceilidhs. There's been one each night within driving distance of our campground in Port Hood.

Tuesdays was in Mabou Village Hall. All the performers were named Beaton, even though they were not closely related. A step-dancer named Beaton showed up from Alberta. The guest fiddler was a young student who had come home to Mabou to visit with his parents. The mom and pop fiddle-piano player, also named Beaton, were the mainstays although the guest fiddler was quite extraordinary. He composed his own tunes, including one to honor his mom and dad who were there celebrating their 31^st wedding anniversary.

Wednesday night we drove south to Judique to the Celtic Music Interpretative Centre. And this took us into a completely different setting. This was much more like an authentic Scottish ceilidh, where the fiddler and the piano player sit and play their jigs and reels and Strathspeys. The audience sat around them as though this all was happening in a kitchen. After a few minutes of music, a group of folks got up and began to dance a reel and the whole affair took on a life of its own. While Shelly Campbell played her fiddle, folks from all over danced with abandon.

Jo and I got into conversation with an old man named Neil from Mississippi. He told us a great story about how he met his Canadian wife when he sailed into Halifax in 1952. They fell in love but then he was posted to Korea and they drifted apart. She ended up meeting and marrying someone else. He ultimately did the same. They each lost their spouses in the later years and she visited some friends from Cape Breton down in Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 2000s. They told her about this wonderful man she should meet and she actually called him because she recognized his name.

“She said when she called 'are you the Mr. Neil who sailed into Halifax in 1952?' he told me as the music played in the background. “I told her I was the same person. It was like my ship came in again.”

They met and the old flame was rekindled. They married each other in 2007. The rest is history.

And to wrap up Cape Breton, on Thursday we attended a local ceilidh at the local museum.

There was a moving and beautiful piece of fiddle music played in memory of a dead mentor by one of the musicians that brought tears to the eye. Then a couple of old miners from Port Hood strummed on their guitars while singing about going down the mine shafts no more. The evening was topped off with hot tea and oatcakes.