|
219 COMMERCIAL ST
Glace Bay,
Nova Scotia
B1A 0A0
|
Nova Scotia Tourism Region : Cape Breton Island
Description From Owner:
- First called Wasokusegwom for ‘shining, home of glory.' Glace (French for ice) Bay first appears on a census in 1752, describing the bay formed by Table Head and Cape Percé.
- It was later called Dyson Bay and then Windham Bay to honour William Windham, Secretary of War in the British government, and sometimes Glass Bay.
- In 1748 Fort William was built near Table Head to protect a coal mine which supplied the garrison at nearby Louisbourg. Since that time, coal has been extensively mined in this area.
- Fort William was a blockhouse brought from Boston, surrounded by a palisade. It was destroyed by fire in 1852.
- St. John's, NL, is the place from which the young Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic wireless signals to Pol-dhu, Cornwall, England.
- But it was on Dec. 15 of 1902 that the first complete transatlantic message was sent from nearby Table Head to Poldhu. That year Marconi built a wireless telegraph station at nearby Table Head with four towers 67 m (216 feet) high.
- In 1904 the station was moved to a new site near Port Morien. There is a national historic site here for Marconi, whose first message was a simple Morse Code signal.
- The Cape Breton Miners' Museum was opened here in 1967.
- With permission from 'Nova Scotia Place Names' David E. Scott 2015
Address of this page:
http://ns.ruralroutes.com/GlaceBay
Have something to say about Glace Bay?
Tell us, and we'll tell the world!
John Hugh MacLennan
Highly respected Canadian author He won the Governor General's Literary Award five times and was the first Canadian to receive Princeton University's James Madison Medal awarded annually to a graduate who has distinguished himself in his profession.
Hugh MacLennan (1907-90) was born at Glace Bay and a Rhodes Scholarship took him to Oxford University. His first two novels weren't published, but his story of the Halifax Explosion, which he survived as a 10-year-old, and told in Barometer Rising started him on a different writing track.
He taught in McGill University's English department for 30 years and is considered the most widely and most successfully translated Canadian novelist to date.
Some of his other works were Two Solitudes, The Precipice, The Watch That Ends the Night, Cross Country and Thirty and Three.
Glace Bay Heritage Museum is in the 1903 former town hall and exhibits recall the heyday of sword fishing.
The second floor contains the council chamber, mayor's office, Marconi exhibits and a sports and entertainment museum.
Marconi National Historic Site
The site at 15 Timmerman St., Glace Bay, is where Guglielmo Marconi launched global communication in 1902.
A wire antenna suspended from four huge wooden towers beamed a wireless message across the Atlantic. There is a model of the original station and remains of the tower foundations.
Hollywood Film Premiered At Glace Bay
Bay Boy was a movie by Hollywood film director and Cape Breton native Daniel Petrie.
The film premiered at the Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay in 1984 and went on to become a Cape Breton icon.
Quick Search
