The pretty village of Mabou is very Scottish, with its Gaelic signs and traditions of Scottish music and dancing. Most Saturday nights offer a helping of local culture in the form of a dance or kitchen party, which is an informal and intimate gathering that usually involves music and dance. Check bulletin boards at local businesses for information about these events. This is the hometown of national recording and performing artists such as John Allan Cameron, Jimmy Rankin, and the Rankin Family (now disbanded). Stop at a local gift shop and buy tapes to play as you drive down the long fjord of Mabou Harbour.

Mabou is a small community nestled on the western side of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. With a culture deeply influenced by 19th-century Scottish immigration, Cape Breton is widely celebrated for its fiddle music.

The pyramidal wooden lighthouse at Mabou Harbour was built in 1884 to guide coastal steamers transporting non-perishable goods into the only protected harbour on the western side of Cape Breton Island. At that time, a number of general stores served the countryside for miles around. At various times gypsum was shipped from here, and there was a lobster and salmon canning factory right next to the lighthouse.

Now, the pretty lighthouse is the Mabou Harbour Museum and Tourist Centre, opened in June 1998, to showcase the history of the lighthouse and the village.

Towns like Mabou and Inverness have a largely Scottish background. In Mabou, a center for Gaelic culture, the language of the Gaels is in no danger of dying out. Cheticamp, also on the western coast, is an Acadian community where the people speak French in an Acadian dialect.

The spectacular hiking trails of the Mabou Highlands are among the most beautiful and challenging hikes on Cape Breton Island.

Gaelic Influence

Cape Breton holds a unique position within the larger Gaelic world. During the period 1775 - 1850, some twenty-five thousand Gaelic-speaking Scots from every region of the Highlands and Islands established thriving pioneer communities throughout Cape Breton and Eastern Nova Scotia.

The pattern of emigration followed by the initial settlers was an important factor in the successful transfer of the language
and culture. This pattern has been called "chain migration" which in its simplest terms, means that emigrants tended to follow in the path of their neighbors who had gone to the New World before them.

Thus, the Barra people coming to Cape Breton settled mainly in the Christmas Island - Iona area; Lewis and Harris people in that area that we call the North Shore; Lochaber people in Mabou, and so on. This grouping of people according to their place of origin in Scotland allowed for the transfer, whole and intact, of localized dialects, of music, song and dance traditions, and of patterns of religious adherence.

Gaelic is still taught in the village school.