Canadian Treasure

In Sydney Mines there is a small concrete shack down on Lockman's beach that holds a whole treasure of history. For years in the early days of the nineteenth century there was a influx of people from the Continent of Europe to Canada and the United States. The communication between the two continents was very slow as it took over a week for the fastest liner to cross the Atlantic and air travel was non existent.

Some men had a dream of crossing

the ocean with a cable that would be capable of carrying verbal and coded messages from the European Continent of Europe to Canada. Men of vision decided to manufacturing a cable that would cross the Atlantic and Sydney Mines was to be the Canadian landing site.

A great ship was built. It was called the Great Eastern and was specifically designed to hold cables of huge length and able to drop the cable in a manner so as to have it safe passage on the ocean floor.The cable was manufactured and the ship built and laying the cable was a huge task with very difficult problems to be overcome as the cable was being laid. There was no mapping of the ocean floor and the mountain ranges were unknown as were the extreme depths.

The men and their ship began the task and succeeded when many said it could not be done. The Great Eastern showed up on the shore of Cape Breton on time and anchored in the mouth of the harbour. A magnificent, standing tall out of the water as it's load had been deposited along the way across the ocean. The last piece of the cable was brought ashore and anchored in a small secure building. This feat was a wonder of the world at the time and shortly after the cable was put into service we had a secure, fast communication cable with Europe.

It caused a revolution in the communication industry but Cape Breton was by-passed as the cable was pushed forward on land to large centers and the landing site was only a shack on the beach. Years later the cable was not used and better ways of communication were ried. As a child I saw the destruction of this historic site and people dug up the huge cable for scrap . There was no thought of making this site a historic place. There is not even a plaque to remember the historic event.

My father and Grandfather lived not one hundred meters from this site and never spoke of the event to me as a child.