Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Cape Breton Highlands Nation Park: Guide


Clarence Barrett's “Companion” is one part guidebook, one part memoir of his travels in the park, and one part scientific journal. If you travel the park counter-clockwise as I did you don't get an opportunity to pick it up until after you've driven the entire highway through the park. It should be available at the Ingonish end. The book is well edited and exhaustive in its coverage of hiking trails, official and unlisted. Ideally the book should be read before one enters the park gates—there aren't any; as I peruse it becomes an exercise in armchair travel and self-education.

The practice of giving the people whose homes were expropriated to create a park first priority in job hiring ensures that park staff have a certain love-hate relationship with the place.

There is a section of colour photographs at the centre of the book on polished paper. I do with the author had opted to show half as many photos in half page blow-ups as the present collage style doesn't due justice to his photography. One or two full-page portrait oriented photos would have been nice as well.

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