📍Beinn Bhreagh, Baddeck, NS B0E 1B0, Canada
1893 – 1922“I grew up in Edinburgh, where my father taught elocution and my mother was losing her hearing; I would press my lips close to her forehead so she could feel my voice. That, and teaching deaf pupils, led me to the telephone. My wife, Mabel, was deaf too. In 1886 we bought land above Baddeck on Cape Breton Island, because its hills and lakes reminded me of Scotland, and named it Beinn Bhreagh — Gaelic for beautiful mountain. We built a great house there and spent every summer and autumn. Beinn Bhreagh became a laboratory as much as a home: I flew giant tetrahedral kites from the hillside, experimented with sheep breeding, and with a band of young engineers built aircraft, including the Silver Dart, which made the first powered flight in Canada. Mabel funded and inspired our Aerial Experiment Association. In our own boatyard we built the HD-4 hydrofoil, which in 1919 set a world water-speed record on the Bras d'Or Lake. Mabel and I rest on the mountaintop overlooking it all.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons