Highland Village, Iona
Bras d’Or Lakes Scenic Drive Sailboats, soaring eagles and Scottish Pioneers On a hill in Iona, overlooking the Barra Strait, there’s a 43-acre “housing development” that is like no other housing development you’ve ever seen. In fact, it has North America’s only Hebridean Black House, Alex Matheson’s Blacksmith’s Shop and its own Carding Mill. It is the Highland Village, an outdoor museum of authentic pioneer homes and places of work, that chronicles the struggles and triumphs of the Scottish Gaelic settlers from their first days in Cape Breton almost 200 years ago. Looking out over the Bras d’Or Lakes from that vantage point is for visitors, as it must have been for those courageous pioneers, an awesome experience. The Barra Strait, so called in honour of some of those pioneers who settled in the Iona area from the Scottish Isle of Barra, separates the upper and lower portions of Cape Breton’s “inland sea”, the Bras d’Or Lakes.
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