The Second Pool

This lovely upriver view shows the Second Pool in the foreground and the falls behind it. According to Clarence Barrett, on page 78 of his Cape Breton Highlands National Park: A Park Lover’s Companion, “[s]almon need a certain depth of water below waterfalls in order to be able to jump them—about one and a half times the vertical height of the falls. In 1898, the Department of Fisheries reduced the height of the falls on the Second Pool, providing access to an additional 14 km [8.7 mi] of habitat for the river’s salmon. The pool below the falls here is 10 m [33 ft] deep—lots of runway for Salmo salar, ‘the leaper’.”

I do not have the patience to be a fisherman, but I can understand full well why it would be attractive to many, especially as it provides a fine reason for escaping into wild scenes of beauty such as this one in the pursuit of an elusive and challenging quarry.

The amounts of exposed bedrock here are greater than anything seen at the earlier pools and the huge blocks of rock with which the site is strewn in seeming abandon are impressive. The falls above this pool are also noticeably higher than any seen downriver. For these reasons, the Second Pool strikes me as qualitatively very different from the preceding pools.