Gabarus Harbour Entrance and Harbour Point

Photo #1, taken from the promenade on the heavy wood-and-creosote barrier behind MacGillivrays Cove, looks west. The gravel road that leads out to Rouses Point is in the foreground; just on the other side of the road is the entrance to the harbour at Gabarus. Beyond it, one can see the eastern coast of the peninsula that ends in Harbour Point, where the lighthouse sits to the right of an octagonal structure that, as best I could make out, is a summer home. Gabarus Bay lies to the right of Harbour Point, with the hills that line it rising above and continuing, along with the bay, behind the peninsula.

Gabarus Lighthouse, seen in photo #2 below, is of the classic design seen in most Cape Breton lighthouses. The day I was there, an excavation was in progress, accounting for the pile of dirt one sees at the left of the photo of the lighthouse; I do not know if the work was related to the lighthouse or not—it was certainly quite close to the lighthouse. I also do not know why the lighthouse is positioned where it is; one would have thought that putting it on or near Rouses Point would have made it more visible from the sea, since its present location means that it cannot be seen from some parts of the Bay of Gabarus. It does sit on a promontory and so can be seen from boats to the southeast of Rouses Point and perhaps that was deemed enough, especially as its current location gives it a fair amount of protection from the fury of the sea whose power is demonstrated by the cobblestone piles seen along the crescent fronting the sea. As the very useful web site of the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society tells us, a six-sided wood tower was first constructed here in 1890; the current structure dates from the mid-20th century and its light stands 16½ m (54 ft) above the water, though the tower itself is only 9¾ m (32 ft) tall.

The space this essay has for photos of Gabarus is now at an end, but these few photos don’t even begin to exhaust all of the beautiful views that are to be found there on such a fine day as this one. I took 112 photos while I was there and it was really hard reducing them down to this small set. So what you’ve seen here are only the barest of the highlights. If you have not been there recently, you should pay Gabarus a visit as it is a very pretty place; one could easily spend a day there, or more, if one were to hike out to Gull Cove.