Views from the Kinsman Park in Cap-le-Moine

The fine photography weather of yesterday was already yielding to the heavily overcast, hazy, and muggy weather of Saturday on Friday evening at Broad Cove, though it took the night for it to really settle in. As I drove to the cèilidh at the Doryman in Chéticamp, I decided to flout the weather and stopped for photos in Cap-le-Moine at the Kinsman roadside park there.¹

Photo #1 shows the view to the northeast; Squirrel Mountain has the long 45° slope at the left of the photo and is followed by other Cape Breton Highlands prominences to the right that are unnamed so far as I am able to determine. At the bottom right of the photo lies the body of water known as le Lac-des-Dosithée². The road in the middle ground, to the left of le Lac-des-Dosithée, is Chemin Bazile, which dead-ends on the side of the mountain, but does offer some nice views on the way back down. The cleared area on the side of the mountain is likely along the Pembroke Lake Road out of Grand-Étang, which I drove a couple of years ago without reaching Pembroke Lake (the road was poor and, had I continued, I would have been late for the Doryman cèilidh, so it remains on my to-do list), but did find (on a day as generally dismal as this one) an open area from which there were good views of the coast: since this is the only open area visible, I suspect it is the one I stopped at.

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¹ The road signs do not agree with the localities shown in The Nova Scotia Atlas: the road sign for St-Joseph-du-Moine is south of the Kinsman Park, but that park is clearly in Cap-le-Moine on the atlas and the topographical map, so that is what I have used here.↩

² Dosithée is a saint in both the eastern and western Christian traditions who lived in Gaza in the 6th century (according to this French-language Wikipedia article), but might have been confused with another saint named Dorothée who was a leader at the same abbey. The name means ‘God-given’ from Greek roots whose Latin equivalents evolved into the more common French name ‘Dieudonné’. To confuse matters more, there was another Dosithée, this one from Samaria, who founded a Samaritan sect believed to belong to the Gnostic tradition; he is supposed to have known St John the Baptist and to have been the teacher of Simon Magus. Finally, a Google search reveals that Dosithée was formerly a fairly common name in the French-speaking world, as there are references to a Québec member of the Legislative Assembly between 1878 and 1886 named Michel-Dosithée-Stanislas Martel and a religious sister Marie-Dosithée, as well as a host of genealogical records mentioning other people who also bear that name, though it seems to be a given name and not a family name. If anyone knows for whom this lake is actually named, please write me at the contact address given in the footer, as my curiosity is now really piqued!↩

Photo #2 looks to the east from the Kinsman Park; it shows the gently rounded Cape Breton Highlands which lie in a string to the south of Squirrel Mountain, declining in height as one proceeds to the south, all again unnamed so far as I can determine. In the foreground is the park area itself, with a bench for watching the traffic passing on the Cabot Trail, and a lovely rose bush that was in full bloom.

Photo #3 is a close up shot of the rose bush, unaltered from what the camera captured. Many of the blooms are yet to open, but those that are constitute a marvellous compendium of magenta hues, backed by entirely appropriate greens. What a marvellous bush!