Views from the North Aspy River Bridge
on the Bay St Lawrence Road

From Bay St Lawrence, I drove back south and made one more stop, this time at the bridge over the North Aspy River on the Bay St Lawrence Road northwest of Cape North Village. Being inland, the air was much clearer than at Bay St Lawrence. This is another gorgeous spot, with roadside parking that allows one to get out of traffic and savour the views. The views on this page were taken there.

Photo #1 was taken from the middle of the bridge looking upstream at the North Aspy River and the valley it has carved. At the right of the photo in the foreground, the Grays Hollow Brook empties into the North Aspy River. As can be seen, the water here is not very deep and the banks are littered with stones and small boulders, but it was flowing along at a good pace.

Photo #2 was taken on the other side of the bridge, looking downstream. (I had to stoop to get the camera beneath the utility wires, so none of the sky is showing.) Here, the water is deeper, but flowing no less smartly. More banks of stones continue downstream, but not for far, as the North Aspy shortly begins to branch out into the delta at the west end of North Harbour, from which its waters enter Aspy Bay (the Atlantic Ocean) through a very narrow channel across the long beach seen previously from the Cabot Landing Provincial Park.

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Photo #3 was taken from the parking area (the old road where the bridge once was—note the abutment on the other side of the river at the far right of the photo), looking at the Cape Breton Highlands beyond. Grays Hollow Brook is responsible for the valley one sees at the right in the distance, with Theodore Fricker Mountain¹ at the right; the mountains at the left are the edge of North Mountain and not, so far as I am aware, individually named.

Photo #4 looks at The Peak, whose bare triangular face is always very striking, rising above the bridge to the north. My apologies for the utility wire across the width of the photo—I had no way to avoid it from where I was standing. I hope these few brief views will encourage you to stop when next you pass this way and enjoy the beautiful views.

¹ The topographical map (11 K/15) labels this mountain as Tenerife Mountain, and so it was officially known until 2009, though how it came by that name I do not know: Tenerife is the biggest of the seven Canary Islands, which lie off the coast of Africa, and the most populous. According to this CBC article, in 2009, two years after Theodore Fricker’s death and in response to a local petition (most locals didn’t know its official name and just called it Theodore’s Mountain or Ted’s Mountain), the province renamed the mountain in honour of a man who spent most of his life there and, in the words of a simple memorial plaque in the barrens on the plateau inland of that mountain that is shown near the end of this essay, was “a man with a love and passion for the moose and this mountain”. The more recent Parks Canada Cape Breton Highlands National Park Topographic Map labels this mountain as Theodore Fricker Mountain, but now places the label “Tenerife” on the north side of Johns Brook, where that mountain is locally known as “The Peak” for its triangular shaped rock face.