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July 6, 2026
By Ryan Martin

When I was in high school, I was a cashier at a grocery store in North Sydney, Nova Scotia. In the summer, we would often have customers from the Mainland (that is, the rest of Nova Scotia) who wanted directions. One night, a couple asked me how to get to the Highland Motel. I instinctually responded, “You know where the Old Highway is?” Needless to say, they did not, in fact, know where the Old Highway was; they had no idea there was a new highway to begin with. But I knew no other way to convey directions other than with Cape Breton-specific landmarks. (Thank goodness they didn’t ask for directions to the Cabot Trail, which almost certainly would have led to my using the utterly perplexing phrase, “Down north.”)

As with any community, the Cape Bretoners have specific names for places that are not reflected on any map but instead entirely localized. Today, I want to share a few of the nicknames I heard growing up. I emphasize my own personal experience here because, as of yet, there has been little scholarly literature on Cape Breton’s endonymic placenames, and what has been written often focuses on Sydney or Glace Bay. While the names and the stories behind those two locales are very interesting, I want to bring attention to the names I myself know, many of which (but not all) are specific to North Sydney and Sydney Mines. As William Davey writes in the Dictionary of Cape Breton English, “learning the informal names for the local places is often part of the initiation into a new community or group and a sign of membership” (72). Consider this, then, an initiation of sorts, a brief guide to endonymic placenames.

Bar Town – The town of North Sydney was, in the early 1800s, known as Bar Town. The  for this: on the one hand, it was named for the large sandbar that stilled the waters of the inner harbour. On the other hand, it may have been named for the high quantity of bars and taverns that befitted a seaport town. Bar Town continued to be used as the name for an annual summer festival until 2019.

The Old Highway – This is how locals refer to Keltic Drive, a road which runs from Leitches Creek to Sydney River. The Old Highway runs parallel to Peacekeepers Way, a divided highway that begins in Sydney Mines and ends in Sydney.  Although I was not alive when the Old Highway was an actual highway, I have never once heard it called anything but the Old Highway.

Louisbourg – Although Louisbourg appears on a map, its local pronunciation does not. You might be inclined to pronounce the town as “LOO-iss-burg” or “LOO-ee-bore,” but the English-speaking population of Cape Breton never pronounces it as such. Instead, it is pronounced “LOOZ-burg.” Recently, I witnessed my uncle trying to ask Siri a question about “Louisbourg,” only for it to bring up completely incorrect search results. (The same misunderstanding happened when my uncle pronounced “Main-à-Dieu” as “Man-AH-doo.”)

North Sydney and Sydney Mines –The names of these two towns, though commonly pronounced as they sound, may also be pronounced in a rather startlingly way: “Nor’ Tydney” in lieu of North Sydney and “Tydney Mines” for Sydney Mines. I was (and still somewhat am) puzzled as to where these alternate pronunciations came from. However, after consulting my mother on the matter, she offered a rather valuable insight: she figures that they arose to mock the heavy accents of Newfoundlanders. There is certainly some truth in this, for I have rarely heard these towns pronounced in this way unironically.

The Red Row – When I was twelve, I attended Sydney Mines Middle School, right across from which is an iconic row of red houses. These were company houses built for workers – largely, miners – that have since taken on the name “The Red Row.” A referred to the houses as “The Red Brick Row,” but I have always known them as The Red Row, a name which William Davey corroborates.

Works Cited and Consulted

Conners, Holly. “Students spruce up historic Red Brick Row houses in Sydney Mines.” CBC News, 12 June 2018. . Accessed on April 5, 2026.

Davey, William and Richard MacKinnon. Dictionary of Cape Breton English. University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Gillis, Rannie. “Birth of North Sydney name dates back to 1841.” Cape Breton Post, 2 October 2017. . Accessed on February 15, 2026.