Blogger: Wally Hayes

Often when I travel the Cabot Trail between Margaree Harbour and Pleasant Bay, the wind is churning up the Gulf of St. Lawrence surf and pounding it on the rocks along the western shore of Cape Breton Island. 

On such occasions, I'm reminded of the 50's era tune 'They Call The Wind Mariah', a fictional wind popularized in Lerner and Lowe musical 'Paint Your Wagon' and a signature tune of the 50s folk group The Kingston Trio. 

Hundreds of names have been given to the winds peculiar to certain areas of the world, like the 'Landlash' of Scotland, the 'Dust Devil' of the southwestern United States or the equatorial "Doldrums".

The Acadians of western Cape Breton have a wind of their own and they call it 'Le Suête' which translates in English to southeast wind. When the Acadians say Le Suête is approaching it's time to put a chin strap on your toque because things are going to get très breezy.

I got a reminder of this a few weeks ago when I started out doing autumn leaf photography and ended up  shooting giant waves and crashing surf along with tourists who were visiting Cape Breton on the Thanksgiving weekend for the same reason as myself. They too ended up on the Cabot Trail lookoffs to watch and photograph the boiling sea.

Later, I was told that I wasn't, in fact, in the middle of Le Suête, but rather a northwest gale. I guess I should have known, as the wind that day was a mere breeze compared with my first experience with the real thing about 10 years ago.

I had been photographing northern Cape Breton and stayed overnight in Pleasant Bay. When I hit the road in the morning, it was raining heavily and, since the forecast called for more heavy rain over the next few days, I decided to abort my Cape Breton photo shoot and return to Halifax.

I headed back through the rain along the Cabot Trail and stopped at the local Tim's in Cheticamp for coffee. I don't remember the wind being a factor that morning until I noticed, as I sat drinking coffee, that the double doors on either side of the coffee shop were suddenly blowing wide open and closing abruptly. Outside, the steel post that held the Tim Horton's sign was waving from side to side as if it were a willow wand.

I continued my drive south, but had gone only as far as Grand Etang when all of a sudden the sun broke through the heavy cloud and not one, but two rainbows appeared in front of me, rising up out of the wave-filled harbour. 

I found a spot to park, grabbed my camera from the passenger seat where I alway carry it and was set to jump out of my van to get a few shots before the rainbows disappeared. Problem! I had parked broadside to the fierce wind and it was blowing so hard against the driver's side that I couldn't open the door.  

I was reluctant to exit from the opposite side because I was afraid I'd be caught by the wind and blown away, so I lowered the driver's window and crawled through the opening and grabbed hold of a lamp pole a few feet away. I shot my pictures one-handed, with one arm and one leg wrapped around the pole for support. 

As I was shooting, I noticed other rainbows forming farther to the north, in the direction from which I had come. To make a long story short, I eventually ended up returning to Pleasant Bay, then farther north to the village of Red River shooting surf and rainbows along the way and using trees, poles and guardrails to hang onto for support.

Little did I know at the time that I was experiencing my first Le Suête, but not my last, although this was admittedly the most memorable. If you're in Cape Breton and decide to venture out in Le Suête, you'd be advised to fill your pockets with rocks and lash down your headgear.

I've dug back into my files to show you a few photos from that day as well as a few from this fall. 

This was the double rainbow at Grand Etang that started me chasing rainbows on the Cabot 

Trail

A bit of a rainbow is visible near the stern of the fishing boat, but the most unusual thing about this photo is that Le Suête is pushing the waves toward the sea. I was wrapped around a post to take this shot.

Fishing boats at Pleasant Bay under a rainbow arch

A full rainbow arches over farms in the small northern Cape Breton village of Red River.

This rainbow near Red River appears to be rising from the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

I felt like I was in a snowball fight in this recent Thanksgiving weekend photo as the wind pelted me with bits of foam that covered the beach near Margaree Harbour

This was a recent windy-day scene at Whale Cove on the Ceilidh Trail near Margaree Harbour.

This lookoff at Terre Noire on the Cabot Trail attracted lots of Thanksgiving weekend tourists with their cameras.