Cape Breton Stories, Myths and the Occasional Half-Truths

Bride sews blessings, warnings, and ancestral memory into her quilts as she waits for her husband to return from sea—and for the winds to shift in her favour.

A folkloric trickster tale set in the highlands of Cape Breton, where a shape-shifting presence named Kelly leaves scarred trees, unnerved villagers, and more questions than answers.

A haunting tale of a tour guide at the Fortress of Louisbourg learns hers may not be the only story being told on the grounds that day.

A poetic slipstream piece in which a woman’s grief is awakened in a quiet café by the touch of a barista who may not be of this world.

After her mother’s death, Moira returns to a winter-bruised Nyanza home and meets a white lynx at the treeline—watcher, omen, invitation. In the quiet house, an unfinished drum and inherited sketchbooks thrum like a heartbeat. Dreams blur into daylight; a grandmother arrives and vanishes; the forest listens back. Guided by signs and song between worlds, Moira must finish what was begun—and learn what the lynx has waited to show. 

Bríd, a devoted lace maker from Sydney, weaves prayers and myth into her craft as she awaits her husband’s return from sea. Blending faith with whispers of Hermes, she threads a caduceus of hope into her lace—only for her miracle to arrive on wings both divine and mischievous. A tale of love, myth, and maritime magic. 

On Baddeck’s moonlit shore, a spiteful ripple-with-eyes haunts the Bras d’Or—unmooring boats, borrowing the dead’s voices, even souring bannock. Enter Morag MacRae, an herbalist who tells him: “Turn to the shine.  

Blank-faced sentries appear each winter on Inverness’s edge—two snow figures with carved calves and toes pressed to earth. No tracks. No maker. Clocks stutter, dogs whine, and the town whispers of “balancers” walking between worlds. Are they ghosts, guardians, or futures denied?  

When the Seal Island Bridge was built, the island buzzed with pride, superstition—and a whisper that the Devil himself would claim the first soul to cross. Between ferry meetings, faerie warnings, and a flock of “bridge-minded” sheep sent to outwit him, Cape Bretoners forged a tale as strange and enduring as the wind itself.