Text written by Jim St. Clair, an historian for Cape Breton. Well known in the community, Jim has been a respected member of the historical community of the Island.Lake Ainslie For many hundreds of years, the large fresh water lake in the middle of the southwestern partof Cape Breton Island knew the comings and goings of First Nations people. They fished on thelake itself and in the many streams which flow into the lake from the surrounding hills. Theyspeared eels where the waters of the lake emptied out into a river which flowed north and thenwest to the ocean. Seen from above, the lake would be very evident as a hollow with low and moderately highhills surrounding, but it would be evident that people journeying from the large salt water lakescalled Bras d'Or to the salt water Gulf of St. Lawrence would have used the lake as a convenientroadway - by canoe in the summer and by ice in the winter. The aboriginal people would have been well aware of the salmon coming up the river fromthe ocean and also the small bone-filled alewives (or gaspereaux), the good supply of hardwoodto provide birch for canoes and for the making of shelters, and the maple trees that were usefulfor utensils and for their sap. But there was no major settlement of First Nations people alongthe shores of the lake - just the comings and goings as the seasons dictated. First known as ______________________ in the Mi'kmaw language and then as LakeMarguerite from the river of the same name (now shortened to Margaree) which flows out of thelake, the half to three quarters of a mile shelf of relatively flat land bordering the lake attractedincoming Gaelic-speaking Scots at the end of the second decade of the 1800's - starting in the1816 period. As people settled around the western side of the Lake, they looked for land grants from thegovernment of the Island of Cape Breton, at that time located in Sydney. The then Lt. Governorof the Island, Major General Ainslie as almost his last act in office determined that the lakewould be called for him and assigned land grants to petitioners. As Cape Breton was returned to the governance of Nova Scotia in 1820, increasing numbersof people heard about the good land adjacent to the lake and the availability of land grants,mostly by word of mouth. With very few exceptions (such as the Hamiltons from the Lowlandsof Scotland) the incoming settlers were Gaelic-speaking from the various islands off the westcoast of Scotland and from the adjacent sections of mainland Scotland. They often came in extended family groups, sometimes from Prince Edward Island across theGulf of St. Lawrence and sometimes from Pictou on mainland Nova Scotia, and some havingdisembarked on Cape Breton soil directly from Scotland, these MacDonalds and MacIsaacs,MacLeans and Campbells, MacKinnons and MacCormacks, MacDougalls and MacQueens,Dunbars and Walkers, MacPhails and MacMillans and others, applied for and were granted lotsof land extending from the shoreline to rear surveyed lands on the hillsides with 100 or 200 acresassigned, a quarter of a mile wide and nearly a mile deep. As people who had lived for time immemorial in Scotland on lands owned by clan chieftainsand hugely powerful regional overlords, the immigrants were gratified to find that they couldown their own land and plot their own futures. The learning curve in the first twenty years was very steep: a much harsher climate withlonger winters and deeper frost than they were accustomed to; new plants to be understood asbeing helpful to heal people or dangerous if consumed; many, many trees ( only remnants of theold forests remain deep in the interior today) which provided a new kind of shelter (woodenhouses) and fuel for cooking and warmth as compared to peat in the "old country", andsweetening for tea by boiling the maple sap to make sugar and syrup. But people were free to fish where they wished, hunt as they could; plough and plant whereand what seemed best - as entirely new kind of economy and way of life. Huge tracts of landwere cleared of woods and log houses were built - and even log schools constructed within thefirst decade and a half. Almost as though planned, the lake provided a separation between the two major Christiandenominations. The Roman Catholics lived on the western side and some of the northern end orKenloch (head of the lake in Gaelic) while the eastern, northeastern and southern portions of theland were almost entirely Presbyterian. The people were united, however, by their common Gaelic culture of language and song andby a long tradition of hospitality and caring for one another. The sharing of work to build barnsto shelter animals and to construct grinding mills for the grain (oats, wheat, barley, andbuckwheat) brought people together. Little by little place names began to be assigned mostly by common practice - East Lake andWest Lake, North Lake and South Lake; head of the Lake in English at one end (the southernpart) and Kenloch (head of the lake in Gaelic) at the other end; then Twin Rock Valley for ageographical formation and Glenmore for "the big glen"; the Outlet for the place where the lakebegan it's long journey to the sea (later to be known as Scotsville); Trout River for it's amplesupply of fish; and so on. Travelling ministers and priests, in the days before congregations and parishes wereestablished, baptized children (sometimes of faiths other then their own), married people whohad confirmed their relationship by "handfasting", and said prayers over the graves of those whohad died with no clergy present. School teachers were appointed after 1826 by the MPS of the county and at least one skilledIrish teacher, Thomas Burke, came and set up a school at the lower end of West Lake. Pipers and fiddlers and dancing teachers could be found as well as people who wrote tunes andcomposed songs. In many houses, people were accustomed tom sitting around the fireplace andsinging songs in Gaelic and in English as well, and either stepdancing to a family members fiddletune or "jigging the tune" by a group of people singing it. Many tasks such as milking, weavingand fulling cloth were accompanied by singing appropriate work songs. The community around the lake developed ways of being self-sufficient, weavers wove notonly for themselves but for other people, and shoemakers made boots for winter wear and tailors(both men and women) developed a craft. Looking down from overhead in the 1840's and 1850's one would have seen great change inthe appearance of the countryside around Lake Ainslie; three congregations had raised their firstchurches, two near the shore at East and West Lake, and one just over a small hill at Strathlorne(or Broad Cove Intervale as it was called then). Log houses with their chimneys either in themiddle or at one end, and in a few cases at both ends, were giving way to frame houses built onthe style of the New England 'Cape Cod' with symmetrically arranged openings for doors andwindows and with large center chimneys with two or three fireplaces downstairs and sometimesone upstairs. Farm land was being developed back from the shoreline, and in the rear of the first farmsalong the shore, additional house sites could be seen. Oxen were being replaced by horses,mostly small French style horses, and some farms would be seen to have as many as a dozenhead of cattle and perhaps twenty sheep along with pigs and chickens. One or two small stonehouses might well be seen at East Lake. Small fishing boats were common all around the lake - vessels operated by one or two people. They had pointed ends and were called pinkies because they looked as though they hadbeen cut out with pinking shears, and they generally had a large sail in the stern with a small sailin the bow. Line fishing and net catching might both have been seen on the lake. In a generation and a half from the time of settlement many changes were taking place and thepeople who had been young when thy arrived were now middle-aged and elderly. A few picturessurvive from the 1860's and 1870's of these pioneers. By the 1860's people had grown accustomed to the rhythm of the seasons and in many caseshad begun to prosper from the hard work, the fertility of the soil, their previous experiences asstonemasons and millers and carpenters, or from opening small stores where the necessities and afew luxuries could be obtained, generally by barter. Rail fences were replacing brush fences or stone piles as ways of keeping cattle and sheep inseparate plots and away from fields of grain and hay. Larger "English style" barns were startingto replace several smaller barns - the new style permitted the storage of hay inside the buildingrather then under sliding roofs on piles in a construction known as "barracks". All animals couldas well be housed inside the one structure. In some houses, new stoves were replacing the old-fashioned fireplaces which were boarded upor taken out all together.The census returns for 1861 suggest that Lake Ainslie had a large population with over 1200people. The productivity was apparently very high as in the year reporting there were more thenfour hundred yards of home-woven cloth taken from looms; more then nine tons of butterchurned (much of it bartered at the seven stores in the community or in Whycocomagh or PortHood and Mabou). The coopers had been busy with preparation of more then two thousandbarrel staves. There were nearly five thousand acres under cultivation with large crops of hay,wheat, barley, oats (13,000 bushels), and seven thousand bushels of potatoes. Education was important as gradually log schools gave way to frame buildings with more thena dozen school districts around the lake. With the first post office opening at East Lake in 1851,communication with other places and the regular receiving of newspapers was possible. Shortlymore then half a dozen other outlets for postal services would open. Many young people were encouraged by their families and teachers to continue theireducation beyond the local schools. In the second half of the 1800's fifteen ministers who werenatives of the Lake Ainslie area ands several priests and other professional men can be identified. They went away to other places and so began the out-migration which is so much a part of thehistory of the second half of the 1800's and of the 1900's. The beauty of the Lake was much appreciated by the poetry and songs extolling its scenes werecomposed.