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Find Your Celtic Heart on Cape Breton Island

Step into a land that flings you into tradition and sends you reeling with every dance. Discover a place that pulls on your heartstrings with one hand and deftly plucks a fiddle with the other. Lose yourself in Highland mountain trails and find your way back by road signs written in a familiar tongue. The Scottish didn’t just settle here, they built a home out of the language, music, and dance that are so distinct to the Gaelic culture. Still looking for your Celtic heart? Find it on Cape Breton Island.

Discover Your Celtic Heart in Cape Breton

The Celtic Heart of North America represents the amazing Celtic and Gaelic cultural experience on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. We celebrate and share the only living Celtic culture in North America. Whether it‘s dancing to lively fiddle tunes, learning a Gaelic milling song or tracing your roots, we’d love to share our Celtic culture with you.

Highland Village

Be captivated by the spirit of the Scottish Gaels at Baile nan Gàidheal. Part cultural centre, part living history museum, it’s the perfect place to learn the mother tongue and see tradition brought to life.

Colaisde na Gàidhlig | The Gaelic College

Colaisde na Gàidhlig is an educational non-profit institution, offering year-round programming in the culture, music, language, crafts, customs, and traditions of the immigrants from the Highlands of Scotland. The only institution of its kind in North America, students of all ages and skill levels visit the College every year to study under some of the finest instructors in Nova Scotia Gaelic culture.

Locals Know Blogs

Live Music

Cape Breton Island and Music go hand in hand. After all, we are the home to the one and only Canada’s Musical Coast, the internationally-renowned music festival, Celtic Colours, and we have a giant fiddle that plays music to us – to keep the ceilidh going 24/7.

  • Arts & Crafts

    Celtic culture allows you to fully immerse yourself in the craft with both your hands and heart. Whether you are dancing, knitting, quilting or more your Celtic heart will surely soar.

  • Genealogy, History & Language

    Céad míle fáilte! A hundred thousand welcomes to the home of your Celtic heart. Here you may discover your roots as you explore historical archives and genealogical records of Cape Breton Island’s museums that are dedicated to cultural research.