The Highland Village Museum on Cape Breton Island has been teaching schoolkids and holidaying history buffs about the region's early Gaelic settlers since 1962. Here's how a $5.3-million renovation made the old space new again.
Highland Village Museum’s $5.3-million renovation updates its marquee building to a contemporary, Scandi-esque designThe museum’s cedar cladding, thatched steel roof and pointed gables reimagine architectural touches seen on original Highland dwellings.
During the Highland clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, landowners forced roughly 70,000 Scots from their homes to make space for more profitable tenants. Many evicted residents crossed the Atlantic and resettled on modern-day Cape Breton Island, displacing the Mi’kmaq from their own ancestral home, known to them as Unama’ki. The Highland Village Museum, located in quaint Iona, has told the story of these back-to-back displacements since 1962.
The structure was assembled using passive-house principles, a United Nations–approved, climate-friendly construction standard that strategically arranges insulation to reduce heating and cooling costs. As a result, the museum is two and a half times more energy efficient than National Building Code minimums. Its outer cladding is made from hardy eastern cedar from New Brunswick, which can easily withstand the harsh Maritime climate.
Highland Village’s old-meets-new aesthetic reaches outside the museum’s walls, too. After passing several other faithful replicas—a school, a general store and a blacksmith shop—there’s an auditorium designed to host blowout cèilidhs, the Gaelic word for party. Every summer, a music festival draws families from around the island. Not a traditional tunic in sight.
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