#22 Baddeck, Nova Scotia: Baddeck to Winnipeg Connection ... Ring a Bell?

"Sago gatchi, ska na ka?"  I was trying to express my greetings to my sister Ivy back in Winnipeg, but she didn't seem to be getting it.  A little louder: "Sago gatchi, ska na ka?" She still couldn't make it out.  Surely the issue couldn't have been my Bell cellular carrier.  After all, I was calling from Baddeck on Cape Breton Island - Canadian home of the inventor of the telephone.  Okay, duh!  I suddenly figured out the problem.  Ivy didn't know a word of Mohawk!

Even as a kid in Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell was interested in how sound was produced.  As a sixteen-year-old he trained his Skye Terrier, Trouve, to be able to growl continuously. While Trouve was obediently growling, young Alexander would reach into its mouth and manipulate its lips and vocal cords to make the sounds "Ow ah oo gamama."  With his dog trained, Bell was able to convince his freens that he had a talking terrier who, on cue, would recite what sounded like "How are you, grandmama?"

After the family moved to southern Ontario, Alexander spent a lot of time at the neighboring Six Nations Reserve where he learned to speak Mohawk.  When it came time for the first public demonstration of the telephone, he made sure his good friend, Chief George Johnson, was part of the crowd and standing nearby.  Why? Because this was also going to be the first prank phone call in history.  After making contact with his assistant Griffin two miles away, Bell motioned for Chief Johnson to speak into the talking machine.  He used the same phrase I tried on Ivy: "Sago gatchi, ska na ka?" accompanied by laughter from the crowd who were in on the joke.  Griffin's response was a little harsher than my sister's.  "Is everybody over there drunk?"  Bell finally took over and put poor Griffin out of his misery.  "You have insulted Chief Johnson.  He's been speaking to you in Mohawk."

It was his wife Mable that convinced Bell to move to Nova Scotia.  My own wife, Patty, especially enjoyed the part of the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck that told Mable's story, when we toured there a couple of days ago.  It's probably because Patty, like Mable is quite deaf.  When we watch a Jets game on TV, we usually have the volume way down because, apart from 'True North', she can't hear what's going on anyway.  But like Mable, Patty is a lip-reader and will occasionally tell me what's being said on the ice, minus any four-letter descriptors.  Because of Mable's handicap, the telephone wasn't exactly a useful luxury in the Bell home.  Alec (her name for her husband) couldn't call to let her know that he was down on Lake Bras d'Or just finishing up his hydrofoil invention and would be late for supper.  The cellular descendant of Alexander's phone which I carry in my pocket has a handy feature that they would have appreciated.  If Patty is gone for the evening, I can text her, "Jets up 3-1 after 2."

The hockey arena in Winnipeg was, till recently, called the Bell Center.  But even in the freshly-named Canada Life Centre, there are still a lot of reminders of the greatest Canadian inventor of all time.  The security scanning equipment at the front door must have started as Bell's metal detector.  The Jets players wear a bold 'Bell' on their helmets.  The land acknowledgement before the game is in the spirit of the relationship between Alexander and his Mohawk friends.  Whenever the scoreboard urges us to 'Make some noise ..." and displays our response in decibels, it is a reminder of the guy from Nova Scotia who invented the audiometer and spent his life studying the transmission of sound.  Yep, he literally put the Bell in decibel.