Glace Bay is a community of about 17,000 people on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Glace Bay was first inhabited by the French in the early 1700s who used the site as a supply center to distribute coal to Fortress Louisbourg. In the late 1800s, several mining companies were founded and started mining the bay area. The town became very prosperous and at one time had 12 collieries and 11 operational mines, producing 40% of Canada’s coal. After the end of the industrial revolution and the diminished importance of coal as a resource, the mines gradually closed one by one, until the final colliery was closed in 1984. In recent years, even Glace Bay’s fish processing industry has declined, and many residents have been forced to leave town to find employment.
Tourists are certainly attracted to Glace Bay for its landscape of forests, hills, marshes, bogs, and rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean. But the main highlight of Glace Bay is the Marconi National Historic Site. The town has the honor of being the site of Marconi’s first transatlantic wireless message sent from North America to Europe. The historic site features the Marconi Museum, which showcases the life of the man who invented the radio. There is also a trail that leads to what is left of the Marconi towers used by the inventor to transmit his first wireless message. | 
