Visit Mabou

Mabou is a small rural community located on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.  Well known for its living history, Mabou is the place to be if you wish to listen and dance to Celtic Music, immerse yourself in Gaelic Culture, hike one of our many picturesque trails or relax and take in our beachscape. Mabou is a village renowned  for its people, hospitality, beauty and cultural strength.  Whether your goal is to refresh and relax or to let loose and have a blast, Mabou is a must for your next getaway.  Your only difficulty will be leaving!

Mabou & Its Surroundings

"There is Mabou, then there's its surroundings!"

Within a few kilometers of Mabou is a network of cousin communities including Mabou Harbour, Mabou Coal Mines, West Mabou, Brook Village and the Glencoes, each of which offers its own special delights.  Whether you enjoy a square dance or swimming at West Mabou, hiking through the stunning beauty of Mabou Harbour or Mabou Coal Mines where a maze  of trails leads you high into the Mabou Highlands, or square dancing at Glencoe Mills or Brook Village, there are many reasons to stop and stay.

Mabou's soundtrack may be the fiddle or the songs of its most famous family, The Rankins, but the village's  setting in itself a delight to view or to explore, both picturesque and photogenic.  Surrounded by hills and a river (which is actually an inlet from the Northumberland Strait), this beautiful village was first inhabited by the Mi'kmaq Indians.  The Mi'Kmaq word for Mabou is Madawak, meaning where two or more rivers meet and flow into one larger river" - 2011 Visitors Guide to the Sunset Side of Cape Breton

Féis Mhàbu

"The Village of Mabou is the heart of a network of rural communities rich in the Gaelic tradition.  For generations names such as Beaton, Rankin or MacDonald have been synonymous with a music tradition that echoes back to its roots in the Highlands of Scotland while shaping itself down through the generations into a distinct and celebrated sound identified now around the world as Cape Breton Music.  It is not only the sound of the fiddle and the feet dancing to that fiddle that pays homage to the ancient tradition of the Gaels.  The Gaelic tongue too, thrives in Mabou where for the past 30 years the language has been on the school cirriculum and a local organization, Féis Mhàbu, has mounted a heroic effort to salvage the language and the tradition, with increasingly successful results." - 2011 Visitors Guide to The Sunset Side of Cape Breton