I stood outside and watched the Northern Lights flow across the sky like a white river. I heard myself gasp when I saw a splotch of green that seemed to wave at me, and I smiled when a starburst of red expanded across the cosmos.
As I headed back into the warmth of the house, my brain brought forth a long-forgotten snippet of something I had read years ago.
“Fine display of Aurora Borealis visible here.”
I could see the old-timey typewritten words clearly in my mind. I knew what I had to do.
On Google, I searched for Alexander Graham Bell in the Library of Congress website, typing ‘Aurora Borealis’ into the search bar. Within a few moments, I had an inventory before me. I quickly eliminated the hits dated before Bell lived in Baddeck and found the listing for the Beinn Bhreagh Recorder.
I knew this was it.
As the green, red, and white colours continued over my head in the night sky, I was going down a remarkably familiar rabbit hole and stepping back in time.
For years, when I worked at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site here in Baddeck, the Beinn Bhreagh Recorder (BBR) was a favourite read, where I could learn what life was like in the place I call home, a century ago.
Bell launched the BBR in 1909 to keep all the disparate parts his aviation group up-to-date on their various flight trials and experiments. It was a chat room for the handful of pioneering pilots at the dawn of aviation in Canada.
The info in the recorder was not for publication. It was more of a curated newsletter about the happenings on the Beinn Bhreagh estate. There were notes from the Bell Laboratory about wing styles that fly best and motor sizes with the best output for lift. There were updates from his wife Mabel about her vast and beautiful gardens, pictures of the grandchildren riding ponies and details about social activities and those who visited the Bell’s home in Baddeck. Like a newspaper, there are different authors. Bell, his wife Mabel, the Aerial Experiment Association pilots, workers in the lab and others including Catherine MacKenzie, Bell’s secretary. It is filled with stories of local people, places and events and is a real goldmine for a local historian. I always find something new about Baddeck in its pages.
The BBR eventually spanned 25-plus volumes – with most editions reaching 500 pages or more.
The volumes at the Bell Museum are photocopies, bound into books, just like the originals were. Only a handful of copies of the complete set were made during Bell’s lifetime. The Library of Congress has digitized this first volume, and this is what I have accessed, via the internet, in amount of time it has taken me to type six words (Library of Congress Alexander Graham Bell) on my laptop. Cozy in my warm Baddeck home, I once again am stepping back into Baddeck in 1909, just by reading the Recorder.
Beinn Bhreagh Recorder Volume 1, page 315
Sept 21:— Fine display of Aurora Borealis visible here this evening at seven minutes past eight covering the northern half of the sky, and extending up to the zenith. Whole northern sky covered from east to west; southern half clear. The western edge of the luminous curtain passes through the bright star Alpha Lyrae. Gentle streamers go up from all points of the northern half of the horizon to a point in the northern cross which seems to be overhead. AGB
The letters at the end of the entry identify it was written by Bell himself. The words, his own observation. For a researcher, this is THE best kind of primary resource. It is like a little time machine. Every time I scroll to a new page, I zip back in time.
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