The busy town of Glace Bay is situated on a north-east facing promontory of Cap Breton Island. In earlier times soldiers from the nearby French Fort Louisbourg mined coal here and the name probably comes from the ice (Fr. "glace") that the Louisbourg soldiers found in the bay in winter. The hill on which the town was built contained vast coal
deposits, mined by the French since 1720. In the 19th c. when iron was discovered in neighboring Newfoundland further north, heavy industry quickly became established. Glace Bay flourished and many European emigrants arrived in the area. Nor did the town's growth grind to a halt when the coal ran out in the 1950s. A State program helped to set up new industries.
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