The Mira River (pronounced like the woman's name "Myra") is a Canadian river located in eastern Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. With a meander length of approximately , the Mira has a very slow flow rate. The river's source is traced to a series of lakes clustered around Victoria Bridge near the boundary with Richmond County. It is also fed by the Salmon River. Flowing past the communities of Marion Bridge and Albert Bridge, the river discharges through the "Mira Gut" at the community of the same name into the Mira Bay. The river occupies a trench arching from southwest to northeast across the southern part of Cape Breton County; much of the eastern part of the river is a tidal estuary, with noticeable tides extending beyond Albert Bridge approximately upstream of the Gut. Name The Mi'kmaq name for the river was 'Sookakade,' meaning 'the silver-place.' One version of source of the river's name is that it was named after a French officer, Lieutenant M. de Mire, in the year 1746. Another source gives the name's origin as having been given by Portuguese fishermen and explorers who may have named it after a place south of Oporto in Portugal. By 1776 the name on maps was 'Miray' and 'Mire.' Geology The Mira River Valley is a dominant topographical feature of southeastern Cape Breton, extending from Framboise Cove northwards to about Marion Bridge and then sweeping eastwards to exit at Mira Bay. The river lies between 320 million year old Carboniferous formations to the north and 500 million year old Cambrian and Precambrian formations to the south. The highly eroded bedrock is covered by a thick layer of glacial till, sands and gravels deposited during the retreat of the last ice age some 15,000 years ago. Lying in a long narrow valley, possibly along an old fault line, the lower reaches of the river have been dammed by glacial gravels to form a long lake. Along the lower two-thirds of the river, these glacial deposits also formed numerous peninsulas such as the one Mira River Provincial Park occupies. About three kilometres from the mouth of the Mira, the river narrows and cuts a valley through bedrock to reach the Atlantic Ocean. The carboniferous bedrock to the north of the Mira includes numerous coal seams - evidence of the area's environment 300 million years ago. At that time shallow lakes, bays, swamps