Back to NS

I returned to Nova Scotia this summer after living away for 3 years, the largest part spent in the west end of Toronto near to the biggest patch of green space I could find, High Park. Maybe if I’d been on the east side I would have lasted longer, but whose to say. The draw of Nova Scotia was ever-present and eventually I caved and moved home.

I have 5 siblings, all close in age and all living within an hour of each other, an easy commute with no planes involved. Both my parents are healthy, though my father had his first real brush with illness while I was away and this amplified the distance I was from home. I wanted to be present in my family’s lives and not just a disembodied voice or holiday drop-in.

I’d been away before, gone out West, traveled around Europe, the Caribbean, and lived for extended periods in over-priced apartments. I enjoyed the big cities, the sights and smells, the hustle and bustle, buses and multitudes of things to spend money on. I came back for the same reasons that drew legions before me; family, friends, a more balanced lifestyle, and yes, the ocean. But I was coming back sooner than some. I came back without the scads of cash someone who’d spent a few years on “the rigs” might have. My fiancée and I were raised here and we couldn’t imagine raising a family anywhere else, wealth wasn’t essential but community was. In our minds, our futures made more sense in this place that we knew so well. It was more imaginable that we’d live here than anywhere else. I’m enough of an artist to draw upon my imagination.

A complaint of Nova Scotians who leave to go west is that there’s no work here, but it's not actually the case though, with the exception of a few short contracts, it did take me months to find work in my field. My wife, a new teacher, had made arrangements with a principal in Halifax to start teaching in September and we felt comfortable that if one of us had a job we’d be okay. With some persistence and digging I landed a great job, doing of all things, promoting Nova Scotia and the opportunities here. In the process I found calls for applications for jobs in a multitude of fields - in IT, accounting, finance, insurance, customer service, administration, not to mention an abundance of opportunities for trade workers like electricians, plumbers, carpenters, pipe fitters, machinists, etc. Not a lot of them boasted the exorbitant wages you'll find some places, but they all offered someone wanting to work the opportunity to live here and given the opportunity most would accept the trade as being fair.