Nova Scotia: All Access

[It’s a small world. Even though Disney kind of took over that phrase with the saccharine song, the words ring true in this part of the world. As this next guest post shows, a smaller community simply brings with it access of all kinds.]

By Philip Moscovitch

Back in the mid-90s, my partner Sara and I were living in Montreal and thinking about moving to the country. Trouble was, to get to an area rural enough for us, we’d have to drive well over an hour outside the city. If either of us had to commute for work, we’d be in trouble. Plus, available housing seemed to be either unaffordable, or in a state of near collapse. Neither option was all that appealing.

So we moved to Nova Scotia. Thirteen years later we’re still here, living in a 100-year-old home overlooking St. Margaret’s Bay, with about 30 acres of woodland in our name and much more stretching out for miles behind our property.

Part of what we wanted when we came to the Maritimes was easy access to the natural world. But I’ve also really come to appreciate how friendly people and the small scale of this place combine to provide access to all sorts of people and experiences.

Need to talk to your member of the legislature? Mine is a cabinet minister; I have her personal email address (which she encouraged me to use) and whenever I’ve raised a concern, she responds.

Like pomp and vice-regal ceremony? Not my cup of tea, particularly, but I’ve still managed to attend a couple of events at which the Lieutenant-Governor was present, and after she visited our local elementary a few years back, she wrote a personal response to a girl who lived near us. That made a huge impression on her.

Want to go wilderness canoeing? The Tobeatic Wilderness Area provides over a thousand square kilometres of raw nature. I can drive there in a couple of hours.

Interested in star-gazing? There are truly dark skies within an hour or two of driving, and reasonably dark ones right here in our own yard, where we can easily see thousands of stars on a clear night.

And, of course, if country living is not all that far from the city, the reverse is also true. It’s pretty easy to get to town anytime you want. When I have a gig that requires me to work in downtown Halifax, I’m facing a modest, 45-minute commute. That’s how long it used to take me sometimes to get from our Montreal apartment to my job at the National Film Board. And that was bumper-to-bumper, not the relatively pleasant drive from here to the peninsula.

I remember realizing that we really were living in a different culture soon after the birth of our third child (the only one born in Nova Scotia). We’d sent the paperwork to Vital Statistics to register his birth and hadn’t received a birth certificate. Concerned that it may have been held up, I called the department and was immediately transferred to someone in the appropriate department. After I gave her our son’s name she said, “Oh yes dear, I saw that one. It went out today.”

Philip Moscovitch is a freelance writer, editor, broadcaster. You can connect with him through his website, www.moscovitch.com, or follow him on twitter @PhilMoscovitch.