When I wrote “Saying Farewell to Nova Scotia” last December, I didn’t think it was going to be us. And yet—my fiancee and I are moving to Ottawa on June 1.
For posterity’s sake, I am going to outline how we got here. We are a two-career household—mine fluid and hers specialized. Being fulfilled in our professional lives is a big factor in any decision we make. We are stability- and “make the world a little better”-oriented over pure money, but in the short-term, with a negative net worth, money matters too.
My fiancee is a pharmacist. To further her career she has applied for hospital residencies, and this fall we evaluated the opportunities and the cities we would potentially live in. Halifax, true to form, had higher tuition and lower pay than most places. Despite this, it was still our priority, but Ottawa made the offer. Our options became: Make Halifax our home base with a year apart, or move together now.
While my career prospects in Halifax are solid, hers, post-residency, weren’t as certain. Recent residents ended up casually working, covering a parental leave or working in a commuter hospital. Ottawa offered better prospects—and a higher wage that offsets uncertainty. Stability and wages both have value (often offsetting one another), but so many in Halifax are surviving without either.
We looked at taxes. Our combined wages would’ve resulted in $5,400 less income tax paid in Ontario than in Nova Scotia. This would be mostly offset in the short-term by graduate retention rebates in Nova Scotia, but soon the tax situation returns to normal, and gets comparatively worse as you get more successful.
We studied housing. As renters, while average rents are four percent higher in Ottawa, downtown-to-downtown they’re three percent lower. This, coupled with higher wages and a lower tax burden, means we can reduce our housing burden, and put the savings towards student debt, travel, family support and a nest egg.
We looked at transportation. The cycle network in Ottawa is already installed. Transit is $30/month more expensive than Halifax for two passes, but is infinitely more centrally convenient. I think we can avoid a car for longer there than here.
We looked at quality of life and the intangibles of each city. We trade the ocean and The Oval for kayaking and skating on a canal. We trade Keji for lake swimming on cottage weekends. I’ll miss the breadth of the craft brew scene and the cozy arts festivals, but it’s easy to find fun things to do if you’re open to adaptation. Plus, we can fly in for ECMA or Pop Explosion and get a fix. Lots do.
Finally, there’s the vague “people” factor here, but having hitchhiked across Canada in my early 20s, I found great people in a lot of places. Plus, with so many of our out-migrants in other cities, it’s easy to find culture that feels like home—and as a result, occasionally garlic fingers. It’s great that you can find two solid career paths before you’re 35 there too.
I don’t think there’s a takeaway from two people leaving, but as someone who’s studied this problem and then went through the process of evaluating cities, there weren’t a lot of “on paper” reasons to choose Halifax. It became clear that while we might survive here, it’s a lot more likely we’ll thrive elsewhere.
This week, the executive committee at HRM endorsed “Be bold” as a slogan for this city. I think it is the right sentiment, but it’s the execution that matters. A bold Halifax is the only solution to retaining the generation that is out-migrating quickly in this province. And as we invest hugely in things like responsive (rather than preventative, or determinant) health care, huge road projects and in industries that can’t compete on their own—investments which heavily skew towards older demographics—perhaps bold means urgently addressing the issues of those who are most likely to leave.
Post-Explosion, Halifax had another slogan: “We shall never rebuild Halifax unless everybody works.” Nearly 100 years later, the need for everybody to have the opportunity to thrive is still at the core of this city’s future. This is a fantastic city if you have a great job—so make that the goal again for every person that isn’t there yet.
A bold Halifax who does that will be the city that everybody will fight over trying to get to. We’ll be the first in line.
David Fleming is an economist, business association leader, cyclist and urbanist. He blogs infrequently at dfleming.ca and tweets @dflemingca.
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This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2014.
You a moving to an area with a large population and leaving behind a small town masquerading as a city. Obviously the opportunities in Ottawa are much greater than we can ever offer. I don’t know what the slogan of Ottawa is and I don’t know any place in the world that has an official slogan.
I have yet to hear any reason why any business should choose to locate in Atlantic Canada.
All the best to you and your fiancee, you are the same as millions of other people in the world who are moving to larger conurbations.
Are you still here? PFO.
An urbanist? Is that a thing?
Ottawa is really nice city with a surprisingly vibrant culture for a political town. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. You may be surprised how much it feels like home despite the lack of an ocean…
I remember a large advertising campaign by the local lottery poking fun at the quality of life between Ontario and Nova Scotia. Mostly jokes about traffic, urban sprawl and high cost of living…
Unfortunately, Halifax has become an urban sprawl, where the peripheries are under-serviced by the municipality and the city center has a dramatically steep cost of living.
Outside of the city center, the communities are becoming incredibly homogenized. Identical looking housing developments with a poor mixture of single and multifamily dwellings, in communities that have little access to public transit. Every few kilometres their interspersed with a shopping center clusters of the same sorts of businesses that provide basic services and goods. A McDonalds and a Tim Horton’s and a few other fast food restaurants, a Sobey’s or Superstore, an NSLC and maybe a few clusters of private offices, the occasional shopping mall. Hardware stores and specialized retailers clustered mostly in the business parks.
I grew up in the suburbs of Dartmouth, it’s a homogeneous place, both culturally and aesthetically. You could be in the middle of Dartmouth and mistake it for a suburb of Moncton, Fredericton or any other town in the Maritimes.
Our larger communities in the Maritimes are losing their independent businesses and cultural fixtures, the things that make them unique. The only exceptions to this seem to be small towns that aren’t along the main trunk highways (Think of the towns around the southern tip of Nova Scotia, Lunenbourg County and the Northumberland Shore) or the city center of Halifax.
When you drive through Truro, it’s eerily similar to when you drive past Dartmouth Crossing and Moncton. Our communities are becoming so alike and losing their personal touches…
And all that said, I love the place. I can’t put my finger on what it is about it. Maybe it’s because it’s the few cities I’ve been in where you feel like you’re really in touch with nature, be it the harbour and the ocean and the pockets of woods dotted throughout the city and how little distance you have to go to be out in the middle of the country. And the peninsula is a wild and eclectic place with all sorts of interesting business and characters, if the rest of the city could develop itself in a way that’s purposefully focused on creating, unique, livable communities the outer areas of Halifax could become really great places to be.
I’ve done the same move, although not with quite as much research, and almost 5 years later, I’m still happy in Ottawa. I miss the ocean terribly (a phenomenon I didn’t truly believe existed until I moved away), and my family of course, but I make more money, and live more affordably in a better neighbourhood.
Don’t despair about the craft beer scene you might be missing, Ottawa is a town that loves beer. I don’t drink anything made over a 4 hour drive away, unless at a chain pub. The foodie scene is also alive and well here.
You will however miss the constant stream of good live music. Bluesfest has been my saving grace.
Good luck to you!
Many good points here but for me the two keys points are (1) “while average rents are four percent higher in Ottawa, downtown-to-downtown they’re three percent lower”, and (2) “Our combined wages would’ve resulted in $5,400 less income tax paid in Ontario than in Nova Scotia”. These are the two points that have had me considering a move as well. I work for a national organization that bases its offices in downtown cores; they scale our wages down here because of a perceived lower cost of living, when reality is it is not cheaper to live here unless you’re talking about buying a home in the backwoods of Tantallon.
I did this move almost three years ago. Granted I work for a non-profit so I won’t make your wife’s salary, but it is a move I regret for a few reasons. I did it for my career and every time I get fristrated at work I think, “Wow. I gave up Nova Scotia for this.”
1. Rent is very expensive here and I was shocked how much MORE expensive than Halifax. Yes you can live in a shit hole and pay cheap rent or live in Vanier, but you get much more for your buck in Halifax. I was paying 600$ a month to live on Barrington and South with a roommate. I pay 250 dollars more to live in not as great a location. My first apartment, I paid $925 to live alone and still had a half hour walk to work. On top of that Ottawa is generally more expensive when it comes to eating out, local entertainment and groceries.
2. Ottawa is called the city that fun forgot for a reason. People here aren’t social like out east. I find Ottawa to be a very cold and conservative city. People mingle in clicks and very rarely do they venture or except someone outside their social circle. In Halifax I found that people eagerly socialized with people for the sake of being sociable. ON top of that there aren’t really any universities here. Carleton is a good hour walk from downtown so there isn’t anything cool and eclectic to capture young people. There is the market, but it is mostly trashy clubs like the Dome.
3. If you like a local art scene Ottawa doesn’t have one. Yes there is the Manx Pub, Saw Gallery, and The Great Canadian Theatre Company but that is it. Worse, the city doesn’t celebrate local arts and culture because the focus is on National – National Theatre Company, National Orchestra, National Gallery. There is no enjoyment of local culture like I found in Halifax.
4. There is the canal and Gatineau Park which are GREAT and I enjoy them immensely. However, Ottawa is one big urban sprawl gone wrong. You think Clayton Park is bad, try Kanata, Bells Corner, Napean, and Barrhaven. There is no soul to this city because all the civil servants get married young and move to the suburbs. Outside of the canal and gatineau park you can’t drive for 15 minutes and be in nature like you can in Halifax. You just end up in suburbs.
5. I find Ottawa to be a bubble. The vast majority of people work for the government and have a job for the rest of their lives. This is great and I wish this upon everyone, but it creates a fakeness to Ottawa. A large segment isn’t worried about work, they have a good income making things expensive, and everything in Ottawa must be unblemished. For christ sakes, they even paved and re-developed Chinatown to make it more pretty!! I love cities that have a gritty meandering Chinatown that is an escape from Western urban planning. In Ottawa, they widened the streets, put in fancy streetlights, and fancy brick sidewalks!
7. Outside of Planned Parenthood Ottawa and some Gay Rights Groups that do some great work there isn’t really the local NGO scene that there is in Halifax. Obviously there are the national offices for a lot of organizations but no accessible and exciting groups that are working to improve Ottawa and different neighbhourhoods in Ottawa.
8. No equivilant to the Coast. No paper you can pick up when you get your coffee and look to see where the cool happenings are or some alternative journalist approach. That being said, if there is nothing cool happening then I guess there would be no market for a free alternative weekly. Yes there is the apartment613 blog, but nothing like the Coast.
Halfiax isn’t perfect and there are some good things about Ottawa for sure. You can have a career here which is important. There is some interesting things that you get by living in a Nation’s Capital. Undoubtedly, Halifax has a lot to improve on and needs some new leadership to make it the city that it has the potential to be.
Just beware, the grass is always greener on the otherside.
Ex ottawan here.
1. thriving arts scene is there – look. Halifax has nothing like Ifco or arts court.
2. Coast equivlilant is the ottawa xpress – even does the Best of thing.
3. Canal + gatineau park powerfull combo – you will miss salt air.
4. craft brew – Beau’s all natural, Kitchisippi Brewing, Clock tower pub..
5. its about 50% Gov 50% private so not all gov, and belive it or not they are generally nice people outside the office.
6. not really sprawl – compute split is 60/40 (60 go downtown, 40 go out), Nepean and kanata are huge employment centers.
7. Ottawa has tons of NGO’s more national in scope, but they are there.
Downsides – No Donair or Garlic Fingers. not proper anyway
80degree seasonal temp range -40 to +40
Enjoy it, its not Halifax, but its not bad.
And lots of designer bags, apparently.
Good decision and a tough one I’m sure. Best of luck, David. You’re certainly not alone in this. We left (after returning to the Maritimes 2 years earlier) just last October for the west coast and have no regrets at all. There are indeed nice people everywhere (not sure why maritimers think they have a lock on that market) and the economics are entirely in your favor. It’s just sad reality. Best of luck!
I’ve lived in the top 5 largest cities in Canada. Halifax is not for everyone – it’s certainly not perfect, but you can say that about any community. I believe that if your happy where you are than you will find a way to make it work. If not, than maybe you don’t belong there. One thing I’m sure of is that it’s not worth it to wake up everyday in a place you don’t belong and spend your entire life bitching about it. I love hearing about friends who have fled Halifax for “whatever” place and are doing well. More room for those of us who love living here.