More than half of my clients are moving to Nova Scotia from out of province. Many of them have never lived in a rural area before. Or if they have, it’s “Ontario rural” – meaning there are houses every few hundred feet still, and there’s still a city with a Costco just 30 minutes or less away.
But many of the communities they’re looking at are “rural rural.” Like, the nearest community (not even town) is 25 minutes away, and the nearest Costco or airport is a solid two hours away. Consider Lawrencetown, in the Annapolis Valley. It’s 10 minutes to the nearest larger community or town west or east, but even those towns don’t have Superstores or Walmarts, but small grocery stores and retail stores that close up shop at 5pm. The Lawrencetown library recently left the provincial library system and is now fully volunteer run, with no access to the interprovincial loan system. There’s a gas station with limited hours, and a great bakery and gathering place in Bee’s Knees, a small cafe, and not much else.
I’ve talked about what life’s really like in rural Nova Scotia in my post about living in agricultural areas. And my most popular Google searched post is “I regret moving to Nova Scotia!” (followed closely by my follow up post, I Regret Moving to Nova Scotia (Part 2) which tells me some newcomers are struggling with their choice to leave the city life behind, whether it’s because they miss the excitement and options of a bigger place, have struggled to make friends, or find the higher sales and income taxes a shock.
Here’s some more of my non-sugarcoated reality of what “rural rural” actually means.
- In the city, infrastructure is invisible. In rural Nova Scotia, you manage it carefully. Unless you’re in one of the few towns with municipal water and wastewater, you are responsible for testing your well for arsenic and uranium. In late summer (and getting earlier and earlier in the year), low water tables mean monitoring your usage carefully. You’ll also learn that there’s no such thing as a a flushable wipe, and hopefully you don’t learn that lesson by ruining your septic field.
- Winter blizzards and shoulder-season hurricanes routinely knock out power. In the country, no power means your well pump stops working, leaving you with zero running water. Some pay for expensive wired-in generators, while others make due with outdoor generators and power banks. We have two generators and several power banks.
- Most rural homes rely on a mix of heat pumps, furnace oil, wood stoves, or wood boilers. Managing fuel deliveries and stacking cords of firewood becomes part of your seasonal routine.
- The provincial doctor waitlist is a reality across Nova Scotia, but rural areas feel it differently. Local regional ERs occasionally close on weekends due to staffing shifts. Managing healthcare here means embracing new tools: using Maple for routine prescriptions, visiting mobile clinics, and knowing exactly where the nearest regional hospital is located and if they’re actually open. Have a chronic illness or been diagnosed with something requiring frequent treatments? That could mean hotel stays and long drives for treatments.
- When stores close at 5pm and the nearest retail hub is a two-hour drive away, your habits change. You buy deep freezers, plan meals in advance, and learn to stock a pantry. Our nearest Costco is a four-hour roundtrip for just the drive, not to mention the actual shopping. And because we don’t get to the city that often, we usually have many other errands to run on the same trip. We have to stock coolers in our trunk to get the frozen stuff home (and have learned that popsicles just can’t survive any detours).
- The fastest way to feel isolated in a small town is to wait for entertainment to come to you. In places where services rely on community effort, social life isn’t found at bars and gallery openings. Community happens at volunteer fire department breakfasts, winter curling leagues, and Legion events. Small communities are incredibly welcoming, but integration is a two-way street. You’ll need to step up, volunteer, and get involved in local initiatives.
Rural Nova Scotia offers a pace of life and sense of community that is increasingly hard to find anywhere else. The key to loving it long-term is simply knowing what you’re signing up for before the moving truck shows up!
If you’d like to chat with me directly about moving to Nova Scotia, give me a call or text 902-349-1022.
