Article content

Eric Harding is describing life in Clearland, N.S., a village where he lives with his artist wife and three-year-old daughter, in a house with three acres of property that cost far less than any Vancouver condo. The family kayaks, bikes, skates on a pond and spends precious hours together, and if they could live anywhere else — they wouldn’t.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Nova Scotia's future looks grim as its economy stagnates, but for optimistic residents it remains the ‘time of our lives’ Back to video

“There are great daycares, an excellent school within walking distance of my house, a park and a sense of community,” Mr. Harding says. “You could always make more money in Toronto, or somewhere else, but you wouldn’t have this lifestyle.”

Mr. Harding did live in Toronto, for a time, but grew up in nearby Bridgewater, where his father and grandfather were in real estate, as he now is, too. His oldest friends often wax dreamily about moving back home. Few do. They are slugging it out in Halifax, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver — or overseas — wherever the jobs are since, unless you are a realtor or an artist or a doctor or a teacher or a nurse or a retiree or an irrepressible optimist or an entrepreneur willing to bet on Atlantic Canada or someone with the good fortune to win the employment lottery and land a secure, well-paying gig in small town Nova Scotia, you probably don’t live there.