East vs West
 

Hi All
I have a question for everyone:
We’ve lived in the west on Vancouver Island for around 12 years. We have a nice house that has probably doubled (even trebled) in value over that period (admittedly we’ve done a heck of a lot of work on it). One kid is at Uni back in the UK. The other is Grade 10 at boarding school here on the Island. We are contemplating moving east, perhaps New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. We’re a few years from retirement, but likely able to continue working remotely. We’ve always loved the Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire stuff. Wondering if the Canadian side has an equivalent? We really like the island and its scenery. But from a fairly brief snoop about, we could likely buy a similar sized house out east and come away with a hefty chunk of cash in the bank. It also seems a lot easier for travelling to the UK etc. What does everyone think of the proposal? Are we nuts?

Re: East vs West
 

No direct flights to the UK from NB, most connections being Toronto, Montreal or Halifax, the latter being more limited.

I'm not sure what you mean by the Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire stuff but whenever I see pictures they do look much the same as NB and NS, certainly coast wise. Halifax aside you won't get the bigger cities and skylines.

The media has been full of reports of people moving here from Ontario for cheaper housing, especially since working from home became more of a thing. It's obviously had its effect on house prices but they are still much less of course.

The cities here have most every day things one could want except for some of the bigger sports teams, major galleries and museums but as I've often said, the cheaper housing can mean you have the money to fly off for weekend breaks to the cities that do have them. And you'd be close to those American states.

You'd have more than a year to wait for a family doctor if that's an issue and the health service is in a bit of a mess right now. Media full of reports of long ER waits, ambulances unable to unload patients, long wait times for ops etc, just like the UK and I doubt NS is any better.

Re: East vs West
 

Not nuts at all. I thought where you were on the island (not sure if it's where you are now) looked just like Connecticut.

NS, for it's the Disney version of NL, is a bit wilder. I don't know though that it's easier for flying to the UK, most flights will be multiple legs.

Re: East vs West
 

We're in Mill Bay, which is, as you say, pretty similar to the Conneticut look/feel. We'd be prepared to travel for culture. We're not exactly awash with culture where we are! I think the attraction is the freeing up of equity wich would allow us to do so many other things - even contemplate early retirement.

Re: East vs West
 

It was Mill Bay I visited en route to the yak farm.

If you were reasonably close to the airport in Halifax, that would open up a number of places for urban trips; Boston, NYC, Washington DC. You wouldn't be sacrificing coastal scenery with local beaches and Cape Breton nearby. Of course, one could argue that you can have urban trips to San Francisco and LA now.

Re: East vs West
 

a consequence of my previous work role was that I spent far too much time in LA and California in general. I’m one of those rare people who really doesn’t like that climate. So, to live near the Maine NB border, or to be close to the Halifax international airport?

Re: East vs West
 

I have just been blowing snow. That leads me to point out that there isn't much in the way of weather on Vancouver Island. That's quite different.

Re: East vs West
 

Back in the day, there was a poster, a realtor if I recall, that waxed lyrical about the fabled North Shore of Nova Scotia - the bit that faces across to PEI. A favourable microclimate, sandy beaches, fields rich in ambrosia, that sort of thing. Although he was a tad hyperbolic, perhaps that might be worth checking out? Cheaper than BC, reasonable enough drive to Halifax and points south. If you live in the East and want easy travel back to Europe you really have to be within driving distance of Halifax airport. There are no direct flights from NB, NL or PEI to Europe. For me, travel to Blightly involves either via Halifax or most usually flying several hours the wrong way to Montreal or Toronto to fly back over my house 7 hours after I left it.

If you really want to go East howabout your own island (with a causeway to get to it) for the price of a broom cupboard in BC? For sale: 45 Atkins (Burnt Island) Road, Conception Bay South, Newfoundland & Labrador A1W3A7 - 1245881 | REALTOR.ca

Re: East vs West
 

I'm beginning to think the post I made is invisible to everyone else :lol:

Re: East vs West
 

Nice. Who plows the causeway? :lol:

Re: East vs West
 

Ah, New Brunswick. It has always appealed to be as a hidey-hole in my old age (dotage?). I was born there, grew up in Shellac Cape with school time in Moncton and weekends various hamlets in Kent country where I had family then, all now moved away or planted in various bone orchards. So many happy memories of the place. In the mid-'50s my family relocated to Montreal and New Mexico (USA), but in the '60s I did a brief newspaper cadetship in NB but left to get more media experience and work at Expo '67 in Montreal. Never really went back, only now and then visits to see aging family members and old friends. My longest period there post-1967 was four months in 1982, mostly in Moncton but with frequent escapes to Shellac to swim at Parlee Beach, weekend parties in Saint John and a few fun trips to Halifax. I went back in 2006 for a last look at the family hacienda (now demolished) in the Cape, and found it greatly changed, tho' I thought St Martin's in the Woods (Anglican) church where a few of my ancestors still rest peacefully, was as lovely as I recalled it from half a century before. Some things endure.

Bearing in mind that my memories are somewhat tinted in sepia... I always found that in Canada, as one travelled eastward (in those good old days at least) from Quebec onwards the prices for housing generally went down but other living costs went up. It's good to bear all this in mind when "costing" a move Down East seachange move.

Moncton I never really did like, I saw it as a lunch-bucket town but friends who still live there tell me this has now largely changed, some of it for the better, much of it neutral or downward. It remains, I'm told, a good place to buy, like Saint John but the latter will appeal more if one has the notion to restore a down-at-heel city weatherboard, often available super cheaply but likely in need of a lot of expensive work. Fredericton has its charm and seems to be well serviced, but I've always thought it is the coldest place in the province, also it's a civil servant town with a narrow mindset. I enjoyed the drive to Saint John along the river of the same name, some quite pleasant towns if isolated and maybe insular.

Keeping in mind my nomadic lifestyle, hobbies and personal tastes, I would opt for (1) Saint John as more cosmopolitan and certainly with more cultural things on offer, then (2) Moncton if mostly for its proximity to the beautiful beaches of the Shediac area, and a far-off (3) Fredericton. A handful of smaller centers do appeal, like St Andrews and (oddly enough tho' it may seem to some) Chatham where I was born. Nowhere else much. Of Shellac I can't say much as I've not spent time there for years - if I had my druthers and sufficient cash in my life I could "retire" to Shellac Cape, the winters would kill me and of course being me I would escape to places like New Mexico and Arizona for long periods whenever the thermometer went down to anything under 40F, but that's just me.

Fortunately for anyone contemplating a move to NB we have a BE member in Moncton who I reckon is knowledgable and ready to offer good advice if asked. Bristol UK also has a sense of humor which to me would be important in a, well, I have to say it, genial backwater such as Moncton. This said, I do admit the place appears to have evolved greatly over the decades and may now even be reasonably civilized to an alien like me. I hated it in the '60s but even then I did find some pleasant aspects to it, mostly the drive to Shellac Cape where I lived with family which of course meant a 20-mile drive to Moncton five days a week to work the ungodly hours my badly paid cadetship entailed. I learned a lot from this first job and I have always been grateful to a handful of old newspaper hands who took the time and made the effort to teach an uppity spoiled kit freshly out of a private boarding school, the basic tricks of the trade which have long served me well in my many moves around the world. The rest of Moncton I have happily largely forgotten, tho' again I realize my attitude to the place are entirely personal and it's quite possible the place is now pleasant and worth living in. BristolUK may care to upbraid me for these opinions about Moncton and if he cares to post them then I will accept his scolding, tho' I have the impression he and I would get on well as we have been (and he maybe still is) aliens there.

I do recall some things with fondness. The friendliness of the Acadians, the kindness of people in Moncton, the ease of getting around the province on quite reasonable secondary roads - the Trans-Canada highway and the Veterans Highway were both opened in my time there and these made longer-distance travel both easy and pleasanter - by car. Also (by the mid-'60s we had reasonable air and rail services and quite good bus links to many parts of the province, now I'm not sure), the excellent food. I did miss the choices of good wine I had found in Montreal and Toronto and in the '60s and '70s media services were not up to what they probably are now, the local media I thought biased and provincial and the mindset was purely local. Otherwise, it wasn't a bad place to grow up in and even today it must be pleasant for kids and to raise a family. All these things have now improved, surely.

Other posters please feel free to correct me if you believe I am wrong on any of this. I would like to think a move back to NB would be a good one even for me tho' at my age now firmly in the realm of fantasy. I now live in Australia and my SO is Malaysian born and would probably rip off my arms if I even suggested it.

Re: East vs West
 

I had to google the lunch bucket reference :lol:

I've never had the need to work here so I have no real idea about anything to do with work attitudes but the odd thing I pick up from people who do sounds like everything I hear about other places. I don't really have much to add to my first post but it's interesting what you say about the past.

The Moncton newspaper occasionally digs into life here a few decades ago and it sounds like Moncton was more like Pottersville of It's a Wonderful Life than Bedford Falls with some really horrendous crimes that one would associate with Prohibition era or 1970s New York. :ohmy:

Genial backwater seems fair. Even the language divide hasn't really reared its head for a while. But we do have things in this city that they don't back in Bristol and that city doesn't even have its Zoo anymore. So we're ahead. :D

The newspaper in my time here only published Monday to Saturday and now doesn't do Mondays. But I understand that's the same with the Gazette in Montreal.

Re: East vs West
 

There were many pleasant aspects of life in Moncton. Far more so in Shediac Cape and nearby Shediac, which to a growing boy in the '50s was always a pleasant outing with my mom for shopping and socializing - I went to school in Moncton and later to a ritzy private school, so missed out on local education. I think I would have enjoyed it. I was also not a sporting type so the more active pastimes of hockey and football passed me by. I did play baseball but I was lousy at it and often as not bypassed for better 'batters'.

As a lifelong foodie in a family of foodies, I have many happy memories of memorable lunches and dinners there. At the Palace Grill, Cy's Seafood, the ritzier Ming Garden in Parkton where I had my first Chinese food (is it still there?). On weekends my parents treated us to 'chicken in a basket' at a pleasant eatery on the Shellac Road in Lakeville , IIRC just past the rail line and the Trans-Canada Highway overpass. I also recall when the A&W Drive In on Mountain Road opened. Does all this qualify e for the (purely honorary, I know) post of 'alternative' local historian? I could write a riveting book on the 'other' history of Moncton, but it would have to be printed on Al-Foil...

My biggest ever treat was lobster, freshly boiled from Paturel's by the sea in Cape Bimet. In 1965 when I had my first regular salary (C$35 a week, serious enough money back then for a 17 year old) lobster season began in September and I pigged out on those luscious crustaceans for, again IIRC, $1.75 a pound. Ditto lobster rolls at Gould's in East Shediac. Everyone else in my family went for the fried clams but my love first, last, forever was always lobster. Unsure what it now costs but nothing like the $1.75 I paid for a good feed every second night.

Cy's in Moncton was good for more lavish dinner and they had a small bar where sometimes this dressed up to look older not-yet 21 year old would sneak in from my nearby office and enjoy a drink or two but never get drunk. At age 19 I crashed the bar at the now sadly defunct Brunswick Hotel and got away with it for a few months until the then bartender (I recall his name was Gordon, he was a looker and a big hitl with the unattached secretaries and retail servers in the Main Street, but happily married and seemingly impervious to their feminine charms and wiles) somehow found out I was underage and I was expelled. Old memories...

The newspaper in question (I prefer to not name it but anyone in Moncton in the '60s and '70s will know it) folded in the early '80s. I had two mostly unhappy years there largely due to the dinosaurs in management and the then-prevalent English-French cultural divide was particularly divisive, I had one parent of either so I was in the middle and suffered for it. I'm told this has now largely changed and everyone gets on better, which pleases me. I did learn a lot about reporting, editing and media, all of which has served me well in my long lifetime. So the wheel of my life did a full circle turn and my 'negatives' eventually became 'positives. A long, long sentence, this last one...

Half a century later I now live in Australia but I still have fond hopes (or old age fantasies?) of returning to New Brunswick for a few weeks for a last look. If I was two decades younger I would seriously consider a happy retirement there but this must be a big No for several reasons - my age (70s), a SO who is happily settled here and would never consider moving half way across the world to indulge my ageing whims, the cost of everything nowadays, and the vile Atlantic region climate. Also my own reluctance to indulge myself on the basis of old memories. The winters there would surely kill me. So I make do with my old man's reminisces. I was young then and very naive, I had more money than most kids my age, nothing cost a lot, the going was good and I had fun. So be it.

Obviously, of greater relevance to this thread and the OP's interest in New Brunswick. Suffices for me to say if I were 30 or 40 now and living in other places in Canada, IF my career did not suffer too much in so doing or I could change directions and find new work then I would move to 'NB' which to my thinking, is a good place to spread out and plant one's roots. It seems the overall cost of living is now high but properties are available more cheaply than in the big cities. I'm not sure about Shellac or Moncton, ideally Saint John or a place closer to Halifax would suit my wandering instincts and provide the amenities of a larger city. So many 'druthers', but there you are. Enough said.

Re: East vs West
 

I have just noticed in my first post, Shediac was auto-corrected to Shellac. My apologies for this. My excuse is Steve Jobs is to blame for all this, if now obviously far beyond blaming for anything.

Thanks to my ever patient SO I've just now finally figured out how to extinguish the Shellac in Shedlac and return The Lobster Capital Of The World (and a most pleasant town) to its rightful name. Old dogs, new tricks.

And here you have it, finally, from me, a brief post!

Re: East vs West
 

JDWoowoo... just want to say that I love your writing style. For some reason it puts me in mind of Truman Capote. That's meant as a compliment. Keep posting. :)