Location Location Location

Choosing a town to live in is no easy task. I had criteria; most of which centered on proximity to dog shows, dog bylaws, and dog accessible places for the beasts to burn off steam. I wanted a good sized house that I could afford but not one that was so large I’d ramble around in it and end up losing a cat. It also needed to be structurally sound and not require a lot of work since I’m kind of an indoor girl.

The first thing I noticed, looking at the homes for sale online, is that there are very few fences in the Maritimes. The neighbors will get a big surprise when I move in since my first renovation will be a 6 foot fence around the back yard. Then they’ll see the dogs and say “Oooooooh. Can you make the fence bigger?”

I jest of course. I think.

Many of the houses stated they were in need of work which was fine with me as I planned to do some renovations anyway to personalize and dog-ify it. The houses needed to be something I could tackle and not over-whelm me with my very first house purchase.

So the western most tip of Nova Scotia and along the Bay of Fundy was out – too remote. The bottom of the province would suffer the most from southern storms and hurricanes coming up the coast. The house prices near Halifax rose according to distance from the city and I was not interested in living in or near a major centre again(despite the hundreds of thousands in population difference between Calgary and Halifax). Cape Breton – the bit that sticks way out up into the North Atlantic was also mostly rock and exposed to the winter weather coming in from the ocean. I’m tough but not that tough. Plus the dogs would never forgive me.

In April of 2008 I was drawn to a city called New Glasgow because of the name. Can’t get much more Scottish Canadian than that can you? It’s located in what I call the ‘elbow’ of Nova Scotia and protected by various land masses but is still right on the water. Also, a town called Pictou kept coming up in my realtor listing searches as being within my price range and after more research I discovered that Pictou calls itself “The Birthplace of New Scotland”.

Bingo.

If you’ve checked out the links to Pictou you’ll see how charming and quaint a tourist town it is. I grew up in the charming and quaint tourist town of Cochrane in the foothills of Alberta (even though as a teenager I’d just refer to it as lame) so I knew I’d feel right at home. The Pictou website is updated frequently and well presented, something that not all small town websites manage and gave me a really good idea what the town was like.

So that was it. I settled on the town and began researching homes there. I’m the sort of person who trusts when something clicks – it’s not all about logic. My gut was telling me my new home was in Pictou. I just had to get there to find it.