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Canada's best places to live
Canada's best places to live
Phil Froats and Ian McGugan
From the May 2008 issue of MoneySense magazine
Alex Beckett grew up in Saint John, N.B., and in his early 20s left the East Coast to attend graduate school in Toronto. He liked the hubbub of the big city and, after graduation, he built a thriving career as a web master and editor. He and his wife Jo, a Halifax girl, bought a house in an up-and-coming Toronto neighborhood and settled down to raise a family. But after their second daughter was born, the Becketts began to experience the oddest sensation — a distinct yearning to return to their Maritime roots. Alex knew that work in his field would not be as easy to find as in Toronto, but both he and Jo pined for a less hectic life and the smell of salt air.
Four years ago, the Becketts finally decided to act on their yearnings. They cashed out of a booming Toronto real estate market and moved to a dream house on the south shore of Nova Scotia, about 45 minutes down the road from Halifax. As the Becketts hoped, the move brought them closer to family. They loved the sense of space and constant presence of the ocean, not to mention the lower real estate prices and relaxed pace of life. But Atlantic Canada wasn't all bliss — among other things, the call for Internet expertise on the East Coast was even less than Alex's modest expectations had foreseen. "I don't think I ever doubted our move," he says, "but I realized that I had underestimated some of the economic differences between what I had grown used to in Toronto and what I was experiencing on the East Coast." If, like the Becketts, you've ever wondered about picking up and moving, you've probably pondered what makes a community a good place to live. Is it climate? Salaries? Real estate?
To be honest, it's probably a bit of each of those factors, plus many more. Our third annual list of Canada's Best Places to Live is designed to help you measure as many different aspects of a community as possible. You can use our findings in several ways. Perhaps you're planning to relocate. Perhaps you're looking to invest in real estate. Maybe you simply want to know how your community stacks up against its neighbors. Whatever your situation, we've got the facts you need.
