Why Did We Move to Bear River?

Bear River valley.

Larry and I just passed our 2 year anniversary of living here in Bear River. The novelty hasn’t worn off yet and it still feels like we are getting away with something fantastically amazing. It seems almost accidental that we wound up living here now. I want to share that journey with you again and to tell you the pros and cons of our lives here.

We came to Nova Scotia to our niece and nephew’s wedding in 2003 and fell in love with Cape Breton, the northern most part of Nova Scotia. The air smelled so fresh, the people were so friendly, the landscape was so beautiful, the fresh fish tasted so good and we felt so happy to just be here.

The trees during yesterday's walk in Kniffen's Hollow, Bear River.

I’ll never forget sitting in the back of the taxi that brought us home from the airport to our semi-detached house in downtown Toronto after our wonderful tour of the Cabot Trail. The highway was so grey and ugly, the air smelled so bad, the urban sprawl was unending. We sat in silence blankly staring out to the window all the way home.

All that next winter we talked about Nova Scotia all the time. We wanted so badly to live in a community with a few other artists. We’d brought home a brochure that featured fine arts and crafts in the province and Larry looked at where groupings of artists lived. Then he went online to look at photos of those areas and also at real estate listings. What he discovered was that Bear River was a beautiful village, from a geographical perspective and in terms of what was still standing in on it’s main street. The house prices were low compared with Nova Scotia’s prime south shore (Lunenburg, Mahone Bay) but especially in comparison to Toronto.

Hundreds of winding creeks feed into Bear River.

While Larry researched weather, geography and real estate, I googled the village and its people. Every time I came across the name of a person in Bear River, I searched the internet for more information about them. We started with the names of the local artists in the studio brochure guide. Larry found an Elections Canada street map and we printed it out and marked all the addresses of the artists, filmmakers, and grape growers that we’d come across on the internet. By the end of the winter, we had fleshed out a picture of Bear River and its inhabitants.

Aerial view of Bear River by Judy Amirault.

The following summer we came to spend a week in Bear River and a week in Annapolis Royal, a nearby community that has a lot of resident artists, a theatre and a vibrant summer artist’s and farmer’s market.

Bear River won our hearts from that first visit. There was an unpretentious feel to the community and people we met felt like long lost relatives. The river and its tidal drama was beautiful. Our short visit reinforced our desire to move here.

Winter is pristine and beautiful.

For a long time we had wanted to be able to devote more quality time to our artistic endevours, but we were caught in the trap of well-paying, but non-creative jobs with good benefits. It’s much harder to leave a ‘good’ job than a bad one. It’s called “The Golden Handcuffs.” Our big mortgage and debt made it seem incomprehensible that we could step away from it all and survive. We even consulted with a financial planner who smiled politely, and told us that it would be folly for us to quit our jobs. She said

Let me get this straight. You want to quit your jobs, sell your house and leave your friends and family and  familiar surroundings to move 2,000 miles away to a little village where you’ve spent a total of 7 days  as holiday tourists during the best time of year?

I almost felt ashamed of myself. We had shared our  secret obsession with a number cruncher and she was saying that we were crazy fools.

The woods are within walking distance of the village.

She suggested that we continue working, part time if possible, and take longer holidays in Nova Scotia. According to her formula, the ideal retirement income is 70% of your annual pre-retirement income. That way, the retiree can afford to maintain the same lifestyle. We were pretty depressed after that meeting, but we continued to dream and to imagine living in beautiful Bear River.

The following summer we returned to Bear River for 3 whole weeks and actively interviewed some of the artists we’d met through email and asked them about the money aspect of life. People told us that it was possible for a couple who owned their own house to live on less than 20 thousand dollars a year, but that 30 was fabulous. I heard the same figures over and over, but it just didn’t seem possible that people could live as well as the artists in Bear River did on such meager amounts.

The beauty of this village is evident in every season.

I have to mention here that the financial planner wasn’t the only person we consulted. I’ve read that when people keep asking different  people for advice they are really looking for affirmation of their plan and that was certainly true for us! We consulted with our friend and guru Ursula Fugger, a wonderful astrologer whose insights, dates and suggestions benefited us in selling our house, moving here and buying our new house.

Tomlin woods.

People from the city I left are always curious about how the transisiton has really been for us. Sometimes they ask because they too are considering leaving the city. Sometimes they ask because they may be thinking about making some dramatic change in their life and they want some sign or affirmation that things will work out well for them.

Here are some unscientific income suggestions before you pack your bags:

• come with a builder’s specialty skill (plumbing, electrical, roofing, drywall finishing, heating)
• come with a pension
• come with work that can be done via the internet
• be prepared to work for low wages (minimum wage to $15 hr for semi-skilled, unskilled jobs; up to $25 hr for skilled)
• be prepared to derive income from a variety of sources (2 days a week as a clerk, selling honey from your bee hives, trading your labor for a tangible thing like cordwood)

I love the gothic windows of this modest church.

Bear River Pluses

• the community is friendly and welcoming
• the scenery is beautiful, inspiring and the air is clean
• studio space is cheap ($300 a month for a river view studio)
• structuring your own time each and every day means having choices….only the weather trumps your choice
• there is no easy access to consumer goods, so you won’t be spending money
• people are all in the same economic boat and are open about sharing tips on economizing
• people make up their own (free) things to do such as potlucks, watching DVD’s together, walking through the unmarked, but well known trails, cross-country skiing, making music together
• lots of people volunteer here and it makes all the difference to the quality of life

Music nights at the Rebekah Music Hall cost $8. People bring treats to share..

Bear River and area Challenges

• it’s impossible to earn anywhere near a ‘big city’ income, so budgeting is really an essential skill
• because of employment challenges, most youth leave Bear River and the largest demographic is boomers and up
• it’s tough to live at a distance from family and former friends, but free Skype, email and facebook help
• there is no easy access to consumer goods which can be super inconvenient when you need to buy art supplies
• it’s a challenge to stay task focused when there are many opportunities for socializing, staring at the scenery
• there is limited and distant access to health care
• there is a lack of diverse cultures like in Toronto
• government funding is practically invisible

Happily, our children visited us for my birthday last spring.

I should also throw in the disclaimer that our experience and opinions are not shared by everyone. Apparently more people have come and gone from Bear River than have come and stayed. The employment challenges here have forced many to greener pastures. At the same time I believe that the working possibilities that the internet brings will draw a younger crowd of newcomers to Nova Scotia.  Still, there are many groups within the village and I don’t speak for them.  I do sense though that there is a universal, quiet affection that Bear Riverites feel for this place. And after all, could you blame them?

Low tide on Bear River.

Home Sweet Home

The fan is our air-conditioner.

We’ve been living in our house for a couple of weeks now and it’s a strange but wonderful feeling to be home at last!

I am loving those floors.

We still have a lot of things to do like painting and organizing and putting the wood trim back up.  Our friend Peter says “don’t worry about it – you’ll get it all done… by the time you’re 72”.  At the rate we’ve been going he may just be right. We’re finding it difficult to stay in the house because it’s so gorgeous outside.

These are begging to be painted this week!

We’ve been getting up early in the morning and sitting under the willow tree to listen to the morning sounds.  The circumference of this tree is at least 20 feet. The branches drip down to the ground so it feels like sitting under a natural dome. Sometimes an unsuspecting bird will whirr past us and it’s possible to actually hear the wings flutter.

There's a chair for you to sit in too!

The bird and cricket sounds are constant and there is the smell of sweet grass in the air. Every so often I hear a loud thump under the trees and I think that someone or something is there but it’s only the sound of apples dropping to the ground.

We are in the midst of a heat wave and the temperature climbs to the 30’s by afternoon. This has ‘burned off” the black flies and even the mosquitoes seemed a bit fatigued.  It has taken until now to be able to sit outside without too much insect activity.

The advantage of living in a rural location is to be able to have lots of space inside and outside.  Now that we’ve moved furniture into this house and are in the process of unpacking, I finally realize how large these rooms actually are and I get the feeling that I’m living in a movie set.

I like to be able to visit with people while I'm cooking.

You know how in the movies everybody lives in a house with lots of space?  Well, when I walk through our downstairs I feel that I’m in a large, old apartment building in New York City or Berlin.   The ceilings here are so high and the doors and windows are so generous in size.

The wide plank floors are also constant reminders of the vintage of this house.

Recently an online artist friend of mine, Carol Wiebe, wrote about me and my blog and she said that my blog reads like we are living in a fairytale.

She is absolutely right and totally hit the nail on the head with that description so I wasn’t too surprised when yesterday there was a loud knock on the door and I opened it to see our friend Tony standing there. He and his wife moved to Bear River from Sherwood Forest of all places.  (No I’m not making this up.) He presented us with a large mason jar full of milk from his jersey cow! Robin Hood couldn’t have done it better!

Jolene is our newest neighbour.

The cow has just started producing an overabundance of creamy milk and Tony and Teresa wanted to share! Okay so this part of my fairytale is that I have never in my life tasted milk directly from a cow. Although Tony had skimmed off most of the cream to make butter, there was still some cream that had risen to the top of the bottle.  I gave it a quick shake and poured myself a glass.  The taste was sweet and creamy and think I’m spoiled for life now.  I’ll never be able to drink ordinary milk again.

Jersey milk is yellow and creamy. Yum!

Home, sweet home just became a tasty reality.

Old Chairs after 33 years

Antique hurricane lamps

In the 33 years that Larry and I have been together, we’ve never had more than 3 matching kitchen or dining room chairs. Either we didn’t have the money or it didn’t seem important or we didn’t have time to shop. We wound up moving to Nova Scotia with no chairs at all, but today that changed!

We both sat in the chairs trying to decide what to get.

Friends had spotted some beautiful press backed chairs ‘down the French shore’ in a place called ‘Grandma’s Antiques and Collectibles’. We took a break from unpacking to check out Grandma’s. The owner, Olive Thibault, has been collecting treasures for 28 years. She mostly buys house contents and it really shows! Her store is a huge, rambling barn that is packed with treasures. Everything from bed pans to fine china to furniture to Victorian postcards and more.

Millions of stitches later...

We looked at the press backs and they were gorgeous and refinished, but we just couldn’t justify spending $75 each for them, no matter how reasonable that was. We settled on 6 chairs mass produced in the 1940’s and available back then by catalogue. Amazingly enough, they cost about $33 each, which is how many years we’ve been waiting to buy matching chairs together!

They have high backs and are quite sturdy … we are really pleased with them.

But back to the store…..it was very cool to see so many nostalgic pieces from my own childhood. Things like tinker toys and shiny, metallic aluminum glasses that cut your lip if you weren’t careful. I especially liked this calendar depicting a father and son on a camping trip. I could almost smell the canvas of their tent.

But where o where are mother and daughter?

I also picked up a book about companion planting. (That’s when you plant something like a marigold next to broccoli to deter white cabbage moths)., but Olive let me keep it as a bonus on top of the bonus of the chairs.

On our way home we stopped in at the lighthouse at Gilbert’s Cove and had a cup of tea in a real china cup with a homemade blueberry muffin for a total of $4.

Sipping tea by the ocean.

You can’t beat Nova Scotia for lighthouses, for scenery or for antique bargains.

Back home we waited for the washing machine repair man to come and replace a part on the 30 year old washing machine that came with this house. He told us that he expected there were still quite a few years left in the washing machine.

Some things in Nova Scotia never have to change.

The little people.

Cherry Carnival, Bear River

I am not going to talk about moving. The subject is so darned tedious at this point that I don’t even want to go there. Suffice it to say that today I took a break from oiling kitchen cabinets to check out the annual Cherry Carnival in Bear River.

The view of Bear River from our temporary housing.

The Carnival is the most well attended annual event in the village and attracts hundreds of people, most of them former Bear Riverites. It’s a real homecoming time.

The day starts off with a parade and most of the floats are, charmingly, home-made.

Next to the parade, the single most popular event is the greased pole event. This goes on for hours as all ages try their turn at walking it to capture the flag. Most fall into the river to sighs and moans and laughter of the crowd. Two hours after I took this photo, we heard the crowd roar for the winner…by the sounds of it, it was quite wonderful.

I dropped into the Bare Canvas Gallery for a book and poetry reading. Newfoundland writers Lisa Moore and James Langer read and it was such a treat to here them talk about their work while surrounded by the art in the Gallery.

Lisa Moore's book "February" is published by Anansi Press.

The writers hung around for signings, conversation and delicious treats that were prepared by the Bear River Cafe.

James Langer's book Gun Dogs is new to my collection.

James told humourous tales about how teachers influenced his love of poetry and his interest in writing. It reminded me that random  events of people in our lives have huge impact on our life’s path.

Life events are truly a gamble. On that note, I headed over to the roulette wheel…my very first time ever! The Carnival is meant to raise funds for our volunteer Fire Department. Fireman Jon enticed me into the game with his reminder that my real gamble was moving to Bear River. Since that has worked out beyond our expectations, I figured I could slap down my 4 quarters and turn them into gold.

The game is rigged, I’m sure. I was up to 3 dollars, got confident and bet wildly. In the end, the fire department won.

Tonight the sky will be on fire ….. with fireworks. Until then, I’m back at our house watching Don and Larry put the washing machine in place and move our bed upstairs.

Looks like my gambling days are over.