Melissa Mahoney and her household stand in entrance of their house in Halifax, Nova Scotia. ({Photograph} by Carolina Andrade)
After 15 years of residing in downtown Toronto, Melissa Mahoney was sick of the commuting grind. Each weekday, the 41-year-old instructor received up at 5:45 a.m. and left her townhouse within the metropolis’s Regent Park neighbourhood. She’d spend an hour commuting to her job in Whitby, Ont., after dropping one among her daughters off whereas her husband dealt with the opposite. Then, on the best way house, she’d decide up each youngsters and her husband with the family’s single automotive.
Earlier than the pandemic, that grind was price it. On evenings and weekends, Mahoney and her household had quick access to the town’s festivals, eating places and live shows. However with all that cancelled, a long-planned transfer again to her hometown of Halifax regarded extra interesting than ever.
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In June, Mahoney and her husband, Greg Corcoran, offered their townhouse and moved into the 5,000-sq.-foot house in downtown Halifax that they had bought the 12 months earlier than and rented out. Mahoney had taken a brand new job working remotely for the schooling software program firm D2L, whereas Corcoran continued to work at home as a communications supervisor for Scotiabank. With extra space, much less gridlock and fewer COVID-19 circumstances within the area, Mahoney felt like she had room to breathe.
“My mantra up to now was, ‘Go go go, need to be right here, need to be there.’ It’s so utterly the alternative now,” Mahoney says. “All the pieces is simply simpler. You are able to do 5 issues in a day. Nothing is greater than 20 minutes away.”
Canadians throughout the nation have been making comparable strikes to Atlantic Canada, and our post-pandemic, remote-work version of the Maclean’s Greatest Communities in Canada rating helps clarify why. Assuming distant work is right here to remain, we ranked the identical 415 communities throughout the nation as we did the earlier 12 months, however with an eye fixed towards nice residing for individuals who don’t have to fret about discovering a job inside commuting distance. As soon as we eradicated unemployment charges and incomes—classes the place Atlantic Canada has traditionally lagged different elements of the nation—the area’s cities rose to the highest.
Halifax took the No. 1 spot, due to its reasonably priced housing costs that include all the advantages of metropolis residing: glorious well being care, top-notch web entry and all kinds of bars and eating places. Three different main city centres within the area made the highest 10, with Fredericton taking second place, fellow New Brunswick metropolis Moncton coming in seventh and Charlottetown clocking in at No. 10. Atlantic Canada’s well-known friendliness and neighborhood spirit helped these cities rating properly in the neighborhood engagement class, with Charlottetown doing significantly properly.
Charlottetown residents participate in a free outside health class; the town scored properly in the neighborhood engagement class of our rating (Courtesy of DiscoverCharlottetown.com)
All 4 cities made large beneficial properties in comparison with the earlier 12 months’s rating, which was designed with in-person employees in thoughts. Halifax got here in 131st out of 415 in that rating, with Charlottetown, Fredericton and Moncton putting within the backside half at 233rd, 244th and 312th, respectively. That’s as a result of, earlier than COVID-19 and the rise of distant work, Atlantic Canada’s reasonably priced actual property was enjoyable to take a look at on-line, however it was impractical to take the leap, given the challenges of looking for a job within the area. Add the truth that the Maritimes has loved considerably decrease an infection charges than the remainder of the nation, in addition to the liberty to journey throughout the “Atlantic bubble” over the summer season, and it’s straightforward to see why folks from different elements of Canada are making the transfer.
All indicators recommend the East Coast’s achieve is coming on the expense of Central Canada’s main city centres. Statistics Canada information on inhabitants motion exhibits that from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020, Toronto and Montreal posted report inhabitants losses, whereas Halifax grew the second-fastest of any main city space, and Moncton additionally grew sooner than common. Housing costs have soared as folks throughout Canada purchase property within the Maritimes sight unseen by digital excursions, with Fredericton’s U-Haul vendor struggling to maintain up with all of the folks renting transferring vans in Ontario and Quebec and attempting to drop them off at its lot.
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Wendy Luther, chief govt of the financial improvement group Halifax Partnership, has huge objectives for capitalizing on the new-found curiosity. Job beneficial properties in white-collar, remote-work-friendly sectors have greater than made up for positions misplaced because of the pandemic, she says, placing the town able to develop into “probably the most fascinating metropolis on the japanese seaboard” as soon as these sectors rebound as properly.
“It’s simply an unimaginable alternative for households to reside in an city or rural life-style because it pleases them,” Luther says. “In the event you’re informed by your employer you’ll be able to work from wherever, why not right here?”
The query of the place to reside when you’ll be able to work from wherever is strictly what Maclean’s got down to reply with its post-pandemic model of our Greatest Communities rating. Utilizing information offered by Environics Analytics and the Canadian Web Registration Authority (CIRA), in addition to publicly obtainable figures from a wide range of sources, we weighted a spread of classes based mostly on how essential we predict every could be to the common particular person and ranked every municipality accordingly.
This model of our rating, like previous ones, considers housing affordability, inhabitants development, taxes, crime, climate, entry to well being care, facilities and neighborhood engagement. Our post-pandemic model, nevertheless, eliminates incomes and unemployment charges (since distant employees don’t have to search for a neighborhood job); distance to post-secondary establishments (since distant schooling was expanded and refined in the course of the pandemic); and commuting strategies. As a result of it’s unimaginable to work at home with no dependable web connection, we additionally added a brand new class score broadband efficiency based mostly on information from CIRA that has by no means earlier than been launched to the general public.
Within the unique model of the rating, suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver carried out very properly as a result of the job alternatives afforded by proximity to the massive metropolis have been well worth the excessive housing costs—a calculus that doesn’t apply to individuals who can work wherever. Nonetheless, the remote-worker model of the rating acknowledges that, even in a pandemic, there are many different advantages to city residing.
We’re extra conscious than ever of the significance of residing near an excellent hospital, for instance, and having takeout choices from close by eating places—a serious perk even in the event you can’t sit right down to eat there. That’s why Atlantic Canada’s cities carried out properly, whereas its rural areas continued to be overrepresented within the backside half.
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Ian McAllister, an economist at Dalhousie College, says the area’s new-found financial success received’t be felt exterior its city centres with no plan. He believes Atlantic Canada’s conventional resource-based financial foundations, such because the fishing business, will proceed to play an essential function within the area’s post-pandemic restoration. However the small cities the place folks in these sectors work received’t share the advantages of the remote-work growth with no coordinated authorities effort.
Poor authorities planning is at the least partly accountable for lots of the Maritimes’s historic financial woes. In 1992, after many years of ignoring warnings from scientists about dangerously low ranges of northern cod shares, Ottawa banned fishing the species alongside the East Coast, triggering the most important layoff in Canadian historical past.
McAllister says elected officers have a possibility to do higher this time, with a little bit foresight. “Do they wish to develop into dominated by a only a few giant cities and cities, or do they need a extra balanced type of development?” he says. “That query has not been requested practically critically sufficient.”
The growth in new residents and property costs hasn’t been excellent news for everybody within the area’s rising cities, both. Nova Scotia launched lease management and a ban on evictions for the aim of renovating in November in a bid to handle a rising affordability disaster. With the town’s unemployment fee at 13.1 per cent as of December, many long-time residents can not afford to reside within the metropolis because the inflow of latest, well-off residents pushes rents increased and better.
Rodney Small, govt director of One North Finish (O.N.E.) Group Financial Improvement Society, has been watching this unfold first-hand. The pandemic has accelerated gentrification in Halifax’s North Finish neighbourhood, he says, the place the Black inhabitants has dropped from 30 per cent to fifteen per cent from 2006 to 2016, as rents have elevated and companies have more and more catered to a rich, white clientele.
Rodney Small, director of Halifax’s O.N.E., says pandemic-related gentrification is pushing Black Nova Scotians out of the town’s North Finish neighbourhood (Picture by Aaron McKenzie Fraser)
Small says the acquainted cycle of a Black Nova Scotian neighborhood being intentionally impoverished and devalued, just for white traders to swoop in and make a revenue by displacing Black residents, is enjoying out in Halifax’s North Finish. He remembers selecting up a replica of WestJet’s on-board journal on a flight in 2018 and being floored by a breathless description of the neighbourhood’s hip new cafés and boutiques—this after years of seeing the neighbourhood he grew up in described as crime-ridden and undesirable in media experiences.
Small says he helps laws requiring builders to implement agreements with native communities to make sure new builds will profit current residents. Luther, the CEO of Halifax Partnership, says she’s keenly conscious the town can’t hold welcoming new residents at this tempo with out addressing the strain they’re placing on the individuals who already reside there: “If housing is a funnel and you set 10,000 folks a 12 months within the high, however you don’t materially enhance your housing inventory sufficient to maintain up, then folks can be pushed out the underside into homelessness.”
So, whereas a sudden inflow of wealth and new residents is an issue any mayor could be thrilled to have, planning for it’s a drawback nonetheless. The area could also be house to the most effective communities for distant employees, however individuals who don’t work remotely—and don’t have tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} in fairness constructed up from proudly owning property in Toronto or Vancouver—should reside in nice communities, too. As folks like Mahoney purchase and renovate properties, planning can be needed to make sure folks like Small, their new neighbours, don’t expertise development and prosperity as a change for the more severe.
Nonetheless, whereas there are challenges that come together with the alternatives, the area is having fun with its shift in fortune. Luther says some are having bother believing it: “It’s taking a while for our residents, our authorities colleagues and others to appreciate this development is actual.”
At a time when the world has misplaced a lot, nobody’s begrudging a long-time underdog a little bit of well-deserved success.
