My mother, sister and myself moved around quite a bit throughout my early years. I spent my preteens in a small farming community and before that I lived in a trailer park for a few years. My teens were spent entirely in one of those tiny fishing villages that Nova Scotia is frequently associated with.

Growing up I never felt at home. Somehow I was a city kid trapped in the countryside despite never having actually lived in a city. The slow paced rural life always bored me, and living in a fishing village with an ever-increasing higher percentage of homes being owned by those who only intended on living there in the summer didn’t exactly help to create any illusions of excitement. Once I turned 18 I set about fixing this as quickly as I could which resulted in me living in a nearby town for a couple of months before moving to The Halifax Regional Municipality.

A year and a half or so at the age of 24 I was living with a couple of friends of mine in Halifax. It was the first time I had lived in a full-sized apartment building with a double-digit number of floors, balconies, shitty superintendents, etc. One day I got off the elevator on the eight floor and was walking down the hallway back to our place when a thought hit me and I stopped dead in my tracks to ponder it aloud.

“Wow. This single building has a larger population than my entire hometown.”

It took me a couple of days to get over that one.

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Funnily enough a friend of mine who is from the same village sent me several pictures last night. I’ll start with this mspaint bee straight from my nightmares. Thanks Danny!