01/16/2025
A delightful perspective of my town, Bridgewater NS, from our [totally unbiased] Mayor David Mitchell.
Anyone from Ontario interested in moving East? It's was fashionable in the early days of COVID to move to the east coast. The trend might have waned, but the personal, professional and enterprising opportunities out here - in addition to the accessibility of beautiful lakes, forests and ocean beaches - remain and have grown!
Check us out: Town of Bridgewater and www.bridgewater.ca.
I’ve spoken about this a few times in the past but after completing a few more guided tours of our community to prospective physicians in just the last week, I want to talk about it again. Actually there are two things I want to touch on.
The first is just how different our entire region is in 2025 vs 2022 or even 2024. New businesses, new houses and apartments, even of course new exits off the highway. If you’ve not driven, cycled, walked or taken the bus around Bridgewater recently, I would really recommend it. In 100% of the cases, when we’re showing a doctor around the area they are amazed and impressed with the hustle and bustle of our town. Yes, it is busy and yes, there is traffic but if these folks are looking to come from a city to town while also keeping that urban feel they are used to, Bridgewater has a lot to offer.
As we take them around, the highlights are generally our parks and trails, the variety of stores and they love the different restaurants now available. The LCLC is a huge selling point and something that we know has landed us a number of staff in various positions at our hospital. There are little things that are important to doctors looking to put down roots as well and perhaps some of them you’ve not really thought about that much. I know we had one doctor looking specifically for a community with a Bulk Barn. For another, it was the fact that the trail around Woodland Gardens is fully accessible and for many it was the variety of service clubs and organizations that they were already members of.
It's that old adage; you can’t see the forest for the trees. Sometimes we can’t see just how great our community is until we play tour guide and show it off.
This brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk about, and that is that people looking to move here, doctors included, do a lot of research on the community they are interested in. They look at the local businesses, they look at the events and amenities and, they look at the social media feeds and comments. For the most part they are seeing a community that is empathetic, engaged and supportive of new businesses and events. They also however, see some of the disrespectful or hurtful comments some leave be it on the Town, a business or this page. Please don’t misunderstand me, it’s important that people are able to express themselves, but I also think it’s good to look through that lens of “who else might be reading this?”
No community, business or person is perfect but this region, this town, has so much to offer. It’s why more than 15 physicians have chosen to make the South Shore their home since 2023! Take pride in where you live because that pride is infectious (pun intended).
Have a great day folks!
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