By Andrew Macdonald
He refers to himself as an ‘elder’ millennial, and now Geoff Livingston is living his dream in his native Cape Breton.
The 36-year-old prior to the pandemic had been living in Montreal, but after he was unable to travel back to his apartment during the first wave, he has now squarely planted his roots back on Margaree Valley soil – becoming a homebuyer.
He is employed by the family enterprise, established by his dad, the well-known Cape Bretoner, Neal Livingston, a big community activist.
Geoff is operations manager for Black River Wind, which consists of windmills selling electricity to Nova Scotia Power.
Last year after the pandemic began, Geoff Livingston decided to give up his Montreal life, where he had lived since 2003, and he turned to his native Cape Breton Island, buying a dream home. Photo by Michael Benz.
He also works during the late winter and early spring on the family’s maple syrup production.
His hobby is as a music performer and dee-jay.
“I had been living in Montreal on and off since 2003. I went there for university, I went to Concordia to get my fine arts degree”, he tells The Notebook.
He is not fully bilingual. “I can understand a fair amount but I can’t tell a joke”, he says.
“I came back to Cape Breton to do the maple syrup work before the pandemic started. I got here on March 4th, 2020 and one week later everything shut down – and I had a sense things would go that way so I packed a little bit of an extra bag – not much. I figured I’d stay for another three weeks or a month, and then things got stranger and stranger and I have not left”, he adds.
Since March 2020 he has only been off Cape Breton Island three times “and only once to Halifax.
He says now he is going to stay back on the island, after buying a relatively new home in east Margaree, which has views of the harbour, and down the valley.
Originally listed for $850,000, Geoff Livingston paid $450,000 for this Margaree Valley home.
“Since I bought the place in October, I have become a resident here full time – I still have my apartment in Montreal but I am sub-letting it”, says Livingston.
Originally the asking price for his Margaree home was set at $850,000. “They dropped it to $715,000, $600,000, and I got it for $450,000″.
He now has it on Airbnb.
The property’s description: “A luxurious new 3,500 sq ft house has all high-end details, in both construction and finishing. This sits high up the south-facing side of the Margaree River valley, with astonishing views of the ocean, the river in both directions, and the landscape for miles around”.
The two-storey home contains three bedrooms and the ceiling height is 9’6.
There is also a carriage house nearby with an additional three-bedroom, two baths, above a garage and workshop.
The view from Geoff Livingston’s new home on the Margaree River.
The real estate listing last year said: “Panoramic is an overused word, but not here. It’s not possible to convey the views in a still photo”.
An occupancy permit was only granted in 2018.
It’s the second property Livingston owns. At age 20, with an inheritance from his mother’s death and estate, he bought the old legion hall, near Inverness.
“Whenever I had come home for the summers, that is where I have stayed – that is still my residence”.
While he said leaving his Montreal friends behind and relocating to his ancestral lands, after the pandemic he will visit with his pals there.
“It was not like I decided to move to Cape Breton and said good-by to everybody, even though I originally came here a year ago just for a month”.
The kitchen in the 2018 constructed home Geoff Livingston bought during the pandemic in the Margaree Valley.
The windmill entity consists of three turbines throughout Nova Scotia, located in Creignish & Mabou Highlands and New Glasgow.
The operation is a six-megawatt project, and each windmill is 120-metres tall, from the tip in the ground to the blades.
As for the maple syrup entity, Black River Maple, previously featured in The Notebook, originally last March it was looking like it would be a banner year.
That was the original word from Neal Livingston when I spoke to him last winter.
But, then afterwards an ice storm hit the maple operation and that resulted a less than robust season for the product, sold at a few Halifax stores, besides Sobey outlets in Cape Breton.
“It was looking good. We made 900 litres this year and we made almost all of that in two weeks and usually that happens over seven weeks. Last year we made 1400 litres and in 2019 we made 900 litres – and when the ice storm hit in March of 2021 it pulled down all the lines in the woods”, adds Livingston.
Despite a drop in production, he says this year’s variety is more “delicious” than previous years, with the syrup being darker than in recent years.
