Editor’s Note: This article originally ran in The Macdonald Notebook in 2018 and is being republished today because of the very nutty idea of Donald Trump to suggest Canada become the 51st state.
By Andrew Macdonald
Burnside cross-border business and tax lawyer Derek Brett, who also does a sliver of complex criminal law and civil litigation, moved with his wife Lisa to Bedford from a life in Orlando, with his now teen daughter, partly motivated by gun violence in his native America.
The family uprooted to Nova Scotia in 2012, sponsored as new immigrants by the Atlantic Jewish Council, which is headquartered in Halifax.
“Gun violence was one reason for the move,” Brett told me in 2018 over a coffee chat at a java shop on Gottingen Street.
“Obviously, the Pulse bar tragedy, around the corner from my old home, was in 2016, but it was real fear of unbridled gun violence that served as a factor in our decision to move,” he tells The Macdonald Notebook.
“We landed in Halifax in Aug. 5, 2012,” says Brett and he is now affiliated with Burnside Law, a senior partner of the firm.
His family quickly settled in. One year, he taught law at St. Mary’s University, and also hosted a half-hour radio show on 97.5 FM public radio out of Lower Sackville. The show “featured a variety of people from the legal community and others who might have something to say about issues in the legal community.”
To illustrate his move into Halifax high society, he once was invited to a party hosted by biz titan George Armoyan at the Oland Castle, Armoyan’s home on Young Avenue.
A real fear of the gun culture in America was one of the impetuses for relocating to Canada, says Brett.
“It wasn’t the main impetus, there were a variety of issues we were concerned with and the gun culture was just one of them,” he told The Macdonald Notebook.
What ails America: Donald Trump Jr. posted this assault gun photo on his social media pages in the first Trump presidency.
“I was serving as private labour counsel for the police union down there (in Orlando). And, so I was seeing the results directly of the gun culture so I’d get police officers call outs of officer-involved shootings in the middle of the night, and I would see the dead bodies and wounded bodies laying there,” he recalled.
“You also hear about guns in schools,” noting the post-Columbine style school shootings, which have permeated into schools in America, including the recent killing spree in Sante Fe, Texas, and the Pulse gay bar shooting around the block from his home, which occurred after he moved to Bedford.
“Hitting closer to home is the Parkland shooting at Douglas High. My sister’s friend lost her daughter at Douglas High. My mom lost a former work colleague who was a coach at Douglas High. And that hits close to home like Pulse did. Even though I wasn’t living there then, it was difficult to talk about those places and the people who were affected. The remnants of my home are still there and it shocked me on both occasions to hear this happen”.
Brett was in his early 50s when he moved to Bedford, and his daughter was three. Born in Brooklyn, he had moved with his family to central Florida when he was 15.
Starting a new life in a new country was “daunting”, he admits, especially not having relatives around to look after his young daughter. “That was certainly one of the sacrifices in making this decision to move”.
“It was difficult to make this geographic jump. It was difficult for me professionally, not so much my wife (Lisa), because she has a specialized degree demand. She was employable almost immediately”.
Initially, wife Lisa worked at the IWK with autistic kids, and later went to the Maritimes school for the blind in southend Halifax.
“My daughter didn’t have a hard transition. She doesn’t remember Florida,” he added.
“I now have friends who immigrated to Halifax from India and Pakistan, and I can only imagine what it was like for them to make the transition to Nova Scotia, as opposed to me,” says Brett. “At least I was able to drive the distance. It wasn’t an easy drive, but I did it three times.
“Even though, occasionally, the southern drawl will sneak into my speech, with the exception of a bit more intensity than the average Nova Scotian, it is pretty difficult to make me out to be any different than a native Nova Scotian. It is not as easy as many others coming from away. In many ways, I am more fortunate than some”.
Brett said he picked Halifax for his new city life after being sponsored by the Atlantic Jewish Council.
“We wanted to have something that was not a big city, but is still urban-like. We had that culture in Orlando, and when I practiced in Washington, D.C., for two years. We wanted something that felt more normal”.
He made an exploratory trip in February 2011 and also visited a windswept Peggy’s Cove.
“Halifax had the feel to me of what southeast Florida was like back in the early mid-1970s and through the early ’80s until we became the virtual concrete jungle. I felt my daughter could have a well-adjusted upbringing. Halifax has the benefits of an urban centre and we’d still be able to get away and enjoy all the natural beauty of the area.”
Brett said he was aware of Nova Scotia before he moved here. “I consider myself pretty well versed in geography,” he added.
“Here’s what I knew. Carly Simon referenced Nova Scotia in the song You’re So Vain (recorded in the 1970s). I knew that on the classic TV show Wonder Woman, Lyle Wagner’s character had referenced Nova Scotia,” he says with a laugh.
“I knew that King George had based a lot of his troops and ships and men in Halifax to invade my home country.”
He had heard of the Cabot Trail, because he likes to hike, but did not know of the Halifax Explosion, which killed 2,000 city residents in 1917.
“I knew that the Cajun population had been the Acadian population that had been expelled by the British over 200 years before,” said Brett.
I asked Brett over a coffee at LF Bakery, which was founded on Gottingen St. by an immigrant from France, what suggestions or pointers he’d have for other new immigrants to our shores.
“Work your ass off. It is not simply just literal to employment work. It’s about marketing yourself through networking, using the good aspects of the internet like LinkedIn”.
He plans to retire in Nova Scotia — “If any lawyer actually retires” — and says he will spend the rest of his life in Nova Scotia.
“Immigration is the future of Nova Scotia,” says Brett.
“It is not going to be done with just the people who are already here, and especially when you see the fact the population of Nova Scotia is receding, and Baby Boomers are retiring or moving away and certainly a lot of their kids have moved away over the last two or three decades,” said Brett.
“There is a spirit that immigrants bring, whether they are coming from Orlando, Florida, Karachi, Pakistan or Delhi, India”.
Asked to put to bed the myth that immigrants take jobs from native Nova Scotians, he replies: “Look where we are sitting – look at the jobs back there. They are creating the jobs”. He references the man from France who opened up LF Bakery, a bakery and coffee shop on Gottingen Street, next door to Edna’s eatery..
At his law office, there are three lawyers and two paralegals, which will soon grow to three staffers.
Of the paralegals, one of them he met at a first job where he taught at a technical school, another was a student of his at NSCC, and the third to be added is an immigrant, he says.
Brett had to take law exams to become a member of the Nova Scotia Barrister’s Society, allowing him to practice law in this province.
Editor’s Note: This story from The Notebook Archives was originally published in 2018.
Burnside lawyer Derek Brett immigrated to Metro Halifax in 2012 from a life in Florida. This Notebook picture was taken while The Notebook had a coffee at Brunswick Street’s Steve-O-Reno’s.
