Can you exhaust a city? Can you become so much a part of your hometown that it simply exhausts itself? Halifax has been such a force in our lives - neither good nor bad - but something I feel I have exhausted. Same people, same politics, same history. Same bus routes, same streets, same manners. The Halifax manners are dying with me. I am the last generation of young people who are polite and will hold doors open for you. Who smile when they pass strangers on the street. The last of a generation who were never feared. But, definitely not the last of my generation who will want to leave. See, Halifax is like Exodus. We must leave here in order to prosper, and not smother. Because, really, really, what is Halifax offering me if I stay?



A dead city? No. Not quite yet. A dying city. A city that has five universities and an upstanding community college, yet a city that fails to acknowledge the masses that attend them, nor take them seriously. Yet, you lament "brain-drain" and cry for help in regards to our retention - only for our opinion to be kindly disregarded, but disregarded nonetheless.



Halifax is too wrapped up in the past to may and strives to the future. A government that lacks backbone and a slanted media presence that is so quick (too quick) to publish only the thoughts that further substantiate their own opinions (i.e. Celine Dion). Oh, but how you desperately long for us to stay with our degrees coupled with advanced diplomas. But, for what use is it for us to stay if you only attract call centres? See, Halifax, you refuse to negotiate the history of the downtown core for the sake of progress. Build, for goodness sake, build! Create a downtown that thrives on industry - not history. No matter what you build, the Citadel will always be there. It's a drumlin, which are notoriously difficult to move.



When you, with all of your power, restore Halifax to its historical glory, you will only have a short time to revel in it before you too are history and we whom you've driven out are too far away to act - but will merely whisper a collective "I told you so."



It's a shame you want to push us away - the enlightened ones who would carry you home from the drug store in a snowstorm. We'll be gone and you'll be left with the heartless thugs that you already fear, but have left the future of Halifax to.



We are an untapped resource, not the natural gas that you've been sending to American for years. Us - me - my friends - the 20-something's who have education dripping from us, but whom you force to work in coffee shops, mall and the aforementioned call centres because you simply can't loosen your collective chokehold on power. We pay dearly to be educated here, not to be looked at as a wondrous educated resource, but to be treated as a commodity.



Yet, you wonder why we leave. Cue the collective sigh of all educated Halifax 20-something's. Maybe one day, Halifax, you'll pull your head out of the sand - or get your behind off of your rocking chair. Someday, before all of the city's potential is squandered and we're all gone to make Calgary, Saskatoon, Victoria, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Regina better places.

Nicole