‘A no-brainer’: Why some U.S. health-care workers are moving to Nova Scotia
CBC
When Donald Trump started talking about running for re-election, Heather O’Dell began looking for an exit.
“I had this feeling that he would win,” she said. “I really couldn't understand how that was going to happen, but it really seemed like it was.”
As an American citizen, O’Dell didn’t like where the country was headed.
She also feared for her safety.
“I knew … the federal government could step in and start doing things like changing my passport gender and changing my driver's licence gender, all the things that led me to feel safer as a trans-identifying person, they could take those things away very quickly.”
As the 2024 U.S. presidential election approached, O’Dell, who was a newly qualified registered nurse in Vermont, applied for a nursing licence in Nova Scotia.
A few days after Trump's election victory, she told her colleagues she was leaving.
In late December, she moved to Halifax. She began work as a cardiovascular intensive care nurse on Jan. 1, 2025.
“It was just a no-brainer. I didn't even come up to visit. I was like, ‘That's where I'm going to be,’” she said.
O’Dell is just one of dozens of health-care workers from the United States who’ve moved to Nova Scotia in the last year as more people move across the border, in some cases seeking a more welcoming environment.
Nova Scotia Health says 50 American health-care workers have taken positions in Nova Scotia in the past fiscal year, up from 31 in 2024.
Two of those people are Steve and Matt Ortiz, who have decades of nursing experience between them.
The couple is originally from Orlando, Fla. But when Trump was elected — after years of increasingly anti-2SLGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies in Florida — they started looking to Canada.
“We just want to live our life and not be harassed,” said Matt, who notes that some people questioned their decision, saying the situation wasn’t that bad or that they’d soon be moving back.
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