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Dufferin County’s first Poet Laureate shares update on life in Nova Scotia

February 5, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Dufferin County’s first Poet Laureate, Harry Posner, moved from Orangeville to a village in Nova Scotia with his wife, Uta, and their two rescue horses, in 2022.

They decided to move after being encouraged by good friends who had already settled there. At the time, many folks were taking advantage of the real estate price gap between Ontario and the Maritimes, an equation of sell high here and buy low there that yielded a reasonable nest egg.

While Posner had already retired from the Orangeville LCBO, his wife continues to work remotely for Rogers as a senior manager.

He was pleased to catch up in a recent interview with the Citizen to talk about his new life.

“It took a year or 18 months to feel at home,” he admitted. “It’s a different feel to the air. Even animals feel friendlier, not so nervous of people. When you make a move, finding fresh roots and finding my literary connection here took time.”

He has written a novel titled Red Pony, a speculative fiction, so he describes it – what would happen if “and when” AI goes on and takes over, pushes humanity out of the picture. By AI using a drug that removes all pain, we fall into Alljoy and disappear as a species. One wonders, will this author find the straggling few raised as toddlers on forbidden doses of Shakespeare to save the many? Only by waiting for the publication of the missive, now in its second reading, will we read the tale.

“We are living in a pocket of humanity,” he commented. He is creating a chat book of poetry, a meditative string that has “a lot to do with the horses, cleaning out the horse boxes, a daily routine.”

They are two off-the-track thoroughbreds.

“We don’t ride them,” he said, citing the abuse the horses’ feet had suffered from racing on the tracks.

It has been an adventure learning to handle horses for Posner: one is 16 hands, the other is 17.2.

“My wife is the horse person and the main care person,” he said.

Local farmers sell hay to Posner, who learned after last summer’s drought that they had to be quick to buy it.

All part of integrating into a new community – he has found a local version of the chess groups and literary events in Orangeville. Posner’s way forward is through those avenues in his new home.

“That is what I’ve done,” he explained. “I met our doctor, and I joined (a) poetry group; we give each other prompts – juicing – talk about the essence of what it is to be where you are; to start to look for ways to challenge ourselves.”

Certainly, Harry Posner agrees, “I miss my friends in Orangeville and the good people there that I had contact with when we organized the Day of the Poets festivals. I felt close to the community.”

Yet he and Uta talked about what they wanted for the rest of their lives – where they wanted to settle for the time being. What the economics of the move could mean.

He asserted, “Folks here are lovely people, very community-minded.”

Woodville is near Acadia University and is the home of Margaret Atwood’s mother.

There are people who can be hermits, but Posner admits he needs others to boost his morale. Uta and Posner have been in Nova Scotia for three and a half years, since the summer of 2022.

Many people have come there. It has been a destination.

A different approach to handling land: “A lot of the natural world is here,” he commented. “The pace is slower; time will tell when we’ll have an evening.”

Sometimes there are writing workshops. The idea is to start small.

Posner said, “It needs a base of people to build something that lasts. Being a part of a literary group can be very rewarding.”

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