'We can just be together': Queer couple from U.S. finds refuge after moving to Nova Scotia

It’s ne'er soft to deracinate your lifespan, but after a yr of watching U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration crack down on 2SLGBTQ+ rights, especially for transgender Americans, Grace Mahoney and her partner, Kayden Burns, decided it was time to leave the United States.

"I'm queer, my spouse is also queer and non-binary, and it started becoming a very unsafe place for us, as it is for a lot of queer humans existing in the U.S.," she said in an interview from her new home in Dartmouth, N.S., earlier this month. 

The move from Worcester, Mass., to Nova Scotia this past February was one the couple had been mulling for more than a year, after Trump signed an executive order and eliminated a number of policies designed to protect 2SLGBTQ+ rights just hours after his inauguration. 

After moving to Canada, Mahoney said it feels like she can finally exhale.

"I said to Kayden ... I think my favourite part of Nova Scotia so far is the fact that we can go out and I can hold your hand, and I can like put my arm around you and like touch you and be just normal with you, and I don’t feel scared and you don’t feel scared, we can just be together," she said. 

Mahoney said she never quite felt safe holding hands with Burns — a simple act of affection that many straight couples take for granted — when they lived in Worcester.

"You could just feel how not welcoming, how not safe it was,” she said. “We’d get dirty looks, sometimes people would say stuff … it’s hard to tell, but you know it’s not kind, and it’s feeling on the edge of [it] could be something worse, and that’s scary."

Canada quickly rose to the top of their list as they explored options for places to live outside of the United States. When Burns, a licensed social worker, was offered a job in Dartmouth, the couple decided to sell their homes in Worcester and commit to moving some 1,100 kilometres away to Nova Scotia.  

As the mother of a six-year-old, Mahoney said she was thinking about what atmosphere she wanted to raise her child in. Worcester was no longer the right fit.

"They're not banging down our door trying to arrest us at this point for being queer, but it gets to the point of like, what kind of energy do you actually want ... To spend your life living within, and that question is even more amplified when you have a little kid," she said.

Last month, when Mahoney's partner took her on a surprise road trip to the small town of Windsor, N.S., she found more proof she'd made the right choice. 

As they sat down for lunch at a restaurant near Main Street, she realized they were surrounded by rainbow flags. They had front-row seats for the town's annual Pride parade — "a powerful experience," recalled Mahoney.

That her first ever Pride took place in a small town in her new adopted country felt like kismet. 

At 37, she's grateful to have the chance for a fresh start, but the reality that she had to leave home to find it makes it bittersweet.

"Even though somehow this place feels much more home to me than the U.S. Ever felt ... There's still grief for what we had to leave, and grief around the reasons why we had to leave," she said. 

"And it's just like processing all of that, while being with the joy and elation of being here in Canada and being in this wonderful country with all these really wonderful people." 

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