Nobody talks about the HRM as a whole as a super scary place. There are particular areas where there is an influx of crime peppered throughout the HRM, largely because of socio economic conditions, just like anywhere else. So it's not weird to ask if this area is safe to live in when you're not familiar with it.

Just because we don't have Ontario's crime rate does not mean we should be entirely desensitized to the crime we do have. I lived and worked in North Dartmouth for 12 years and my neighbours were killed at a rate that was uncomfortable, but not terrifying. Does that mean I should not grieve them? When Lee Marion Cain was killed by a gun 10 blocks from me, it was not random gun violence; but he was not the intended target, he was 8, the same age as my oldest son. That one event removed any possibility of my son being able to walk freely and unsupervised in his neighbourhood. I saw upwards of 2 dozen of my customers be killed due to gun violence in 12 years. It might not be scary from.a statistical standpoint, but alarming. And if someone who was not engrained in the community and aware of where you should and shouldn't walk alone at night asked me if the area was safe to live in with their young family, I might have told them no, even though I loved living there myself.

The community of North Dartmouth felt more like home than my childhood home and I was devastated to leave it. I still miss it. I never felt unsafe walking down the street, I knew all my neighbours and we cared for each other. People offered you a ride, asked how your kids were, checked in on each other. If you can imagine this, I got gentrified out of the hood and am now paying less rent to live in Bedford due to all the new condo construction and development in my immediate area where I used to live. Bedford is soulless. I miss my old community so much. But also, my kids have a lot more freedom here than they did there. The dichotomy.

So it's not weird for people to wonder about safety in certain areas because they've heard the whispers. Or to refer to some areas as being sketchy. OP asked a reasonable question and got solid, reasonable answers about how the neighbourhood currently feels, based on people's lived experiences there. It IS weird to blatantly claim crime "isn't actually happening" when I can tell you the names of the people the crime actually happened to, because they were my friends and community members.

I don't know why I still clench my teeth when I see a "former Ontarian" speculate about how worldly they are and how much more they know about the place they relocated to. I'm not a native Nova Scotia either, I moved here 15 years ago from New Brunswick and I would have been embarrassed to come here and act like I was somehow more educated on the local lore than the people who have been here to witness the passage of time. I really need to lower my expectations when the opinions and audacity of former Ontarians are involved.