by Angus MacCaull

Pie in the morning is always a treat.

Last month in Digby, a client brought in a pie. I was there early to chat with James-Allen about his new office and ended up with a piece of classic lemon. Homemade. A flaky crust and fluffy meringue.

Down-home service brings down-home perks. The client was so pleased with James-Allen’s attention to detail, and how he cared for the particulars of her policy, that she promised to bake something even better the next time.

He’d saved her almost a thousand dollars. That’s a lot of pie.

After leaving Digby, I drove over to Wolfville for the grand opening of the new location there.

Clients in Wolfville dropped in to chat with Tammie, Cheryl, Angie, Lisa, Andrew, Harley and Theresa throughout the afternoon. We shared several cakes—one of them homemade by another local in the Valley.

Everyone was in good spirits. “I just came back from a visit with my friend in Bedford,” a client told me, over a slice and cup of coffee. She had a twinkle in her eye as she nodded across the room to poke fun at her husband. “I’m not sure what he was up to while I was gone!”

Of course, it’s not every day that there’s pie and cake and clients cracking jokes. Days in any office can be stressful, as can days on the road around the province. Not every policy is straight-forward and not every driving day has clear skies.

But when you get a tangible sense of your place in the community, and you can see that people respect your job, it’s nice to be doing this thing called insurance.