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SUSSEX -

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At the front staircase of Jonah Place are new innkeepers Deborah and Phil Sellars.

The honeymoon suite at Jonah Place has an appealing beach cottage theme.

Goodbye city life, hello Sussex. Innkeepers Phil and Deborah Sellars are part of a small but growing contingent of Alberta businesspeople moving to the Maritimes.

But while most swimming against the westward flow are native East Coasters returning home, these Calgarians deliberately chose Sussex.

They arrived April 2 as the new owners of Jonah Place Bed & Breakfast Inn. Previous owners Rob and Annemieke Gulmans returned to their native country of Holland recently after operating the inn since 2002.

"We knew we wanted to be in the Maritimes," said Deborah Sellars, explaining their only link to the east had been a son attending a Halifax university.

"We started coming out here about seven years ago. We just really like it here... the quality of life, the friendly people. It's beautiful here."

Phil Sellars, a financial advisor, continues to operate his Calgary-based business, Marketscape Financial Services, but plans to establish a business here once he and his wife have settled in to the inn business. He's currently licenced in both Alberta and New Brunswick.

"We had the idea that Deborah would run the bed and breakfast and I'd continue doing what I do," he said, explaining that's been their dream for the last five or six years.

They learned Jonah Place was up for sale last August and came out to see it last September, visiting 80 properties, including six bed and breakfasts in a two-day tour whirlwind tour of the Maritimes.

Sussex, which they'd never visited before, was the first town they visited. They used Jonah Place as a base for their research and it won them over from their original preference of an inn on the coast.

"We thought Sussex seemed to be thriving year-round. We're active and we wanted a place with things to do in February as well as July," said Phil.

Jonah Place itself, which the Gulmans had renovated to a four-star inn, also impressed them.

"We thought it was a grand old house," said Phil, who has learned the house was built in 1884 by Charles Stockton for Judge Harry Jonah. The inn and town became the standard by which the couple measured other potential inns.

"We found some had a great house but not a great town, or vice versa. Plus, it had the number of rooms we were looking for five guest rooms, all with a private bath and our own suite," said Phil.

He returned in February and stayed eight days at the inn.

"Part of the purchase arrangement was to meet all the people they had business arrangements with. It was worthwhile," he said.

The Gulmans left the guest rooms and common rooms furnished, another plus for the new owners, and continued to take bookings and package deals so the Sellars could step almost effortlessly into the business.

"We're sliding in and laying low," Phil said of their plans for getting oriented this season.

They're doing business with local people as much as possible, right down to finding a source of fresh local eggs for the inn during their first week in town.

The Sellars plan to offer more breakfast choices at the B&B and may do a bit of landscaping this year. Future changes may include adding more guest rooms.

Learning the ropes of innkeeping is made easier by Deborah's education in event planning. In Calgary she worked as financial manager of a large engineering firm.

Experience in planning and multi-tasking came in handy on moving day. To maintain the inn's Canada Select rating, the couple needed to install televisions and phones in each guest room as per new guidelines this year. As it turned out, the cable installer arrived on moving day, making the task of installing cable in a century home a little more challenging than usual.

With the bustle of moving behind them, the two are settling in to a whole new way of life.

"We lived right in the city of Calgary, where you lose all sense of who people are. It used to take us 40 minutes just to drive across the city," said Phil, marveling that Sussex is only a 40-70-minute drive from urban areas in Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John.

"We're quite looking forward to a smaller-town atmosphere."

As for the irony of Calgarians coming east for work, Phil said the "Alberta boom" is something of a myth for many job-seekers.

"There are a lot of low-paying service jobs," he said, "but if you're not in the oil and gas business, you're not going to make a ton of money. You'll spend it all on rent."