Imagine the opportunity to row ten to twelve months of the year! Now imagine the opportunity to row out of a well appointed club with a bar and change room with a lovely harbour view within a few kilometres of downtown. Now imagine the opportunity to row in one of the world’s great and most attractive harbour settings, in one of the world’s temperate climates while the rest of Canada froze. Imagine that rowing experience followed by a short stroll to a delicious breakfast of caffe latte, eggs and smoked salmon in a breezy open restaurant facing onto the high street of a fashionable inner-city suburb. Resisting this temptation was the dilemma I faced while visiting with relations in Sydney, Australia, in December 2005.

My wife is a beautiful born-Sydneysider who has lived in Canada for almost twenty years. She claims to prefer Toronto because Sydney is “too hot”, but I have always suspected that it is simply her independent and intrepid Aussie nature that first inspired her to depart her hometown. In seemingly everything except the broad twang of her accent, she has become the consummate Canadian – relishing all four seasons, even if it means a circumscribed summer. And despite having been raised in a climate where winter clothing entailed nothing heavier than a blazer, she enjoys ski-ing and has learned to make the best of the long, slushy Toronto winters.

However her stories of extended Christmas vacations spent camping at the ocean had become a guilty pleasure for me. And I often detected a note of ambivalence undermining the blunt certainty of her declarations which might otherwise have convinced me that life in Sydney was indeed sweltering, insular, diminished and tedious...

© Brian Singleton, 2007