I've just returned to Toronto after almost 10 years away. I left for a 5 month contract in Ottawa. Five months turned into a year. A year turned into another year. I was still thinking that I would return to Toronto and carry on with life. But a curious job presented itself to me with an opportunity to follow a career path and ear a regular salary.

At one point somewhere near the three year mark, I remember saying to my friend Melinda that I couldn't imagine ever returning to Toronto. We were walking along one of my favourite parts of Ottawa, the river path behind the Houses of Parliament. It was warm, probably late spring or summer, and everything was a luscious green. People were enjoying the outdoors. Ottawa was at it's best, in my eyes. This may have affected my mood and precipitated my pronouncement. I truly believed it.

Some people love Ottawa in the winter. It is a wonderful city for doing outdoorsy things such as skating on the canal, cross-country skiing, and snow shoeing etc. If you like that sort of thing. Me, I don't feel quite warm enough for a good 9 months of the year, so even through I gave it a try, several tries in fact, I couldn't get excited about Ottawa's long, cold and snowy winters. I just don't like being cold and I start to feel chilly around late August/early September.

Still, after returning to Toronto, I have realized Ottawa winters have changed me. I still don't like that season anywhere near as much as I absolutely and positively adore the summer. I realize I can handle the winters in Toronto much better than I used to. It just doesn't feel so cold in comparison. Sure I learned to dress appropriately in Ottawa. I've outfitted myself with requisite the head-to-toe coat, the arctic winter boots, fleecy hats, woolen scarves and down-filled mitts. I quickly discarded any attempt to look fashionable. Not worth the hassle. While I am by no means a fashion plate, it's fortunate that Ottawa will never be considered the fashion capital of any region other than perhaps that small area referred to as Eastern Ontario.

I grew to like Ottawa. When I arrived, what stood out the most for me was its odd mixture of architecture - grand old Ontario-style houses, embarrassingly drabby, small town store fronts, inspiring national institutions (National Gallery, Parliament etc), 1970's federal government offices blocks that reach the heights of ugliness, quaint post-war bungalows and red brick row houses. When I left, it was a city that had changed significantly over the course of 10 years. I left a city with a vibrant arts culture, even if it has to fight for its life every year at municipal government budget time, a rich diversity of cultures, inviting self-contained neighbourhoods that offer its residents a great life, more music festivals than you can shake a stick at, miles and miles of river walking paths, and great friends.

Ottawa gave me a career. It was not a career I sought out. I stumbled into it. At no point in the course of my education had I ever said "You now what? I really want to check out this cultural policy thing. I just won't be happy until I am a policy analyst for the government." Nope, never crossed my mind. Probably because I had no idea what cultural policy was or how to analyze it. It wasn't an unfortunate stumbling. I quite liked many aspects of my work. Of course there were other aspects that were less than thrilling. I was happy to be learning and deepening my understanding of the culture game in Canada. It definitely feed some passions.

I became a home owner. After, I'd settled into a career as a policy analyst, I felt the urge to own a home. It was quite strong and I recognized that it was more likely to happen in Ottawa than in Toronto. I was lucky, very lucky. I bought at a good time and found a lovely condo built by a housing developer with an excellent reputation. I loved my neighourhood. By the time I left, I could walk home from work and pass the houses of many of my friends. Not bad, I say.

Nothing stays the same. I started out in arts funding and then moved to arts policy. Then, I had the opportunity to move into film policy. A door opened for me to explore new media and the affects that digital technologies were having on the cultural industries. It's not really a linear trajectory. In fact, it's more cyclical or spiral perhaps. I started out taking photos and dabbling in watercolours. I say dabbling as it never really progressed beyond that, despite the switch to acrylics. Still, it opened up the world of light, colour and texture to me. Studies in media arts at Ryerson lead me to film and video. I'll never forget the pleasure of seeing my first over exposed roll of 16mm black and white film. It was at the time when new media was just taking off, but we didn't call it new media then. I was interested in things computer-related, desktop publishing, computer graphis, computer animation but wasn't fussed by all the programming involved. So I stuck with moving images. It was the media arts connection that took me to Ottawa, where I went back to the arts, then to film and then to new media again. You get the idea.

New experiences led to new directions. I was extraordinarily fortunate enough to get an education leave from work to do a residency in interactive art and entertainment at the Canadian Film Centre. While I had had the feeling that something was missing for a while, the experience at the CFC confirmed two things for me. One, that I wanted to do something more creatively active than policy analysis. Two, that it was time come back to friends and family in Toronto.

So, now 9 years and 9 months after I left Toronto, I find myself back in the city. Even though I'll miss Ottawa and my lovely friends there, I am very happy to be back home. Besides, I suspect I'll see my Ottawa friends here much more often than I saw my Toronto friends there, with the exception of a few T.O friends who grew to like Ottawa a lot.