In my experience, it's unusual for a writer to compare Toronto favourably to London, England, but newbie Torontonian, Claire Davey, who moved here from London sixteen months ago, is adamant that is in fact true in her case.
That could, however, be due to the fact that if there is one thing that surpasses her passion for writing, it would be her passion for the outdoors. In the seventeen years she lived in London, "I would always make sure I lived close to a railway station so that I was twenty minutes away from Epping Forest," a 6000-acre open space beginning in East London. What she relishes most about Toronto is the opportunities to be outdoors in and around the city, as well as easy access to places like Wasaga Beach and Algonquin Park. An avid hiker, canoer and camper, in the short time she has lived in Canada, Claire has canoed in Ontario lakes that I had never heard of and, after our conversation, was heading to Frontenac to camp in minus two degree weather.
She also claims that Toronto is superior to London because it has more colour than grit and greyness, and more light. "I think it has something like 600 more hours of sunshine, actually, and the light right now, in the fall, is very similar to parts of Northern China."
She knows that because she lived in Shanghai for a year while doing an undergraduate degree in Chinese and Linguistics. She worked in the airline industry for several years before joining an international development charity. She came to writing in the last two years and quite by accident.
Claire and her partner were on a year-long sabbatical in New Zealand where, in the town of Te Anau, she discovered a movie theatre that had been built by a helicopter pilot to screen a film he had shot of the spectacular mountains, glaciers and lakes in which the town is nestled. It inspired her to write a film script. She first learned of the Diaspora Dialgoues mentorship program through a poster in the library, and hoped it would be an opportunity for her to workshop her screenplay - but then wrote a play when she realized the program does not include film. She was thrilled that her play was accepted to the program, and is looking forward to returning to her film script once it is done.
"All I want to do now is write."
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