That's one way to beat the traffic

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Air Canada concierge Sarah Hardy with lawyer Susan Wortzman at the airport. Susan works in Toronto and lives in Winnipeg. (BORIS.MINKEVICH@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

If you think a five-minute construction detour throws a wrench into your daily commute, be thankful you're not a true road -- and air -- warrior.

Virtually every week, a band of local business people, including lawyers, accountants, consultants and executives, leave the comforts of their Winnipeg homes and head out to their offices -- in Toronto.

"Instead of driving to work, we have a guy who has four stripes on his shoulder that takes us there," said Tom McIlwham, president of Brootsoft Inc., an IT consulting firm for the financial services sector.

He has been commuting to Toronto for four days a week since he moved to Winnipeg seven years ago. It only makes sense, he said, as the vast majority of his clients, Canada's biggest financial services companies, are headquartered in Toronto.

He said he enjoys the pace of the Manitoba capital, the ease with which you can get things done and not having to worry about "that crazy traffic." The non-stop accumulation of air miles is well worth it, he said.

"I joke with people in my office in Mississauga that I can go to the airport, fly home to Winnipeg, drive to Victoria Beach and be at my cottage before they can drive to the Muskokas," he said.

Susan Wortzman, a University of Manitoba-trained lawyer, regularly flies to Toronto on Tuesday mornings and returns to Winnipeg in time for supper on Thursday. Her schedule allows her to combine a career on Bay Street with being a mother and wife in Winnipeg.

Now a partner at Wortzman Nickle PC, Wortzman spent more than a decade living full-time in Toronto as a trial lawyer at Lerners LLP. But then she met her husband-to-be, John Scurfield, a Court of Queen's Bench judge in Winnipeg, and the commuting began. She realized her duties on the home front would be seriously compromised if she got tangled up in a lengthy trial so she and a friend founded their own firm two years ago.

But because her field of expertise is so specialized -- Electronic discovery also called e-discovery, -- she knew it would be difficult to generate enough business in her home town.

E-discovery refers to the process of searching, finding and securing electronic data and using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case.

"I knew there wasn't much e-discovery work in Winnipeg. There aren't the same opportunities," Wortzman said.

Manitoba's cottage country was another reason for not moving to Toronto, she said.

"There you spend your whole life trying to figure out when you're not going to hit traffic. Here, you just get in the car and go," she said, noting she spends her nights in a hotel adjacent to her office in Toronto.

Wortzman said she has become so used to the commute that she scarcely notices she's on a plane anymore.

"I'm at the office by 11:30 a.m. and I've already done three hours of work. No phones are ringing, no Blackberry messages are coming through and nobody's bothering me so I'm not really behind," she said.

Alan Knight, who runs Big Ups Inc., a Winnipeg-based food distribution company that caters to specialty customers in Toronto, said Winnipeg's relatively low housing costs, strong sense of community and safe environment for his family, keep him from pulling up stakes and moving closer to where his bread is buttered.

"There's a certain simplicity to Winnipeg that you realize once you're in the Toronto market. You really miss the ease of getting around. There's also a sense of familiarity with the city and the people that comes with a sense of Winnipeg's history. I was born here and went to university here. I know this city pretty well," he said.

To manage his costs efficiently, McIlwham rents a house in the east Toronto neighbourhood of The Beaches, a short streetcar ride away from downtown. It's much cheaper than staying in a hotel, he said.

"You choose to live where you live and work where you work. I choose to live in Winnipeg but work in Toronto," he said.

McIlwham said if he wanted to live in a big city, he'd pick one that didn't have winter four months of the year, such as Los Angeles, Phoenix or San Diego.

"There's nowhere in Canada that has great weather in the winter," he said.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 31, 2009 A6