Marie Conboy: Reporting perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic

I arrived in Vermilion, Alberta, on a -30°C day, in the middle of a swirling snowstorm, to start my first reporting job. My first assignment was covering a rodeo. I couldn't wait to leave Leitrim and Ireland. I wanted adventure, and by God did I get it! I remember walking into a bookshop in Dublin not long after I graduated from college.

Ireland was coming out of a recession and the newspaper headlines screamed economic gloom. I remember looking at them and thinking, feck this, I'm getting out of here. I wandered around the bookshop and bought a travel book called Canada. A few weeks later, I was on a plane.

I spent my first year in Vancouver, working on a television show that took us around Vancouver Island, filming out on the ocean. When that ended, I had only weeks left on my visa and wasn't ready to go home. Then I landed my first reporting job in Alberta.

As a journalist, I would go on to report thousands of stories across the Prairies, the Rockies and northern towns. Being a reporter was probably the best way I could have landed in a completely different world.

The job introduced me to some of the most interesting people — Indigenous Chiefs, horse whisperers, Calgary Stampede champions and characters I would never otherwise have met. It took me into people's homes and communities and gave me an understanding of a new country I would never have had simply living there.

The winters were long, to say the least, but I guess that was part of the beauty of it. Snow could lie on the ground for six months of the year. Canadians thought nothing of digging their cars out after a heavy snowfall. They had grown up doing it.

Still, I loved a good snowstorm. There was nothing like putting your feet up in front of a blazing fire while a blizzard swirled and ripped outside. The landscape was vast. Canadians think nothing of driving distances. Eventually, I made my home in Canmore, right in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. I had always been drawn to the mountains, and I fell in love with the place. The mountains were our playground — rock climbing, skiing, hiking and trail running.

They were also where I worked, telling the stories of the mountain people who lived there — and sometimes those who died there. After a while, I became conscious of how many stories I was writing about people killed climbing, skiing or in avalanches.

For all their beauty, the mountains could be merciless. Since moving back to Ireland a year and a half ago, I haven't stopped exploring. Maybe Canada changed that in me. Last weekend I hiked Slieve League and Mount Errigal; the week before, Benwisken.

And strangely, I think I see Ireland differently now. After more than a decade away, I notice things I probably took for granted about Ireland before — the wildness of the west coast, how much the landscape can change within an hour's drive and how much history is packed into such a small island.

In Canada, I was always the Irish reporter. Nobody cared whether I came from Leitrim, Dublin or Donegal. The county borders that can seem so important when you're living here disappeared completely. And now I'm home reporting for the Leitrim Observer, and there is something wonderfully ironic about that — but I'm not looking at it through the same eyes.

There are still plenty of places I want to see and stories I want to tell. I don't think that part of me will ever change. But these days, adventure doesn't always have to mean getting on a plane. Perspective changes everything. Same job. Very different view.