do it, he stresses, without a supportive family. They get a couple of hours together each evening, but recognize that the weekends are when they can share together. Down the road, he can envisage taking advantage of being in Toronto during the day by having his wife joining him there in the evening for theatre or other events, before returning home together. Each commute involves a trap. One aspect of work-life pulls in one direction and another pulls in the opposite direction. The other tension can often be cost: The quickest way to work may be the most expensive. Boni and John Wagner-Stafford no longer suck it up. When the couple, both now in their fifties, got together four years ago, they moved to a 2,400-square-foot home in Maple, Ont., which they found in a lovely, quiet community. But it was an hour each way to work in downtown Toronto -- both work for the Ontario government -- and although they usually travelled together and could talk, listen to CBC, and occasionally even do home finances, the constant travelling ate away at them. "It was exhausting. We were always rushing to get out of the door in the morning and to get back home," she says. On vacation in Mexico, they calculated the cost in time of commuting. Two hours a day added up to 500 hours a year. That's about three weeks of a year, but they figured if an average day has eight hours of productive work time,