Susan Bonner: So long Washington, it's been a Capitol affair

So long, Washington. It wouldn't feel right to end our four years together without a proper good-bye.

Leaving you won't be easy. How could it be when you have so much to offer.

First of all, as I've come to discover, you are a physical beauty, from the sparkling marble of your national monuments, through the broad streets and avenues to the lush flora of your subtropical climate.

Some of that, I daresay, flows from the care and cash that comes with national park status. There are not many other cities in the world that can claim to be almost 20 per cent national park.

On top of that is your near-legendary energy. It begins pre-dawn as the important and the want-to-be-important people begin the work that makes this capital buzz. If it matters to the world, it matters here.

Though I do know, Washington, that you have your ugly side.

Pockets of your city moan with despair. African-American neighbourhoods, some in the very shadow of the Capitol building, illustrate the stark inequality of opportunity in a country founded on the principle that all are created equal.

Of course, you do hide that ugliness well, if only because most of your admirers are so smitten with all the political drama that you provide.

Even your most petulant political moments affect the world. Like last year's partisan brinksmanship over the debt ceiling, which is not over yet.

Living so close to your power can make what seems so big and virtuous sometimes feel rather small.

Your admirable legislative checks and balances have been hijacked by polarization. There is more politics than policy in your screaming sound bites. And the political system you laud, not without justification, as being among the best in the world looks pretty broken some days.

I will always be watching

It goes without saying that I will not miss another mass shooting story.

Any one reporter who has spent any time here knows the script: The horror. The grief. The shaken president as consoler-in-chief.

The "this time must be different" calls for changes in the guns laws. And the inevitable stale-mating pushback from the gun lobby, even as the polls say that Americans really do want change.

Of course the whole world pays attention to you and what your leaders say.

Though one of my pet peeves after listening to every important political speech in this country over the last four years is the way your politicians talk about freedom.

Do they think they invented the idea? That yours is the only free country in the world?

On the other hand, I've benefited enormously from one of the freedoms you rightly champion. Freedom of the press.

I'd love to transport some of your openness with the media back to Canada with me. From the detailed daily release of the president's schedule, to the standard issue photos from key cabinet meetings, to the updates on who attended the national security meetings and "read outs" on important conversations, you act on the belief that the people have the right to know.

It is one of the American traits I most admire.

I leave you, dear Washington, as a better reporter for having been here. I learned more than I expected here because your orbit really is the world and all its problems.

Your politicians pepper their speeches with the phrase "the American people," even if the 316 million or so individuals described in that phrase can't be summed up neatly one way or another.

But when you live among them it is hard not to be impressed by their history, their strength and their independent spirit.

One of our former prime ministers, Pierre Trudeau, once quipped that living next to the U.S. was like sleeping with an elephant.

Living here these past four years made me understand and appreciate the elephant in our Canadian lives in a host of new ways.

Like everyone else who leaves you, Washington, I may never really get away. I have this feeling that I will always be watching you.