There's no lack of excitement in Sean Murphy's life these days. As the President of Irish Travel Bureau Inc., and the Vice-President of Kemtpville Travel though, Murphy would be happy with a little less drama, considering the type of year the travel industry has just endured.

But so long as there are people still willing to jet off into the wild blue yonder to see the green fields of home - and, at the end of the day, plunk down a little bit of gold to do so - Murphy's more than willing to make it happen. After all, satisfying people's wanderlust has been his stock and trade for almost all of his life.

Murphy was born Dublin in 1943 and grew up in the Hanlon's Corners neighbourhood. In 1963 he was hired by Bord Failte, but little did he realize that his job of attracting tourists to Ireland would result in him being sent to live abroad permanently. Following an argument with a superior in the early 80s, he was given a choice between being sent to represent the agency in Sydney, Australia or Toronto, Canada.

"I picked a place that was closest to Ireland," said the Dublin native at his local watering hole, the Summit Grill House, in the Yonge and Eglinton area, when he sat down with the Toronto Irish News.

Consequently, Murphy arrived in Hogtown on Canada Day, 1983. "I'd never been to Toronto in my life. And then I fell in love with the place," he remembers. "I had no intention of ever staying here. Two years later, the penny dropped. It was only supposed to be for a year, my assignment here." In November 1989, he left his posting with Bord Failte and founded the Irish Travel Bureau.

The first few years of the operation were tough sailing indeed, economically and otherwise, with one crisis following the next in international tourism. "There was the recession, then the Gulf War, then a massive recession which didn't ease off until 1995. So, we spent the first few years teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, hanging on by our fingernails," he remembers, between puffs on his cigarette.

But the year 2003 was certainly a trying one for Murphy and his companies.

Of the 120,000 Canadians who are estimated to be travelling to Ireland this year, six per cent, or 7,000 of them, will book their vacation through Kemptville Travel. So any dip in tourism numbers between either of the two countries was bound to affect Murphy's business, as the SARS crisis did earlier this year.

To put the crisis into perspective, the company normally makes about 40 bookings for its clients during the course of an average day. During the hard days of April and May, there were no bookings at all, and about five cancellations per day. While the cancellations affected Murphy's bottom line, Sean was not unsympathetic to the family strife and separations the outbreak forced upon some families, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. "Families [in Ireland] told [families members here in Toronto] that they didn't want them to come near them. That was the saddest of all," he says. "SARS did cause a family feud situation."

There was one thing that helped Murphy and his company through this tough time though. "Without Karen Murphy, we wouldn't have a business worth having. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. We did everything together," he says fondly of his Canadian wife. Other endeavors, such as sponsoring the Toronto Rose of Tralee competition and other community events helped Murphy keep it all in perspective.

Despite this being the Toronto tourism industry's annus horribilus, Murphy and company will undoubtedly be "looking after the interests of travelers to and from Ireland" for a long time to come.