Cities I love: Montreal
Montreal is my favorite city in the Americas.
(Main contenders: Austin, Las Vegas, Mexico City)
I could try to come up with some objective-seeming quantitative metric and then show how Montreal meets all of those and comes out on top, but it might not, and I don’t think that’s generally how people make decisions anyway.
For me, Montreal does very well on a lot of dimensions I care about and then has some unique and special qualities which put it at the top of the list.
Weather in the winter is somewhat of a downside, but the city and province seem to have dealing with large amounts of snow and extreme cold worked out about as well as Scandinavian cities. There is a robust plowing and snow-removal system in place, salt and grit are consistently applied, and the downtown core is connected through underground tunnels (an extension of metro stations and basements which have grown together. It’s called the Underground City or RÉSO and is quite extensive.
Actually having 4 seasons does have benefits — parasites tend to be killed off by the extreme cold, and it encourages more robust structures to deal with a variety of conditions. Aside from Singapore, the “equatorial paradox” is real. From April to maybe October, the weather is for me ideal.
One of the most obvious aspects of Montreal (and Quebec generally) is the French language, unlike most of the rest of the Americas. It’s not horrible if you only speak English, at least as a short-term tourist; it does seem like learning French is important for living there or having more substantial social interactions. Fortunately, French is a relatively easy language for native English speakers (mine is horrible; I did a couple years of high school French long ago). Unlike the stories (which are mostly about other parts of the province, not Montreal), there are no problems in shops or other establishments with using English.
Food — a benefit of French heritage is excellent food. In many ways, I prefer Montreal to most of France on this dimension — I’ve never had a bad meal here. There is everything from amazing Asian food (especially Chinese and Vietnamese), to varied and excellent middle eastern, to better Jamaican/other Caribbean than I find in Puerto Rico (for non-PR food). There is also a great fine dining scene, and prices are generally 1/3 to 1/2 what you’d pay in New York or San Francisco for the same meal.
There are lots of festivals and other events in the city. The best hardware reverse engineering conference in the world (REcon) is held in the summer; a major circus and comedy festival happens at the same time.
There are plenty of solid hotels, including numerous of the 4-5 star big corporate chain hotels I tend to prefer.
The Canadian dollar is pretty weak compared to the US dollar, so prices for everything are quite reasonable as a visitor.
Infrastructure generally is good to great. YUL airport is very nice (if a bit far from the city, and badly connected by high speed transit), which makes sense for the city home to the ICAO. YUL has incredibly cheap flights to Paris ($1k or so business class on Air France or Air Canada, sometimes; about half the price from New York), as well as plenty of cheap flights to the rest of North America. Oddly, often most expensive to fly elsewhere in Canada vs. flying to US cities. Power is inexpensive (hydro), water is good, roads are good.
Demographics are interesting — it seems like a younger population than many other North American cities, but that is probably just a function of where I tend to visit (downtown). It seems like a better place to raise a family than other parts of Canada.
The biggest drawbacks don’t really affect me as a tourist — high unemployment and somewhat higher regulation of certain industries than elsewhere in Canada.
Quebec overall has excellent residency to citizenship programs for skilled immigrants. (It’s 3 of 5 past years residency to get citizenship, and Quebec Investor Program and some other programs help with getting initial residency.)
(Getting ready for SHOT Show today and for the rest of the week; will probably post a few times about interesting stuff I see there over the next couple days. Generally I’m bored of firearms themselves, but medical, logistical, and tech stuff are more interesting to me.)