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Our situation: 2 young kids, 2 adults (mid 30's), remote workers, anglophone but willing and wanting to invest the time to gradually become bilingual, 1 car for the family
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Neighborhood considerations:basically looking for something sort of like a few of the less commercial neighborhoods in Portland (woodstock, st. johns, sellwood, mt tabor), but you know, with more diversity and better schools
Unhurried pace - don't want to always be trying to find parking including for errands and at home, also don't want to feel rushed and lacking private mental / physical space all the time
Public elementary school quality - strong french curriculum schools that aren't impossible to get into
Nature / green space / recreation - tree-lined streets would be nice, parks and playgrounds, fields, community centers, pools, etc.
Housing - houses > than apartments, porch or small amount of back yard ideal, no garages or even necessarily driveways, decent housing quality, have laundry in house
Diverse & not rich - don't want to be somewhere homogenous, boring, and/or snooty / status-y, also want things to be somewhat affordable
Walkable - for most daily needs and amenities (groceries, park, restaurants, school, gym)
Public transit - want the option of not using a car at least 50% of the time, and without it being a major inconvenience, not just to get downtown, but also to other nearby neighborhoods or other parts of the city
Chance to regularly practice french - don't want to be so isolated in anglophone area that we never really have to learn more than the basics, but also can't really handle diving headfirst into immersion at this stage in our lives either (can barely get a shower in many days trying to keep up with work and kids)... hope to integrate and invest a lot more time as kids get a little older
Community & good people - friendly, open-minded people with sense of community where it is easier to build social relationships
Easy to get to outdoors / adventure - hiking, mountain biking, skiing, water, etc. with car
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Some Montreal impressions from online:
NDG seems to check a lot of these boxes but maybe be just slightly slightly too close in to the city it seems?
West Island seems maybe slightly too far given some of the comments about I've seen on lack of diversity, commute times and public transit availability, but I also don't have a good handle on various areas that fall under this umbrella and how they are different.
Not opposed to being off-island if the fit is right, especially due to some of the "best places to live" rankings, but their methodology seems biased towards wealthy a bit
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Any help or suggestions for us to check out when we come do our scouting visit? Thanks for any input!
I'd move into NDG then after you have familiarized yourself with the city you could always move to a more favorable location if NDG isnt what you want. ya gotta start somewhere. NDG has 2 metro stations and many bus lines into the city center, west island is all about the car and the traffic chaos that brings, south shore is also about traffic chaos. https://www.google.ca/search?biw=109...30.08lyP1bBaWA
i used to live in Austin, TX which I believe is similar to Portland and I've also visited Portland a couple of times.
Unhurried pace - it's much faster than Portland in any part of Montreal or the suburbs, that's for god damn sure. This is the Northeast after all. On the flip side, there's more buzz and urban feel to it.
Nature / green space / recreation - Montreal is very urban and even some of the suburbs don't have much nature. There are parks and trees throughout the city but they are URBAN parks, so it will only be as green and forested as it would be in a city of 4 million. For wilderness-level of nature, you need to travel around 1 hour by car. Even then, don't expect west coast level of natural beauty.
Community & good people - You can't expect something you'd expect in Portland. Montrealers are city folks and city folks can sometimes lack the community spirit or sense of solidarity between residents. It's all relative but you are not going to experience people going out of their way to be nice to strangers because we are all in a hurry.
Chance to regularly practice french - You gotta swallow the pill and go full immersion. You cannot half-ass it. You gotta take a dive into French immersion. Otherwise, your French will not improve because most Montrealers speak English fairly well. They will not talk to you in French if it's inconvenient for them to do so. I lived in Montreal for 5 years and my French is still not functional despite having taken classes. Most of my friends are francophone but they talk to me in English so I never learn.
Public Transportation and walkability - This is totally a breeze. The city is compact and the subway system is great. You combine the subway + bus + bicycle + carsharing progrom and you definitely don't need a car.
Chance to regularly practice french - You gotta swallow the pill and go full immersion. You cannot half-ass it. You gotta take a dive into French immersion. Otherwise, your French will not improve because most Montrealers speak English fairly well. They will not talk to you in French if it's inconvenient for them to do so. I lived in Montreal for 5 years and my French is still not functional despite having taken classes. Most of my friends are francophone but they talk to me in English so I never learn.
Yep, same thing here: 5 years in Mtl, took classes, but half-ass French. I think the best for the *full immersion* would be Quebec City, (or any rural Quebec community for that matter, where they look at you like a deer in a headlight if you speak English), but other than that meh.
Oh, this is a funny film: Quebecois snowbirds in Florida. Listen to their French... I found this movie funny in a tongue-in-cheek way...
Okay, I'm back after our visit. It was a blitz, and we had kids with us so were only able to explore a bit.
TOP POTENTIAL CANDIDATES:
Lachine
South Shore (St. Lambert, Longueuil, Brossard)
I think the realization when we were visiting is that you still could REALLY use or need cars to get around with kids in large parts of the city on a daily basis, so why not move somewhere where parking and traffic for daily errands (school dropoffs, grocery, gym/pool/park etc.) would be less of an issue. For sure we sacrifice a few things with this list like walkability and diversity, but hopefully we gain more in more affordable housing stock with storage, garages, play space for kids etc. and fewer daily headaches.
Any further advice?
NDG and Verdun were nice too, just maybe slightly overcrowded for us. St. Laurent, at least the Bois-Franc area, was nice but sort of cookie cutter and detached from the city / MTL experience / commerce. Didn't make it to Outrememont, unfortunately. Also liked edges of Westmount that bled into NDG, but for the $$, some of the same considerations apply.
The things we liked about south shore and lachine were being slightly more spread out and less hectic, but still not super isolated suburby feeling like further out on the West Island. Don't know much about elementary schools in Lachine, but I know that South Shore is supposed to have pretty good public ones. Wondering if Lachine is less diverse than say Brossard. Definitely Lachine would enable us to stay in our comfort zone with English, while South Shore would provide more opportunities work on our French. Both areas are still within about a 45-minute bus or public transit commute downtown.
The public transit service of the City of Châteauguay is managed by the RTM secteur Sud-Ouest. Guaranteeing a regular service, 7 days a week, the RTM also offers rush hour service, from Monday to Friday for traveling to work as quickly as possible. A bus every 10 minutes and more than forty rush-hour departures will take you in less than 30 minutes to Montreal, thanks to the reserved lanes.
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