Our First Weeks in Montreal: Of Tough Beginnings and Happy Endings

The first steps are always the hardest…

We were off to a rough start in Montreal.
Of course I was aware of the harsh winters in here. That was also the first thing everyone told me when I said I was going to move to Montreal „oh its really cold there in winter!“. And my answer would always be “yes but we move there in spring, so we’ll have enough time getting to know the city and places we can go inside once the cold season arrives“. Not quite right though.

I’ll be honest (and this will not please the proud Montrealer) but I was far from impressed with the city in the beginning. I had heard of numerous people who initially moved to Montreal for a year and ended up staying there forever.

I was not naive enough to think that I’d move there and would love it right away not wanting to go home again. I had traveled around the world for one year before and I know that even though this is a fantastic experience, it sucks in the beginning. Everyone who did it knows that mostly the first night alone away from home is spent crying into the pillow.
Now, of course, we moved together as a family, so I did not feel quite as lonely as I did when I went traveling. But still, I felt detached and misplaced at first, asking myself if we made the right decision.

What really helped though, was that the moment I set foot in our new Mile End apartment, I did feel at home. I cannot say why this was, but somehow it just felt like this place was made for us. But the day after we arrived, Liya got ill with the stomach flue and short after I got tonsillitis.

While in Switzerland people enjoyed the early start of what was going to be an exceptionally hot summer, in Montreal there was still snow on the side of the streets and it snowed about every other day. And somehow I had not expected this.

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New and Weird

Also, I had not expected the dirt. The street sides were filthy, the melting snow started to reveal all the mess of the past months which gathered beneath it and from the very naked and skeletal trees hung plastic bags and other waste blown there by the wind.

I travel a lot but there are things you only start to register once you spend a particular amount of time somewhere. I was shocked by how badly the infrastructure was maintained. Most roads displayed huge holes. There is this story of the hole outside our house. They came once in summer to exchange some pipes. The hole was in the middle of the Walkway so people mostly had to cross the street to get around it. They worked for one or two days on the pipes, then they left the open hole with a cordon so no one would fall in for about two months without anyone taking care of it anymore. One day someone closed it off put the cordon aside, where it was left, waiting for pick-up and making several people trip over until the end of fall. Amazing!
Furthermore, most cars looked like they might fall apart any minute, totally rusted and missing whole parts. Of course, the climate and especially the crazy changes between warm and cold as well as all the snow and the salt in winter do not help. Still, to me it was unbelievable that people would drive them! I would start taking pictures of cars missing whole (you would think essential) parts, because people at home wouldn’t believe me otherwise. And then there were these stairs everywhere, but hardly any ramps or elevators even on official buildings. I wouldn’t want to be in a wheelchair in this city and frankly, it was not that funny with a stroller either.

Then, there is always style. This is something I love to analyze wherever I go. Normally I’m quickly intrigued by new styles, especially by social style differences, but the way people dressed here, and particularly in Mile End, where there is a young, very individualistic crowd, seemed very strange to me. I was most amazed about the broken shoes. It seemed to be a thing here. I had never before seen so many people walk in totally torn up shoes and to date I have not figured out wether the reason for wearing them is style, ignorance or poverty. Also, once temperatures rose, a very high density of tattoos appeared and those tattoos were thick-lined and very dark. At first I thought “how ugly” but then the psychological effect of liking what you see a lot got me and in the end I was thinking of getting one myself – as a souvenir, you know.

This all made me suddenly very much aware of my foreign origin. I had the feeling everything about me screamed European and sometimes I didn’t know if I had just made a behavioral mistake or not. For instance, at the supermarket there is always a cashier as well as someone who packs all your groceries in a bag. They ask me if I needed a bag but since I always bring my own, I just handed those to the packer. After he had given me, what I interpreted as a weird look (maybe it was just a normal Canadian look), I suddenly thought that they maybe only pack things into the bag if you buy one of theirs. Maybe I had been really rude, behaving in a way no Canadian would. Such situations and thoughts were very common in the beginning.

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Language barriers

And then there was the language. Yes, all Montrealers are perfectly bilingual. If their English is bad, they are most probably French people who moved to Montreal, if their French is bad they are mostly non-Quebecois-Canadians who moved here.
My French was mediocre at most when we came here. We obviously learn French in school in Switzerland but after that I had never used it anymore except from the occasional vacations in France and one very embarrassing job interview where they forced me to recite my CV in french which resulted in me blushing to the color of a sun-dried tomato.

When you enter a store or a restaurant in Montreal, they always greet you with “bonjour, hi” and you get to choose which way to go. But beware, don’t go bonjour if your French is not good enough. They would go “Ça va bienggggg?” in their very nasal Quebecois and then a waterfall of incomprehensible sound would flood over you. Therefore I always chose the safe English route, which was fine until my French friend, who had moved to Montreal about the same time as we did, told me that people seem to be very rude to me and that she thinks it’s because of me not speaking French. I was flabbergasted. I hadn’t even realized that people were rude to me. Having lived in Zurich my whole life I find rudeness in service personal very normal and even gives me a pleasant feeling of home. Still, it bugged me, so from then on I started speaking more French.
Also, the yoga classes are usually bilingual, so they tell half of the stuff in French and the other half in English, which results in me knowing now all the body party in French as well. Yet, when it comes to other conversations than listing my body parts (which is the minority of my conversations) it doesn’t go much further than two sentences and then I have to switch to English again but at least I try and mostly they acknowledge it. Are they now friendlier? Who cares! Do I feel better about it? Yes, absolutely, I feel like I am part of the community.

Mommy alone in Montreal

The moment Niels started work, it really hit me what I had agreed to. I was left alone with two little children in a two-bedroom-apartment in a city that I did not know and the weather wasn’t very inviting to spend a lot of time outside either. What were we supposed to do here? I remember some excursions to playgrounds in the area. We were mostly the only ones there, very seldom joined by a jewish family but always cold and wet after a short time, the kids eventually crying and asking to go home again. Life looked and felt rather gloomy.

After a while Liya started to ask when she could go back to daycare. I told her that we first need to find one but I also understood that always playing home with me and her little sister had to be boring. I had been told that Canadians do not go to playgrounds with this weather but later I also realized that most Canadian children are in daycare 5 days a week and only go to playgrounds either with their daycare during the day or later in the afternoon with their parents.

Every day we went out and explored a bit further away from home trying to visit new playgrounds in the area. Fortunately there were plenty and they all offered different toys. What restricted our outings was the cold and the fact that the Metro in Montreal does not have an elevator in every station and the stairs were way too steep. Liya walked well but she was scared quickly when it got steep or slippery, Kenzie did not walk at all. The only way we could move around with public transport was the bus. Still I tried to avoid it because I felt super uncomfortable with my big stroller in the tight bus. There are designated areas for wheelchairs and strollers but people mostly don’t bother to get up from the foldable seats in those areas, and I would park the stroller in the alley which annoyed most everyone who needed to get in or out of the bus.

One evening, it had been a challenging day with both kids being in a defiant age, empty playgrounds and no end of the cold season in sight, I had enough. I missed my mommy friends. Those girls who had children the same age as mine who knew how it all felt. We had been by each others side since short after the births of our first kids. We can be open and honest without judging or being judged. I missed these talks where I would tell about such a day and about the kids and my friends would just know what I am talking about and by being there and showing their understanding, they would make everything better. I missed them! So I decided to take action and posted in an app called “Meetup”. The App connects you with like-minded people by offering groups of different topics. I decided to post a proposal to meet with other moms in Le Plateau Area.
Short after, I did actually meet with four women who had responded. Even though it was not the perfect match (They were all very nice but our interests varied because they were all mothers of only one and much smaller children) it still gave me an energy boost. I realized it just took more effort from my side. I was no longer in my comfort zone called Zurich where I knew it all. I had to get out and become active.

Still, there were evenings, where I doubted wether we had taken the right decision by coming here. I had said goodbye to people and a life I loved and I had given up a job I liked very much for this. Sometimes it all seemed wrong.

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Exploring and learning

We tried to fill the time with exploring and hiding from the cold. We found a fantastic Dim Sum place (one of our favorites to this date) where we would go on Sunday mornings to stuff our faces with dumplings until we’d explode of bliss. I went with the kids to botanical gardens to see an exhibition of free flying butterflies. We went to the city center and to the mall and one weekend, when we were officially fed up with the cold, we took a plane to Washington DC for a time out and in search of spring.

Also, my mother came to visit for Liya’s Birthday in the beginning of May. We visited the Eco Museum, a zoo that harbors local animals only. We visited the old town and explored our own neighborhood even further. But still, there was the occasional touch of feeling homesick, for example when we watched Sechsilüüte in Zurich while outside in Montreal it was raining ice. 

What also turned out to be more challenging than expected was shopping for groceries and very normal household items. I now suddenly understood Niels who in the beginning of living in Switzerland always said he didn’t like to shop at Migros because he did not know the brands and products there. 
At first, it would take me ages to find what I needed or sometimes I would not find it at all and the sales person would look at me like I was crazy when I asked about it. Things that are normal and used very frequently at home seem to be non-existent here. There is no such thing as rolled out pastry dough to make your own pizza without having to make your own dough.
Laundry detergent for hand wash or delicate wash that protects the fabric also doesn’t seem to exist. There is detergent that protects the skin, the environment, the washing machine but NONE that protects the fabric. I have a jumper that is half its size by now – I blame the detergent I had to use here!

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Slowly it all fell into place

But we were super happy with the neighborhood we chose to live in. When we started looking for an apartment, still back in Switzerland, we did not know where it was best to live in Montreal. My condition was not to live in a suburb, where I needed a car (I don’t like to drive). I wanted to live such, that I can do grocery shopping, going to playgrounds and to the city center either by foot or with the public transport. After some research we gathered that Mile End was a very young and hip area, so we concentrated our search on this part of the city. We almost signed a lease for a place in Atwater at one point, which would also have been great but at a totally other end of Montreal. Finally, we found the place we are renting now, in the heart of Mile End, which in turn is a part of Le Plateau. And I am so happy we did! The moment the days started to become warmer and playgrounds started to fill up more and more, it also seemed that people started to crawl out of theirs holes. We then realized that he had moved in a little village within the city. After returning from the Netherlands at the end of May, spring had definitely arrived and we got to realize that in almost every house in our street there were families with children (where they had hidden during our first two months I did not know). Within a few weeks we met numerous families living around us. And we had found a very close playground that turned out to be the go to playground for all families of Mile End. After a while we would know most of the parents who came there regularly and we’d have our ritual of getting a coffee for mommy first at Le Butterblume take-out (where I also knew the Lady by her first name at the end of summer) and then hit the local playground.

Also, by the beginning of June, we found a daycare that agreed to take the girls for three days instead of the usual minimum of five days a week.

Short after we arrived in Montreal we started to call Liya the daycare junky. Every daycare we would pass she asked whether she could go there. She particularly took to one daycare, which we would pass almost daily on our way to the playground. I found it a rather sad-looking place with a „garden“ out front right next to a super busy three-lane street but she thought it looked like heaven. In general, the daycare system is pretty different to what I was used to. At one daycare we looked at, the woman told me that it was a scandal that Liya was not yet potty trained – apparently for Canadian standards, having just turned three was way too old for diapers.

I had been told that the waitinglists for daycares were very long and that it was nearly impossible to get into a public daycare (CPE). Mothers here sign up once they are three months pregnant and finally get their spot by the time the baby turns two. Based on such stories I was amazed that we got invited to look at daycares at all and I didn’t think it possible to find something in due time. Also, the fact that daycares in principal only offered care for 5 days a week worried me a bit. I didn’t want to miss too much of my girls while I knew it would be good for them and me to have some days where they can play with and get inputs from other children while I get to have some time to myself.
Eventually we were lucky. A new and very big daycare would open in June relatively close to where we lived and we got to sign a contract there for three days a week.

I would call this actually the beginning of our settlement in Montreal because once the kids started daycare we started to develop a routine, we started to become a part of the community, I found a yoga studio where I took regular classes. At this studio they offered a Family yoga class where we went to Saturday mornings to start our weekend and where we met a bunch of people that eventually turned into friends. I feel like this was the point where it all fell into place and started to feel like normal life again. 

Welcome to our new life in Canada!

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