One Thing I’ve Learned from Every Place I’ve Lived: Montréal, Québec (Ep. 6)
Somewhere in the beginning of 2024, I had the idea for this theme. I’ve lived in quite a few cities in the last 10 years, some of them dreams fulfilled and others happy accidents. Most of these places were my homes for a year or more, while a couple of them ended up being just a few months. But each one was meaningful in its own unique way and has left me with lifelong memories—good, bad, monumental, uneventful—and lessons learned.
In this series, which I’ve decided to separate by “episodes”, I’m going to choose just one of those lessons to ruminate on and, in a way, to symbolize my personal attachment to each place. These posts will be complemented by some hopefully fun (possibly funny) throwback pictures too, of course!
Episode Six: Doing the Most
I’ve long said that Montreal seemed like a place that could suit me and my little family. We had only visited once, for just a couple of days, but something about it felt right. So when my husband and I got an opportunity to move there temporarily, we didn’t hesitate to say YES!
What was intended to be a much longer stay turned out to last just under seven months (it’s a long story), but even though there were many experiences we didn’t get to have during our time living in Montreal, I can’t say that I have any regrets. Those months were bookended by moving stress and a sense of instability, yet I found a kind of peace there that was new to me, especially in a place of which I had very little knowledge and where I had no family or friends, at the start.
I found it easy to fall in love with Montreal. In many ways, the city felt like a blend of lifestyles that I knew—American and French—along with elements of uniquely Canadian and specifically Québecois culture. There were adaptations to make and still plenty of things to learn, but it felt like a small leap from my familiar, not a pole vault. I fell into a comfortable mindset and routine before I’d even had a chance to play tourist, but this would turn out to be a lesson in disguise: you don’t have to maximize every moment to truly “get the most” out of a day, a week, a month, or an era. (Pardon my Swiftism—I just can’t help it.)
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a set of goals in my sights—some of them realistic, some vague and larger than life—and I’ve always been impatient to accomplish them. It’s a common problem (thus, sayings like “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey”, credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson); and it can lead to an unhealthy obsession with productivity. That doesn’t mean I’m always productive, of course: I’ve learned how to take breaks, and I’m no stranger to the kind of overwhelm that envelops when you want so badly to get somewhere seemingly unattainable that you don’t manage to do anything at all. This phenomenon leads to burnout, and I was in a pretty severe state of it by the time I arrived in Montreal.
Changing cities gave me something else to focus on, other goals to set for myself and, ideally, achieve without too much added stress. I spoke both of Montreal’s primary languages, English and French, fluently already. Necessities like transportation, errands to the grocery store, and daily interactions with locals and visitors alike instantly felt familiar to me. There were things I missed from New York, as there always are when you’ve left a little piece of your heart behind in a place, but Montreal offered many of the same things that I loved and, for every thing it lacked, offered something else enticing instead.
It felt small, compared to the cities where I had spent the last several years of my life. New York City and Paris are two of the most-visited places in the world, and they could fill guidebooks with their famous landmarks and museums that tourists flock to by the thousands. Montreal, on the other hand, felt more discreet. After a few months wandering its streets, when my friends from abroad would ask me about my favorite things to do, I found myself describing beautiful walks that I’d taken; restaurants, shops, or markets that I’d visited; festivals or events that had taken place for a few summer days or weeks and would only be back the following year. I would have probably discovered grander attractions if I’d been able to stay longer, of course—but this is also part of what made Montreal such a joy to call home.
My days featured hard work and productivity; they also featured passion projects, soul searching, and experimentation, as well as rest and calm. After an entire month or even season in Montreal, I found myself looking back through photos and videos and finding only sprinklings of time spent truly indulging in my new landscape; the rest catalogued happy moments of…normalcy. Simplicity. The kind of memories I might make of a place that I knew well already. The comfort I felt every day was reflected in this easy appreciation of the little things.
At the same time, I experienced so much! I explored Vieux-Montréal (Old Montreal) and strolled along the beautiful port. I visited the Redpath Museum and walked the campus of McGill University. I trekked to the top of the Mont-Royal Park and took pictures of the city from the viewpoint. I enjoyed summer festivals, international fireworks displays, and a free concert in the park. I took a day trip to Quebec City, and I spent a weekend hiking in Mont-Tremblant. Yet, looking back, there were many weeks when I did nothing exciting at all. My few social media updates were of food, my cats, a book; snapshots of the city itself showcased in streets, signs, cafés, and parks. Montreal has its own kind of beauty and charm, one that was most gratifying not when I made lists of sites to see and things to do, but when I simply enjoyed the environment it had to offer.
The key that I plucked from all of this is moderation: in my goals, in my mindset, in my discovery of new places when I’m traveling or moving (yet again!). While I love romanticizing adventures through aesthetic vlogs and picturesque photos—which I also made in Montreal, in small doses—I found a different kind of magic in the moments in between. I may not have maximized my time during those months, seeing everything there was to see, doing everything there was to do…but I left that stage of my life feeling more fulfilled and inspired than I had in a very long time.
