111–119 of 119 posts
I live in Montreal. One thing that is remarkable here is that even with 2M people, there are no ghettoes. Rich neighborhoods are generally mixed in with poorer ones. It's a great city to live in and to raise a family.
Besides absolutely miserable winters, french-enfrocement for businesses and chronic low-ball salaries for high tech jobs. However summers are lovely albeit short, old Montreal is cute, and yes, cousine is delicious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most countries have language skills requirements for immigrants though, and language isn't an intrinsic part of a person but can be learned, so language skills requirements certainly aren't racist.
Canada is so heavily reliant on immigration that what's classified as barely passing English is enough to move to the suburbs of Vancouver and Toronto. There would be so much backlash in Vancouver if a bill like Quebec's Bill 96 passed to prevent first generation Hindi or Mandarin speakers from communicating to their doctors in anything but English. Quebec's actions are racist. They literally try to exit Canada with…
However, doctors now have to be able to communicate in French and English along with any other language they wish.
Independence sentiment in a province annexed through war, even if it was long ago, and that has kept a different identity, has very little too do with racism it seems to me.
As someone who lived in Canada but isn't Canadian, there is so much disinformation regarding Québec in the rest of Canada, and not uncommonly outright hate, that the often heard claims of racism are very ironic.
Quoted post unavailable.
https://montreal.citynews.ca/2022/05/08/quebec-language-law-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really no, there's been a bump which studies seem to agree is an aftereffect of COVID, but the media is also paying more attention to it. There's always been some amount of shootings and stabbings in Montreal, and 99% of Montreal is safe during night time. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2021001/article... https://spvm.qc.ca/upload/02/2021_Activity_Report_SPVM_EN_VF...
euh thanks for proving my point lol have you read the report ? "À Montréal, en 2021, ceux-ci ont augmenté de 17,3 % par rapport à la moyenne de 2016 à 2020. Les homicides et les tentatives de meurtre ont augmenté de façon importante et la problématique de la violence armée contribue très certainement à ce portrait. En effet, la moitié des homicides et des tentatives de meurtre commis sur le territoire du SPVM en 2021…
Homicide rate per 100,000 population in 2021 [1]: - Montreal 1.11 - Toronto 2.08 - Vancouver 2.16
The US average hovers around 5 [2].
[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=351000...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
Rent is cheap because people are leaving the xenophobic environment. There's always some referendum talk on a 20 year cycle to keep the rates low, 70s, 90, 10s. So yeah there's a huge Brain Drain from Anglo/English speaking Immigrant populations, as well as people fed up with the corruption.
Wow, what a take. I seriously doubt that people in Montreal/Quebec are more or less xenophobic than the average North American; if you have data supporting this I'd be happy to change my mind. Also please be more skeptical of thoughts of the form "X is Y because of hot take Z". Reality is complex and things have many causes. Montreal has a long history of doing city planning differently than other cities in Canada.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-real-estate...
As for examples of xenophobia, I don't know of any other places where they have a separate language police, I know personally of non-white owned stores being harassed and fined for having the wrong accent on their french sign. There are countless politicians who've blamed immigrants for their woes, Jacques Parizeau being a famous one for blaming the Ethnic votes for their loss. CAQ just took a majority, look up Bill 21.
Anglo Brain Drain is a real thing too, and it's the major thing that's on some community's mind https://montrealgazette.com/news/brain-drain-brain-gain
Rent is cheap because people are leaving the xenophobic environment. There's always some referendum talk on a 20 year cycle to keep the rates low, 70s, 90, 10s. So yeah there's a huge Brain Drain from Anglo/English speaking Immigrant populations, as well as people fed up with the corruption.
Of all the places I've lived in and visited, Montreal was the only place so far where random people on the street had a problem with me, based on the way I look - got this way around the time the current government was elected. However, one thing to remember with rents is that the city mandates the percent of allowed rent increases plus it's nearly impossible to evict someone, which I suspect has a non trivial effect…
Can anyone explain this article to me? Why would America want to be like Montreal at all? A fair amount of US was built with some considerations in mind. I am not sure what Montreal has to offer here.
Montreal has probably the best public transit in north America. Can't think of anything else really.
Metro/Buses are great (except in the West Island of course)