Ignorance eradicated! Thanks.
Road cleaning tonight, so there’s nowhere to park, my coworker’s car is in the shop because of a pothole, and at one time, I considered applying to a program at a Cegep in Laval… if the metro ever gets there!
But DAMN I love it here!
I love the people, the shopping, the fact that nearly every street corner has some interesting shop or café or restaurant. I love the architecture of so much of the city, including my apartment (french doors! built-in buffet!) I love that, due to the constraints of being on an island, the city doesn’t sprawl for miles and miles (kilometres and kilometres!) the way Toronto does (seriously, the drive through Hamilton-Burlington-Oakville-Mississauga-Toronto-Scarborough-Pickering-Ajax-Whitby-Oshawa has got to be about as long and depressing as you can get!) I love that I can get a decent poutine pretty much anywhere (we were in serious withdrawal living in Hamilton). I love that my car insurance is cheaper! I love that I can get beer in a dépanneur (that people know what I mean when I say dépanneur!), and that we have 6 dépanneurs within a minute or two from our place, all with a different selection! I love that the pepperoni on the pizza is UNDER the cheese! I love the festivals, the Botanical Garden, and that on my drive to work, I get to look at rollercoasters (admittedly, possible in other cities, but ours are on an island!) I love the sheer number of activities we can do on any given day, even if I don’t do them.
Ok, I could kind of go on for a while, and a lot of it is more a condemnation of Hamilton than praise for Montréal, but while I knew I’d be a LOT happier here, I didn’t think it would get to me so much. I still smile on my commute home when I see that downtown skyline, and Mont Royal rising above it all, and I realise that “I live in Montreal!”
Quasimodal,
Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.
I didn’t go through the programme. I’m just an old jazz fan, the kind that even shows up for students’ workshops. I was a member of the long-defunct Montreal Jazz Association. I used to organize jazz soirees (and made sure everyone was paid over scale, and the guild got the contribution to the musicians’ pension fund.)
However, if you do come to Montreal this summer, a few of us will surely introduce you to musicians about town, a number of whom teach at McGill. Try to come around the time of the jazz fest.
Then I am not crazy! You feel it too! 
Just want to add that I feel that too, and have felt it since the first time I arrived in Montreal, decades ago.
Ahh Montreal, so easy to romanticize, especially if you’ve been gone a while…
-The McGill music program is excellent. Lots of cool people, though I probably know more people from Concordia who are actually working in the industry.
-Weather. Horrible. Really just brutal, though I suppose Saskatchewan is no treat. The dirty black slush is the worst.
-Roadwork. It takes about five years to get anything fixed in the city, so even though parts are quite beautiful, you will never, ever, ever be able to walk from Old Montreal to Mile End without coming across at least six construction sites. Not so nice for local businesses who get their sidewalks blocked or homeowners without soundproofed windows. I don’t see why they don’t just fix everything with red tape, since there seems to be so much on the island.
-Rents are ridiculously cheap for a cosmopolitan city.
-Lots of young, hot people. But plenty of assholes, be they bitter old timey francophones or obnoxious anglo out of towners (99 percent of whom attend mcgill).
-Tam Tams and Medieval battles at Mount Royal are really ridiculous but still sort of nice. Nothing like taking a picnic there in the summer and laughing (good naturedly) at all the hippies. On days like those, the winters (almost) seem worth it.
-The best-named strip club is Sex Caleche aka ‘Sex Buggy’ or ‘Sex Sleigh’. Obviously.