Well there are some people who may ignore you - or worse - in the same way for example that some racists might with those of other races but stuff like that can happen anywhere.

I lived with my Quebec wife and her family for several months in Longueuil, on Montreal's South Shore. I was never acknowledged by the neighbours in the apartment building.

Whoever delivered the newspapers left my Montreal Gazette on the outside doorstep while the French papers were left outside the individual doors.

Never a problem in the city itself though.

No, it isn't like that. In some places it will be but they are not places you are likely to move to!

People do speak French constantly, which is fair enough. They are francophone, after all. I've never had a problem with people switching to English.

I've had fun with it. I can speak French quite well, although I'm not fully bilingual. People just assume that I can't. A few weeks ago I was having a beer in my yard with our neighbour, a bilingual franco-Ontarian that we've known for about a decade. She only ever speaks to me in English. I suddenly switched to fluid French. Her jaw dropped!

Officially Bilingual New Brunswick is very hit and miss too. Along the Acadian Peninsula there is a lot of French spoken, and in Dieppe over by Moncton, but here in Fredericton, practically none. I am currently doing quite a bit of temping for NB Associations who are holding conferences, they 'must' have a French speaker on the welcome desk, but they aren't too easy to come by, as they are all in Government jobs. It's funny, in France I would have said I was an intermediate speaker, but here they all say I'm 'fully bilingual' which gives me pause for thought about how serious linguistically the rest of them are Acadian vocabulary is a little challenging however.

Here it seems to me to be like a club membership, you go in somewhere converse with them in French, have a laugh and a joke, pat each other on the back for ten minutes and then they are all happy to move into English...they just seem to need the reassurance they you 'can' do it and are willing.

I can find some empathy for that. My missus can't understand Acadians either!

Saint-Antoine is pretty much francophone*, & mostly quite suburban (to my mind) depending on which "end" of it you're looking at. *For example: don't expect people to spontaneously speak English in everyday life/transactions (supermarket, neighbours, property owners/managers etc).

There's a bus from St-Jérôme which passes through St-Antoine to Metro Montmorency for commuting, also a bus from St-J which connects to the train de banlieu in Blainville.

Other than Hudson, most of the other places you mention are quite suburb-y too... Is that what you're looking for?

OH used to live in Hudson, now lives just West of there, & commuted (by car) to Mtl for decades.

If/when you come over for a recce trip, do feel free to contact me for a coffee/meet-up/pick my brains session .

You probably will, unless you work in/for an big international (usually American) company, or in certain sectors (IT comes to mind), or small businesses situated in Anglo enclaves...

That's a tad "optimistic", IMO & experience. Qc is officially & legally unilingual French.

Whether one agrees or not, an employee or coworker who can't/won't speak English is perfectly within his/her rights. OP should expect to be able/required to interview for a job AND function at work in French, & be pleasantly surprised if that is not the case. Unless, of course, s/he already has a job lined up with one of the workplaces/sectors I mentioned above where English predominates.

To finish: I'd echo the posters who have said rent & live in the city on arrival, & take time to visit the various areas mentioned outside the city before committing to a house purchase.

I would compare it to going to Wales ......

....... you walk into a shop in a small village and may be ignored if you cannot speak Welsh OR the people there might be fluently bilingual and switch to English to serve you, OR they may be English-speaking.

Sometimes you aren't sure which until you actually speak to them.

My mother-i-l was born in Wales, spoke no English until she went to school at age 6, lived only in Welsh-speaking areas until she was 18 so spoke Welsh in the community and English at school, but became fluently bilingual. She had no Welsh accent when speaking English, and I'm told by others that she had no English accent when speaking Welsh. But we were and are well aware of areas in Wales where Welsh is the preferred language.


In the past, we have been into small general-type shops in the old town area of Montreal, lots of tourists around, and the shop assistant (??owner) would speak only French ..... and Quebec French at that. Our daughter was quite fluent at that time, but she had been taught Parisian French at school here, and she and the shop keeper had some problems communicating

In all honesty these are just the areas that have caught our eye so far, I don't think we will know for sure until we visit and actually have a look at the areas mentioned however monteregie is currently our favourite. Obviously though we are completely open to suggestions of other areas!

Do you know how long it took to commute on average a day?

Oh we defo will! I believe it will be early next year maybe around march time!


That's fine we can speak basic now as we learnt it years ago at school... just need to revisit it so we can speak it more fluently.

Yeah we have been looking at renting in Ville-marie for the first year so that we can get settled in and sort out all the important stuff before sorting out our own home