6
Yes, I’m a bit grouchy this weekend.
Living in Montreal has been interesting, challenging, frightening and exciting. Never dull. But sometimes there are some things that really bother me. Here they are in order of annoying-ness (the lower the number, the more said item bothers me).
1. Pretentious attitude. Montreal is a city of intelligent, talented, chic and artsy people and sometimes this results in a “better than thou” attitude. I guess this should not be surprising, I think it is a common feature to large cities everywhere. But in Montreal it seems to be a local sport to make fun of Alberta or people from Alberta. I can’t even recall the number of times I have heard people say “Who would want to live in Alberta?” or “those people from Alberta” or “Rednecks from Alberta”. Sometimes this is said directly to me, as if I am expected to jump up and say “oh yes I hate the place where I lived for 25 years and where my closest family lives”. Yeah. Well guess what, not everyone in the world is born in Montreal. Surprising isn’t it? People have to come from somehwere. Some of them come from Edmonton, some from Winnepeg, some from Vancouver, some from Liverpool, some from Munich, some from Shanghai, some from St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, some from Tehran. It happens. Yes, there are vegetarians, artists, and intellectuals and farmers in Alberta, just like Ontario and Quebec. The thing that bothers me about this is that if I were from another country I would be justified in calling this discrimination, but I doubt it would be taken seriously since being from Alberta is just one big joke here. Its not funny to me.
2. I don’t exist. When I got married, I took Dan’s last name, as is the common practice in most of the rest of the country. It was a choice that I had the freedom and right to make. The Government of Canada knows me as Karen X. I have published articles as Karen X. My friends and family know me as Karen X. My passport is issued to Karen X. My co-workers & employer know me as Karen X. My bank, my landlord, and the utility companies I pay know me as Karen X. But almost all of my ID now bears the name Karen Y. Why? Apparently it is (or was) illegal for married women to take their husband’s names in Quebec, the result being that I must use my maiden name for my health card, driver’s licence, student ID cards etc. So whenever I have to sign up for something I have a very hard time proving who I am. Given Montreal’s obsession with having a telephone or hydro bill with your name on it at all times so that you can get library cards and vote makes it particularly difficult, as these are issued to an imaginary person, Karen X, who has no ID bearing her name. Also, a person’s name is what identifies them. It isn’t a nice feeling to be constantly called by a name that is not yours.
3. Leases. Somebody had the brilliant idea that all rental accomodations in Montreal should require leases and they all should expire on the same day. The result? You must plan your life in 12-month intervals and should you need to move (let’s say you finish university and get a job in Toronto), you are responsible for finding another tenant or paying the outstanding rent. So our hypothetical tenant could end up paying 11 months in rent if (s)he cannot find a subletter. I’m not saying that all landlords are evil and that all tenants are victimized by this, but it does leave the poorest members of society in a very akward and expensive bind. It also makes the competition for getting the nicest apartments very fierce. In Alberta leases are optional (the landlord chooses to have one or not) and if one has not signed a lease a month’s notice is sufficient.
4.The health care system. As bad as I found it in AB, I have to say its worse here, at least in metro Montreal. The concept of preventative medicine does not exist here and one may find oneself with a doctor who does not speak sufficient English to obtain reliable health advice. Also it is assumed the paitent wants to know nothing about why or how they may have fallen ill and such information is never supplied, even when requested. Forget Alberta’s attempt to allow private health care. Its alive and well here in Quebec.
5. The aforementioned issue of inaccessible French lessons for Canadians not from Quebec.
6. Rudeness. Holy crap people (by this I mean strangers one interacts with on a daily basis) are rude here. I haven’t been bumped, pushed, talked down to, ignored and insulted like I have been here. I guess this is normal for big cities but still, I’m a believer in the friendliness of Canadians and it has been a bit disapponting here.
7. Pollution. The air quality here is quite bad. Again, not a surprise for a major urban centre. Air conditioning is really a requirement. Its bloody hot here in the summer and if you don’t have AC its enough to make one ill or exhausted after a simple commute home and cooking during the summer is out of the question.
8. The centralized automobile agency (SAAQ). There are 3 (count them, 3) places on the entire island of Montreal where you can get your liscence renewed. None of them are easily accessible to public transit, so if you happen to be someone who doesn’t own a car but wants to have a driver’s liscence (to rent a car for a trip or perhaps to rent a truck to move you stuff on July 1st when you lease expires) it means a long trek and a long wait.
9. The provincial sales tax. I’m just being whiny, but I’m not used to this at all. It makes the cost of living a lot higher. Also the amount of tax taken off one’s salary. Its simply ridicuolous.
10. Ghettos. Again, not a surprising thing to find in a major urban centre but nonetheless disappointing to see. Usually these don’t have good public services (poor transit links, few grocery options) which make things worse for those who can’t afford to live elsewhere. They are usually dismal, have few or no clean parks, and the streets and small patches of half-dead grass covered with garbage (oops I mean nighbourhood parks) are rarely cleaned by the city.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m definately not saying Alberta is the best place in the world to live and everything is perfect there. Far from it! There are some good things about living in Alberta (yes, its true!) and some bad things. Some of the bad include:
1. Premier Ralph Klein. Nothing more needs to be said.
2. The now defunct Alberta Report aka the Report Newsmagazine (now morphed into the CCFD). I was given a yearly subscription to this by a well-meaning friend several years ago. All I can say is wow. To be honest, it was not all bad. Sometimes there were some well-thought out and balanced articles, but unfortunately they were few and far between. The rest of the magazine was filled with crap like “Women love big government” and “The Charter of Freedoms makes Canada a country of Whiners” (This one was a real gem. It described how the female gender never shuts up about how they have supposedly been “abused since the beginning of time” – yeah ok…).
3. The cost of heating and electricity. Electricity was deregulated , as was natural gas, resulting in bills twice their usual size. We paid up to $260 per month to heat the house we rented in Edmonton, on top of ther $120 for water, sweage, electricity, garbage and recycling and the $80 per month for phone and internet. That doesn’t include food and rent – expect another $1000 or so for that. Its simply not affordable … even with the rebates!
4. The weather. Alberta (aside from the chinook-y areas in the south) has 2 seasons: winter and not winter. Not the standard 4. Fall is about a week long. Boo.
5. Urban sprawl. There’s lots of space, so why not use it? Forget that we are turning some of North America’s best topsoil into back yard lawns, or that it makes it impossible to travel without a car.
6. The government continues to mortgage the future of its most vulnerable citizens for businesses. Getting by there in a low salary is hard. When I was in high school the minumum wage was $5 an hour. All those extra sources of income that people get here in Quebec, such as the monthly stipend for each child, doesn’t exist in Alberta. Being poor in AB (yes it happens!) is tough because there is so little funding from the province.
7. Education (& other) funding. You would think that the richest province in the country could afford to spend a little on some cultural events, maybe some on health care, and a bit in education. Wrong. That’s partly how they paid off the debt – by cancelling physical education, music, art and drama classes in many schools across the province. Woe betide students who happened to attend public school in the 1990s.
8. Along the same lines – a rather small arts community. Yes, AB does have one and I know some very talented artists who actually “do art” for a living, but it could definately use more funding, publicity and support. I have to say Montreal has this in the bag.
9. Clothing. There are some good clothing stores (my favourite is Nokomis on Whyte Ave – thanks Amanda!) but not as many as one would hope, especially for men’s clothing.
10. You can’t really grow a garden. At least not like you can in the East. I think the soil is different and of course the humidity & temp as well, so tomatoes are out. Potatoes and squash work ok.
Bonus: The big cowboy boot.
Well I should end on a positive note after all this complaining. Summers in Alberta are lovely, especially a BBQ in someone’s tree-filled back yard. Winters are beautiful because of all the frost that forms on the trees. Fall in Montreal is incredible – right now our street looks like a tunnel of gold from the Maple leaves. The variety and quality of food in Montreal is excellent. I love the hardwood floors in our apartment. Overall, life in Canada is excellent and I can’t believe how fortnate and blessed we are in this country. Now, somebody give me my name back!