USA, Canada /
TORONTO OR MONTRÉAL (for a Polish person to live?) [35]
To Guest, I digress with your facts. I've lived in both Toronto and Montreal. IMO Toronto is a Muslim/Asian ****hole.
First of all, Toronto only has about 80,000 Polish, where as Montreal has about 60,000. It's also much easier to meet Polish people in Montreal as people walk everywhere and it's a very concentrated downtown. There is much more going on culturally in Montreal than in Toronto. In Toronto everybody lives in the suburbs, commutes downtown, works, goes home, and sits at home. In Montreal there's people on the streets until 3/4/5AM, Toronto is dead.
Also regarding the economy, yes, the Quebec economy is a bit weaker than Ontario. However, things are much cheaper in Quebec. Take for example car insurance. In Ontario the average car insurance policy costs approximately $2100/year I believe, due to the price fixing by the monopolistic car insurance companies. I was paying $2,500/year in Ontario, and I just moved to Quebec-- I'm paying $350/year now. Furthermore, food is much better quality (real european food, fresh cheese, bread, etc) and much cheaper (no tax on food), where as in Ontario it is all processed **** and expensive. All in all it works out to about the same. And I have some friends here in Montreal who work in Aeronautic engineering who make $80-$90k/year, while same friends in Toronto make $60-70k . . . . so salary is relative. Minimum wage is $9/hour in Montreal while it's now $9.50/hour in Ontario now. Keep in mind in Ontario you will have to drive hundreds of KM a week just to survive, in Montreal I drive my car perhaps 1-2x a week for short distance (walk, metro, cab, etc-- faster).
Yes you do need to speak French if you want to do a job that requires French (government, service industry), but if you do engineering/technical work English will do. The vast majority of people in Montreal downtown speak English, but you go into the suburbs few people speak English.
As for being more multicultural give me a break. Montreal has lots of Europeans and people from all over the French colonies. Toronto has virtually no Europeans from Europe (sorry but someone coming from Europe doesn't come to Toronto). It is all Asians (China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, etc), Muslims/Brown (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etc) and Blacks (Somalia, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, etc). Very few Europeans immigrate now as Canadian policy prefers minorities (this is why Canada is importing 200,000 Muslims/year).
And whatever you do don't fly into Vancouver, RCMP will kill you and laugh.
So my advice between Toronto and Montreal would be Montreal, but my overall advice is to stay in Europe.
Ciao.
Also:
BaBa is 100% correct
There is so much to do in Montreal, it is like little Europe
Plus another thing I will tell you, I am actually relaxed in Montreal, I am not angry, I am not in a hurry, I can sit down, have a coffee and a cigarette and just relax and enjoy the scenery / people. This is coming from someone who has lived in Warsaw, Koln, London, Seattle, Manhattan, Toronto, Montreal, etc... and I've travelled to 10x more places (and I am just 26). Montreal is one of the most relaxing places. Remember work week is 35 hours here, not 40+ like in Toronto (or 100 like in Manhattan LOL), so yes economy is a bit weaker but you have better quality of life. Yes I made much much more money in Manhattan, but I just worked, smoked, drank, nothing else, no time... 9am -> 11pm 7 days a week. So it depends on what balance you want.
I think there is too many people here who have lived in Toronto their entire life (Polish born here) and they are brainwashed.
