Nachos at Midnight :: Life in Ottawa

A friend of mine raised a good question concerning all of this “where would I go if suddenly the opportunity came up?” drama. She asked, “How about Montreal? Would you ever go back there?”

Montreal is my hometown and it always will be.  I spent 26 years of my life there and even though when I was living there, I often wanted to move away, I still respected it and now miss it.  Thankfully Ottawa is so close that if I’m ever craving a walk down memory lane, I can just hop in the car and be there in under two hours.

But would I pack up and actually move back?  That’s a really tough question.

As much as I love Montreal, I don’t know if career-wise it would be a smart move.  There are many factors at play here, both good at bad.

On the Pro side of things, Montreal costs less.  From groceries to taxes to the all important cost of housing (including rent and home ownership).  Insurance costs less, utilities cost less, and they even have a better cable package. (Videotron’s Illico service let’s you actually pick the channels you want instead of charging you $70 (taxes included) for 300 channels, most of them being repeats or lumped with other channels you don’t want.  But I digress…)

Certainly a cable company isn’t reason enough to move back to Montreal — unless you happen to work for that company, and that brings us to a hurdle: work.  The English media in Montreal is small — smaller than Ottawa — so your choices are really limited.  Of the top English radio stations in the city, three (Virgin Radio 96, CHOM-FM and CJAD-AM) are owned by the same company (Astral Media) and the only English language daily newspaper, The Gazette, seems to keep making cuts to their staff.

For the ever-changing TV market, Montreal has three English choices; CTV (CFCF-12), Global-TV and CBC.

Not a lot of options for someone like me.  I do speak French, but probably not well enough anymore to land a job on the French side of media in Montreal.  Besides, I feel more comfortable in my own language.

My experience in Toronto and now in Ottawa certainly helps — it’s been my finding that Montreal media occasionally likes to bring in folks who like the city and have worked in other markets — but they also like to “recruit from within”, so to speak.

Going back to the part where I said I don’t know if career-wise moving to Montreal would be a smart move,  surely that will ruffle a few feathers as many Montrealers have had long and illustrious careers in the media there. A majority of them never moved away leaving a nearly eight year gap.  It’s hard to just decide to move back and jump into the game when there are players who have been doing their thing for many years.

And, let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. There’s the issue of politics which is always a hot-button for Montreal and Quebec.  I don’t notice it so much now, living close to Gatineau, but I do remember what it was like when I was in the middle of it in Montreal.

Sooner or later, the Parti Québécois will come back into power (sadly, it’s unavoidable) and while it won’t drive the English-speaking people from the province, it makes for a tougher economic environment as well as a somewhat unpleasing atmosphere knowing that the people running the province are looking to break up the country that prints the money they enjoy spending.  But I don’t feel like getting into that right now.

Still, these are all things I think about. The idea of living in Montreal again is great. It’s an amazing city, filled with many memories, but honestly right now at this point in my life, there’s a greater chance of my heading back to Toronto than Montreal.

So, hopefully that answers that question. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be visiting my hometown for my birthday this week.

And just for old time’s sake…. Go Habs Go!