So you want to leave Quebec?The latest local news contrivance is shows that a lot of young English-speaking Montrealers have thought about moving away, which a suddenly-caring French newspaper has confounded with wanting to leave.
No other place inspires as many tortured narratives of departing disappointment as Montreal
Quitters consider it mandatory practice to enumerate their bad feelings about Montreal.
This index of personal disappointments makes for awkward listening, no, we're not your boyfriend or girlfriend or psychiatrist. We didn't sign on to hear you moan.
French Quebecers are even more vitriolic in their denunciations of their former province on sites such as quitterlequebec, which runs withering Quebec-bashing attacks penned by those who left and found bliss elsewhere.
Most know that misery comes with the luggage. You can't run away from it.
Life in that other place will invariably be riddled with the usual assorted disappointments. You'll still be stuck with yourself, minus a few friends and family that you made here.
So the problem might not have been Quebec but unreaslistically high expectations concerning your life outcomes. (I thought you said you weren't their psychiatrist- Chimples)
Some depart with grace, the best example being Leonard Cohen, who mused fondly about Montreal after he relocated to Los Angeles while also hinting that he'd eventually return.
The most epic of all renouncing Quebec moments came from Janet Torge who was 28 when she arrived in 1975 after growing up in Ohio.
She raised three kids here but unlike most anglos, she voted for the PQ and voted yes in the referendum, which would make many English-speaking bretheren welcome her departure but she figured it made her a model immigrant for many French-speakers. So her departure renunciation was meant to be a big deal.
She penned a leaving letter in La Presse on 30 April 1991.
I'm exhausted. I'm sick of paying for the crimes of other anglos who left long ago for Toronto. I'm sick of feeling responsible for Coffee Crisp bars in corner stores. (What's that about?- Chimples) I've heard enough talk about cocktails and fur coats on the West Island. That's nothing to do with who I am.
There are plenty of bilingual anglos who haven't got any plans to leave. To keep them they must be brought in and not pointed to due to their mother tongue. Some small gesture to show that all Quebecers can be partners
As for myself, I'm leaving with some bitterness and I've given in to the temptation to do it symbolically. I've rented a U-Haul for June 23 and will leave St. Jean Baptise Day. Je me souviens, from a distance.Torge returned to Ohio, then on to Ottawa to become a flak for the NDP and moved back to Montreal in 1997. She presumably doesn't have her La Presse column stuck to her fridge door.
Others who couldn't resist parting shots while leaving Montreal include
- Jay Baruchel who said something or other about politics before leaving for Toronto that we didn't read.
- Crazy Suzanne Verdal, immortalized in Lenny's Suzanne, left in bitterness, although there was also that $5,000 Hydro Quebec bill she couldn't pay.
- Pudgy CBC personality Wayne Grigsby once wrote that he would never leave his hometown. Within weeks he was moving to Toronto.
- Expos Manager Buck Rodgers said when leaving in 1991 that Montreal would be a ghost town in 10 years.
- One of Paul Theroux's characters in his trans Siberian express book makes everybody miserable with him complaining about how bad things are in Quebec.
There might be money in such see-ya-later-Quebec missives. So Coolopolis is developing a leaving-Quebec app. Here's a trial note from the beta version.
When I arrived in Quebec I saved orphans from fires, ate only poutine and shook everybody's hand while singing "gens du pays."
I paid millions in taxes, employed hundreds of unemployable people and was planning to hire thousands more at my used Garou CD store.
I always smoked a corncob pipe and wore a shaggy tuque in honour of the local culture and served des fromage grille to my friends at the Quebec Solidaire rallies.
But once while helping elderly from the metro I was asked "T'es pas frette sans coat?"
My life transformed at that moment.
All the unspoken subtexts,all those glares behind my back,all that shoveling, all those frustrated job searches and lines at Tims suddenly crystallized into the inescapable conclusion that I must move to Peru where harmony exists between all people.
Farewell Quebec, c'est a ton tour.