Why I left Montreal – part 1

Hi everyone:

As many of you may be aware (especially if you follow this blog on a regular basis). I now live in Hamilton, Ontario and have done so since September 2002. Before that I lived in Mississauga (a suburb of Toronto). But I actually grew up in Montreal, one of Canada’s largest and most exciting cities and will always consider it my hometown. To be more specific, I am from St. Lambert. We’re located on Montreal’s South Shore, directly across the St. Lawrence river from the downtown core. If you take the Victoria Bridge off the island of Montreal, St. Lambert is where you wind up. We’re also known as the home of the first lock of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Indeed, when Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight Eisenhower opened the Seaway in June 1959, the ceremonies were held at our lock. I was at those ceremonies along with my family – or so I’m told. After all, I was only two years old at the time, so obviously I don’t remember anything about that historic day.

Over the years, many people have asked me why I moved away from St. Lambert after graduating from McGill University in June 1979. Was it easy to leave your childhood home for a new city? There are many answers to the question, perhaps one of the most important was that when my father was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 1975, he suggested to my mother, brother and I that we leave Montreal. I’ll explain why he felt that way later on in this series of blog entries.

As for whether it was easy to leave – that’s an easy one to answer. No, it wasn’t. It’s never easy for someone to leave the only city you have ever known for a brand new home and my experience was no different. In fact, I found the first year or so in Mississauga very difficult. Especially when everyone and everything you grew up with is suddenly replaced by a totally foreign environment. I didn’t know the Toronto region at all, and outside of my uncle and aunt and my three cousins who lived just down the street from us, I didn’t know anyone. There were more than a few times when I was awfully tempted to just give up and go back to Montreal. I knew of a few of my childhood friends back then who had in fact done the same thing. They had left Montreal for the Toronto area, but I guess they got homesick, or just couldn’t make the adjustment. Or maybe there were other reasons why they went back. In the end I decided it was best to stay in Mississauga and at least give this strange new place a good try. And if I felt that I was never going to fit in, I could discuss all this with my mother and brother and see if going back to Montreal was a better option.

But that discussion never happened and over time things got better. A major part of settling into my new home city and region was when I landed a job at Simpsons (a department store in downtown Toronto) during the 1979 Christmas holiday season, about 4 months after making the move. Although it was only a temporary position, it helped me make some friends, establish some roots and get to know the Toronto area much better.

A second element that helped solidify Mississauga as my home was when I joined St. Luke’s Anglican Church in early 1980 – which is still my home church today, some 31 years later. St. Luke’s has always had a strong sense of community and making newcomers feel at home. Everyone there was really loving and caring, and within a few months of joining the parish, it did feel like home. All these years later I still see those qualities at St. Luke’s today. It’s my spiritual home and there’s a lot of me wrapped up within those walls. That’s probably why I continue to maintain an association with St. Luke’s, even though living in Hamilton makes it much harder to attend than it did prior to moving here in 2002. Funny thing is that back in St. Lambert, our home church (St. Barnabas) was very much the same. It really felt like having another family, and I really hated to leave the parish when the time came to move up to Mississauga. Little did I realize that less than one year after officially leaving St. Barnabas I would find another church some 400 miles west of there with the same sense of community and fellowship. I thank God that He put me at St. Luke’s and hope to continue worshipping there for years to come.

The third and final element in making this part of the world feel more like home came in May 1980 when I was hired to work for the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod in downtown Toronto. To be more specific, I was working at the Anglican Book Centre and by the time I left there at the end of 1986 to enroll at the University of Toronto for my studies that ultimately led to my Master of Library Science degree, the journey was complete. I had now lived in Mississauga for over ten years and it was no longer that strange and frightening place it had been way back when. I was sufficiently rooted in the community that it was home to me. In many ways, it still is today. Yes, I don’t live in Mississauga anymore. But Hamilton isn’t all that far. Thanks to the GO Transit commuter system that serves Toronto and the surrounding regions, I can get from my apartment to Mississauga in about an hour. My mother and stepfather still live there, as well as my brother, sister-in-law and their children (just a few streets away in the Clarkson area of the city). My association with HAPPEN and our meetings every Tuesday in Mississauga also make sure that I am there regularly. And of course, my continuing involvement with St. Luke’s.

Now I am sure some of you are reading this and thinking that I haven’t really answered the question I raised in this entry’s title. And you’re right. I did talk about whether it was difficult to leave Montreal, and how over the years I gradually adjusted to life in the Toronto area to the extent that it’s my home now and has been for over 30 years.

But I haven’t talked about the factors that led me to leave Montreal in the first place. In order to do that, I invite you to continue reading. And to join me on a multi-part journey that will help explain why I made that decision along with my family to leave behind the city I loved (and still do today!) to build a new life here in the Toronto region. Stay tuned for part two – just scroll down the page and you’ll be there shortly!