I Moved From New York to Canada for My Husband’s Job; Didn’t Expect to Like It

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erin Smith, a 47-year-old a freelance marketer and founder of the travel blog Gluten-Free Globetrotter, who moved to Montreal in 2024. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in New York and spent my last twenty years living in Brooklyn. I just didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Not even in 2016, when I moved with my then-boyfriend, who is now my husband, to Santa Cruz. Even though it was beautiful there, I just wasn’t happy. I had to get back to the city, back to New York. So we moved after only two and a half years in California.

I thought I wouldn’t be moving again, but in 2024, my husband got a really good job opportunity in Montreal. He’s an agronomist who works in indoor agriculture. He had the opportunity to help start up a greenhouse division for a national company there, which was right up his alley.

As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of agriculture in New York City. I’m a freelance marketer and can work from anywhere, but for my husband, it really was the perfect job at the perfect time.

I hired a relocation coach to help me with the move

We had to wait for my son to finish the school year in New York, so from January to July, we focused on planning the move.

The thought of leaving New York was really hard. I mean, all my friends and family are there. And even though Canada isn’t geographically far from New York, it’s still a different environment — especially Quebec, which is a French-speaking province.

I kept thinking back to when we moved to California, which hadn’t been a good fit for us. “Oh God, this is going to happen again,” kept running through my mind. This, plus the overwhelming feeling of how much we’d have to learn about Quebec, led me to hire a relocation coach.

She’s a digital nomad who’s lived all over the world, and she helped me a lot — not so much with the logistics of moving, but more with realizing that the things that were important to me in New York would still be important to me in Canada, and that there are ways to incorporate them into my new life.

We’re paying less for housing in Montreal

We visited Quebec a few times before our move to scout out neighborhoods and schools. It was important for me to visit during the winter because it’s very cold and snowy here, which I wasn’t used to living in New York City.

Our last visit before the move was in April, and we literally had a week to find a place. Unlike in New York, where you can find a rental at any time of year, in Montreal, many leases start on July 1 and run through the end of June the following year.

My husband works in rural Quebec, and we couldn’t live there for many reasons, but we’re very happy with where we landed. We live in a great neighborhood in Westmount, in the southwest part of Montreal. We’re right near a metro station and can walk to downtown Montreal from our apartment. I feel very lucky.

When we moved, our goal was to spend less on rent than we did in New York. In Brooklyn, we lived in a duplex with a backyard, which is pretty rare there — we got really lucky during COVID-19, when everyone was leaving the city. We paid about $3,500 there; here I’m paying roughly $1,000 less. While we’ve lost our outdoor space, we gained a washer and dryer, a luxury I never had in 20 years of living in Brooklyn.

We had to make new friends and set up new bank accounts

Quebec’s primary language is French, so navigating the region’s bureaucracy and school system has been challenging.

In Montreal, there are two main school boards, one English and one French. We needed specific paperwork to qualify for the English system. My son now attends an English school with a French immersion curriculum.

Making friends here hasn’t been easy, either. Because I work for a New York-based company, I’ve really had to put myself out there to meet people. Most of my community has come from meeting other parents through my kid’s school organizations and connecting with our neighbors.

The biggest challenge we’ve faced has been setting up our finances. Since we had no financial history in Canada, we had no credit. Even basic things like getting a credit card or opening a bank account took about six to eight weeks to sort out.

The cost of living here is pretty comparable to New York. We spend about the same on groceries, and while we’re saving on housing, my husband spends more on gas because he’s commuting and driving farther outside the city. I, however, work from home.

The healthcare system is affordable but difficult to navigate

I have been living with celiac disease for over 40 years. In Canada, it has been much easier to eat gluten-free due to the country’s food regulations and labeling laws. And thanks to my work with gluten-free restaurants and brands — and my blog — I already had a built-in gluten-free community when I moved here.

I’ve never lived in a place with socialized healthcare, so there has been a huge learning curve in finding doctors and handling prescriptions. I have to use Google Translate for everything.

Health insurance is affordable here. We no longer pay out of pocket for coverage, which is a big change — in New York, health insurance for a family of three costs almost as much as rent.

It’s different from province to province, but in Quebec, you’re required to have an assigned family doctor. Since moving here, I’ve had to see a few specialists for checkups, and the service has been covered. Sometimes, I still find myself waiting for a bill to show up, and it never does.

Something else that surprised me about the medical system here is that you can actually make an appointment with a pharmacist, and they can prescribe medication if you have proper test results.

Montreal now feels like home

I really love Montreal and I’m happy here. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do. Life feels calmer — the city is beautiful, cleaner, and safer. People here are so much nicer; they have this polite, laid-back attitude.

Our Canadian visas last for three years, but we hope to extend them. For now, I’d like to stay as long as possible.

A year ago, I probably would’ve wanted to move back to New York. But now, especially with our child in school, I don’t want to disrupt that. I also don’t know if we could afford to go back.

I’ll always see myself as a New Yorker first and an American second; that’s my identity through and through. But in New York, I never really felt like I could slow down. In Montreal, we’re not in that constant, heightened state anymore. Life here just feels different.