In order to feed my Quebec obsession, I’ve been watching the Radio-Canada series “Catherine” on TV5 each evening. Luckily it’s subtitled in European French because I don’t understand all the words, but when they make cultural references to Thanksgiving, Sears or hockey, it makes me a little homesick. Sometimes I catch “Pure Laine” which is also a comedy about life in Montréal in a multi-cultural family (Quebecois mother, Haitian father, and adopted Chinese girl). Barbara has been posting her wonderful photos of a recent trip to Montréal & Québce City and David has been mentioning wanting to go there more and more lately.
Then Quebec announces that between now and 2012, it will need 700,000 immigrants to make up for the retiring population. They’re increasing their quota for French citizens as well, because of course they want people who already speak French. I’m not a French citizen (not yet anyway! I can apply after 5 years of PACS, so early 2012), but I can obviously still apply as an American citizen who speaks French. Career-wise, I don’t know what David or I would do because he works for the French government and I really don’t want to continue teaching English. (I could be improving my Italian and German so much instead of preparing lessons…)
If the high-speed railway between Montréal and Windsor ever gets approved and built, I will so be there! It currently takes more than 9.5 hours to take the train from Montréal to Windsor (not including connection in Toronto) compared to at least a 9 hour drive from Montréal to Flint by way of Sarnia. Granted, Windsor is still a 2 hour drive to my parents’ house, but cutting down on the travel time in any way would be nice especially if I didn’t have to drive at all. The whole project would connect Québec City to Windsor (via Montréal, Ottawa and Toronto) in 3 hours and 55 minutes!
