Fleeing the Country – Carl Vonderau

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled a human resources executive, a sound engineer, an academic, and a psychologist who moved to Canada because of U.S. politics. Even Timothy Snyder, the famous Yale historian who wrote On Tyranny, escaped to Toronto. My wife and I moved there from Chicago for different reasons in 1989. She was offered a faculty position at McGill University and I hankered to live in another country and to learn French. Our kids were young, so we took the plunge.

What you realize in another country is that you have never felt more American. Many of the things you took for granted are expensive or hard to get. In Montreal, food was very pricey and the fruit in the supermarket was never ripe. The wine was sold through a Quebec government corporation and was outrageously expensive. And how about Chicago pizza, or Mexican food, or the Chicago sports teams? On the other hand we soon learned to appreciate French food, the great bagels, and the safety. When we first got to Montreal we took our two-year-old and three-year-old to a Christmas display downtown. While enjoying the displays we lost our three-year-old. We desperately searched for him in the very large hall. Then we saw him with a Quebecker. The man had hoisted him on his shoulders so our son could better spot us. It was all so neighborly and innocent. It would be hard to feel that way about such a thing in the U.S. today.

And the freezing weather! Montreal is cold and rainy most of the year. But it is spectacular in July and August. In the winter I used to park my car in a lot and walk through a hotel to warm up on the way to my job at Bank of Montreal. One of our sons walked home from high school one day without a cap and got frostbite on an ear. We took him to the hospital and he asked the doctor if he was going to lose his ear. The doctor said, “Not this time.” What a great response to that question! I gradually got used to the snow and the cold. It took two or three years.

Employment was another challenge. The university had informed us that I could automatically work in banking under the Free Trade Act. Not so. Only certain professions were covered, and banking was not one of them. Everyone I spoke with on the phone at Quebec Immigration was so polite and tried to be helpful. But I went around in circles. Finally, we had an interview with an official from the Quebec Government and he found a special exception to allow me to get a work visa. I have no idea what the exception was. The whole process took more than a year.

But that allowed me to spend more time with our kids and to study French. My wife had to teach and get tenure, so she never had time to take French classes. I spoke Spanish and Portuguese, but French, particularly written French, is a tough nut. You study and study but you never reach the level of a native speaker. I financed international trade and always told clients I was an American. They gave me more slack about my French because I wasn’t Canadian..

Health care? Yes, it is universal and free. But try finding a general practitioner who wasn’t completely booked up. Or getting a date for surgery. Hernia or knee operations could take a year. My wife’s great aunt fell outside our front door and broke her hip. We tried to get her surgery and the Montreal hospital had her wait for several days without food. Each day they hoped to find a spare operating room. We finally transported to Plattsburgh by ambulance, where she had the surgery the same day. One of our friends had a heart condition and needed surgery. The waiting time was so long that she never got the operation and died. On the other hand, many people we knew got the care they needed for cancer, and some were sent to the U.S. because Quebec couldn’t provide the specialized medicine they needed.

Like everywhere else, Montreal was full of politics and corruption. We finally had an interview to become landed immigrants/citizens. It was at the time of the sovereignty referendum in 1995. Quebeckers were voting whether to separate from the rest of Canada. The Canadian government normally told you when they would deign to interview you for citizenship. Then you would drop everything and go. Surprisingly, they told us they’d set the interview at a time we were available. Why? Because immigrants almost all wanted to stay in Canada and if the federal government made us citizens we would vote “no.” During the build-up to the referendum they actually flew in more judges so they could make more citizens. The sovereignty initiative lost by 1%.

But how about safety? During the time we lived there, about 180 people a year were murdered in all of Canada. Most of the deaths were gang-related. At one point I sold the immigrant investor program to Colombians. This program provided citizenship to people who invested a certain amount in Canada. The statistic I always mentioned first was the number of murders each year. That was like a weekend in Bogotá.

Now we live in warm and sunny San Diego. But I still feel very Canadian. I think it’s a good thing.

What has your experience living in another country been like?