Montreal Moving Day: what happens when a whole city moves house at once

I had fondue in Los Gatos, and the meat what in cubes, cubes!!!!

Looking out the window and seeing trees and mountains.

If your area has a Chinatown or large Chinese grocer, you can get your fondue meat by asking for "hotpot meat" there.

In Montreal, people line up in a neat straight long single file to board a bus, or for other kinds of queues. In many other parts of Canada/US, people either huddle around the entrance ready to push in or reluctantly make a disorganized line.

Switching to Brazil, I have a long list of things that people from the US or Canada would think of as normal, but don't exist in Brazil or are very rare (like garburators, limousines, and bathtubs -- not kidding about bathtubs!):

http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Common_in_the_USA_and...

In the Netherlands you are often expected to remove/install floor when you move. Also, interestingly, no warm water in toilets in there either. The weirdest discrepancy between US/Can and Europe is the amount of water in and the size of toilets.

I feel you (from Quebec too, working abroad). The thing that shocked me the most in europe is the lack of facial tissues, cleaning stuff and many other things we generally have in the pharmacies.

- Cheese curds being available at any grocery store.

- Bagged milk

- Ketchup chips

So I live in Canada, but grew up in Australia. In Canada, you inherit the fridge and washer/dryer of the apartment when you move in. Back in Australia, fridges and washer/dryers are often things you need to bring along on your own. They're big items, I much prefer them coming with the property (if they don't suck, which in places I've lived, often they have!)

Well I only moved across the country (NH to CA), so the biggest differences I’ve noticed have been in dialect and food.

People think I’m quaint for using “wicked” as an adverb here, but the local “hella” is both less emphatic and used slightly differently. And my accent probably comes off as “old-fashioned”.

Part of it is just moving from a rural area to a suburban one, but at least among my friends & family back home, it was pretty normal to make a whole meal, or a substantial part of it, from home-grown, homemade, wild-caught, or foraged foods. I would’ve expected to see more of that here in CA considering its agricultural fertility, but I have to go out of my way to visit farmer’s markets or “localvore” restaurants. In New England it was just around—my family would grow/make/catch/find/harvest stuff and swap it with friends, neighbors, and coworkers. You knew someone who kept chickens, so you’d take some eggs off their hands so they wouldn’t go to waste; your garden produced far too many green beans, so you’d give them away—that sort of thing.

We Belgians have a "washandje" to wash our face with it.

You can stick your hand in it and use it.

It's not known anywhere else and we actually laugh with it :p

>What are some examples of things you thought were "normal" until you moved elsewhere?

Where I come from, the UK, all the entrances to your house, your flat, and shops that don't have automatic/sliding doors would open _inwards_. You'd push a door to enter. Now I live in Finland an doors open outwards.

There are a ton of tiny differences I've noticed since moving from the UK to Finland, another example would be that light-switches turn on/off in the opposite direction to that I'd expect.

That said though I've started taking a lot of these things for granted now, so it is actually quite hard to think of more examples!

One thing I'll never take for granted is that the majority of flats here in Helsinki have their laundry-machines in the bathroom. In the UK the washing-machine would ALWAYS be in the kitchen, or in a dedicated laundry area if the house was large/modern enough.

(Also the UK would have all rooms of a house be carpetted, barring a reasonably modern trend of solid-wooden floors. In Finland houses are universally carpet-free, although people frequently use rugs.)

Singapore - No hot water in kitchens. I thought I just had a weird apartment, but everyone swears, that outside of a few expat focussed house/apartments, 90+% of the country doesn't have hot water in the kitchen.

Renter's protection. Any lease in the Netherlands was permanent until the renter left. Most still are. Living 30 years in the same rental is not exceptional.

Having decent bread at any corner of a street.

All movies are dubbed.

Only cops have weapons.

On the road, roundabouts have only one way.

You have an old money and a new money and you need to help old people with it.

Pubs and restautants should give you free water.

In France, school year starts in September and ends in June.

The small city I grew up around has a weeklong street festival that is a primary fundraiser for all charitable groups within 50 miles - every church and marching band and sports club political group has a food booth, Boy Scouts sell parking, etc. Move away and get confused at everyone having these small anemic standalone pancake breakfasts and ice cream socials, find out the Fall Festival is like the second biggest street fair in the US after Mardi Gras.

My wife grew up in St. Louis and assumed that basically all white people were Catholic and that you have to tell a joke to get candy when you are going door to door on Halloween.

People thanking the public transit bus driver in Vancouver.

Jaywalking isn't a thing here. You can just walk across any road that's not a motorway, as long as you don't get hit by anything. Same with Simple trespass. Although that's the case in a lot of places.

Moving your household in 115°f with 90% humidity is just rediculous. I've already heard some stories this year about movers just not showing up. There is also a very common scam where individuals pose as movers and ask for a deposit since it's near impossible to get movers in the month leading up to moving day, only to never show up the day of and subsequently disappear.

That first link with the story about a sale is really depressing.

This is why I go to Ottawa to celebrate Canada day and have fun while everyone in Montreal deals with the nightmare

It's a Quebec thing. I moved to Quebec a few years ago and had to buy a whole set of appliances, as every other place I lived in always came with them. Looking at other places around me as well, none of them come with appliances.

What do you mean with appliances?

Dishwasher? Washing machine? Coffee maker? Sink? Stove?

It's pretty common in France as well, unless it's a furnished rental, the renter brings their own fridge, stove, etc.

This is common in Australia.

You move everything that isn’t part of the rental.

So you move your fridge, washing machine and dryer, and microwave.

The stove, oven and dishwasher are usually the landlord’s.

It's even worse in (some parts of?) Germany. Most apartments come without a kitchen. The law says that they have to provide a sink and a stove, and they provide the cheapest stove there is and a little pedestal sink. You're expected to ask the landlord to remove these and order a kitchen, with all of the cabinets, countertops, sink, refrigerator, washing machine, and stove. When you move, you either try to take it all apart and make it fit in your new apartment, or try to sell it to the next tenant. With first month's rent, 3 months security deposit, and a kitchen, moving in to an apartment is very expensive.

If it's a rental, and doesn't include appliances, of course you'd take appliances you purchase since you own them.

In every place I've rented in Ontario, appliances were included -- which is common but not universal.

I've only owned two houses, where it's a matter of negotiation. The first place we purchased from a couple downsizing to an apartment, and the terms of sale just included everything. We ended up replacing the fridge and stove after a couple years anyway. Also learned a lesson there, because they included an old fridge in the basement that we didn't need but figured whatever, why not. We never even used it, and then refinished the basement and ended up having to pay to have it disposed.

The second place left nothing but the dishwasher, while the people buying our place offered some money for all our appliances. We took our new fridge and stove - since it wasn't really worth it to us to sell <2 year old stuff and then have to buy brand new at retail price - and sold them the rest for next to nothing (or maybe just left them, I can't remember).

A similar spectacle happens near me. We've taken to calling it "hippy Christmas" I've dropped stuff off on the curb and it's been picked up in <1 hour by someone looking for new furniture.

Allston Christmas is more like the week before September first. With a guaranteed UHaul on Storrow that got its roof torn off.

Hmm I thought moving day in Boston is Sep 1?

You mean September 1st right? June 1st is also a big moving day.

your thinking of Alston Christmas which is September 1. Every lease I had in Somerville, Medford, Cambridge, and Quincy all were for September 1.

Yup. The effect of 15% of the city’s population being students works it’s way to all corners of the real estate market here. I currently live in an apartment building that contains 0% students and is pretty squarely out of reach of most students price-wise - nonetheless, property owners here are conditioned to turn everything over on 9/1 at all costs.

It‘s more a result of the shortage of available rental flats so people can easily find a successor by themselves. Outgoing renters have negotiation power and the incoming ones have to adhere to whatever date they want, resulting in cascading effects.

New flats in big cities have arbitrary (ie monthly) moving dates in the contracts nowadays to bring them in line with reality. But it is never a problem to agree on any random date between you and the next guy, as long as you provide somone willing to take it over per that date.

I‘m Swiss and never moved on one of the official moving dates...

I'm not inclined to agree. Some holidays are just not as popular with québécois folk (Thanksgiving is another example). A long weekend in summer based around a holiday the majority of the people in the province don't particularly care about is perfect for moving.

Hello fellow anglophone in Montreal! I too assumed thought that was the reason, but turns out it's not: the party that created this conflict one year in the 1970s by adding two months to all leases which ended on April 30 is the Quebec Liberal Party, who are federalists.

Apparently back then Canada Day, which was then called Dominion Day, was simply less of a big deal than it is now.

No, this is an economic problem in Montreal in general.

Montreal doesn't have the greatest of economies. Reasonable standard of living, good culture, but Montreal is like Buenos Aires a little ... there is a weird kind of dysfunction and chill that doesn't exist elsewhere in North America.

Source: I live here.

You can find apartments any time of the year, it's just that the majority are up for rent for July 1st. Moving at another time of year is a mixed bag. There's less selection, but so much less competition.

Getting new tenets is more a New Year's thing.

I will have to disagree with the article on this, really it is 2-way. When searching for a new apartment you will have way more choice in the weeks around July 1st than at any other time of the year.

Its a figure of speech. Writing liberty. 8% is definitely a huge proportion of the city moving in a single day. For my own experience living in Montreal, no chaod but lots of furniture and other trash left behind.

8% of Montreal is 136,000 people. That's an entire small city's worth of people.

They mean ‘everyone who moves, moves on that day’

Finding a moving truck, company, etc for such a big percentage of the population that moves all on the same day is often a challenge.

Yeah but people who move often have the help of a few friends. The percentage of people who are moving/helping would be more impressive.

The vast majority of people who move do it on july 1st. So much that when I moved in march everyone thought it was impossible.

That's quite massive number if you just count people moving.