Home is where the heart is. Yet, what if the heart doesn’t know where it belongs? What if the heart has been taken in and out of so many countries that even with a map, it would not know north from south? What if the heart finds home everywhere and nowhere at the same time? What if this heart belongs to a third culture kid?
At my ripe age of twenty, I still do not know where home truly is. I share my cultural baggage between a French mother and an English father. If you see my history, however, the data will start in the United States of America, lead you to Hungary, give you a brief few months in Paris, and finally eight years in Belgium. As a result, I am a French person who is not French and an English person who is not English. I am somebody who lived in Belgium but is not Belgian.
To the francophones, I am an anglophone. To the anglophones, I am a francophone. To my French family, I am English. To my English family, I am French. To some, I am even Belgian—though to the Belgians, I am a foreigner. On top of everything, I have more of an American accent than an English one. To me, I am lost. I am an impure product of my nations, the holy bastard of the Hundred Years’ War.
Yet, in Montreal I make sense. Despite not being Québécoise, I am a logical cog in this city’s intercultural machine. Montreal sits between the U.S. and anglophone Canada, while also having strong historical and linguistic roots to France. This results in an incredible blend of French and English actively fusing together to create Québécois French. The Montrealers switch from English to French with the same ease as putting one foot in front of the other. They dazzle you with the Bonjour, Hi greeting and own whatever English words they use as a natural extension of their French. For instance: “Es-tu down pour chiller?” meaning “Are you down to chill?”, or “Ça fait la job” meaning “It does the job.”
I indulge in this linguistic cocktail myself, having grown up in a dual-language household of French and English. My French teachers back in Belgium or my family back in France would penalize this expression as “des anglicismes” or “du franglais.” I have seen those words marked in red and underlined three times on my written papers countless times. However, this so-called “improper” French is very proper in Montreal.
I find myself right at home naturally switching from one language to the other. Starting a sentence in English and finishing my thought in French. Throwing in a random word from the other language, because I feel it is more fitting. All the while being understood and, instead of being looked down upon, being responded to in the same fashion. Over the summer, my childhood best friend, after witnessing this linguistic ballet, declared Montreal to be the most perfect city for me. She could not have been more right.
Montreal’s heterogeneous landscape does not stop there. When looking at the city through a magnifying glass, the influence of immigrant communities in building the foundation of Montreal is striking; Little Italy, Little Portugal, Little Maghreb, Little Latin America, Mile End Chavurah. These neighborhoods alone place Montreal within a dialogue of diverse cultural experiences, identities, religions, and languages. My own experience living for a year in Little Portugal has only highlighted this further. The Portuguese population was present not only through local businesses, such as bakeries and rotisseries, but also in church-centered festivities.
My old apartment was right by the Portuguese Mission Santa Cruz Catholic Church on rue Rachel. Throughout the summer, this church hosted a myriad of very popular festivals—as I would walk by, I would hear Portuguese everywhere in the air. Portuguese spoken between families and friends. Portuguese sung on stage by performers or projected through speakers. There was also a day when a Portuguese Catholic procession walked down rue Saint-Urbain. All these events showed me how such a public expression of Portuguese religious-cultural identity is not just confined to a church parking lot, but quite literally runs through the streets. A neighborhood bonus is that even the local Desjardins is called Caixa Portuguesa, with all the employees speaking Portuguese. Indeed, I was able to see how the Portuguese identity and language is entrenched in Montreal, proving how well immigrant communities have made themselves at home in this city.
My sister’s husband is Colombian, and the rest of his family continue to live in Montreal. Connecting with them has allowed me to gain insights into the well-established Latino community of Montreal, which I mainly have access to through food. I am amazed by how accessible Colombian food is for my family, despite living miles away from their homeland. For instance, they can buy frozen packages of pre-chopped and assembled ingredients for traditional Colombian soups, such as the Sancocho soup and the Ajiaco soup. They can also find fresh Colombian tamales, buñuelos, and pan de yuca. South American grocery stories, such as the Sabor Latino, Marché Andes, and Marché des Amériques, are central hubs for this preservation and expression of Latino tradition in Montreal. They allow immigrant families to stay connected with their culture and community through food, instead of losing touch and diluting into a homogeneous Montreal identity.
Montreal is a city that has so much to offer to third culture kids like me. It is built on a constant dialogue between different languages and cultures sharing the same space. This gives me the feeling that in Montreal’s great puzzle of identities, there is a place for everyone to fit in. It is a city where you are bound to find people who share your background or your journey, people who may come from the same places, share the same language, or have the same third culture experience. You may not be from Montreal, but Montreal is made for you.