Over the past few years so many pieces of my life and identity have been intertwined with my living in Montreal, most notably my leadership and affiliation with the Montreal IT Professional Community. I grew up here, and have for most of my life considered it to be home. My on-line alias, at least for most IT-related newsgroups, is Montreal MCT (until July of last year it was Montreal MCSA).
As an independent consultant and IT professional I had a good client base here, and have said so often that I love the city, and would only leave for professional reasons.
The last year has seen tremendous changes to my professional life. I am still an IT professional and do not anticipate that changing any time soon, but I have transitioned from full-time consultant to full-time trainer. As such I have been presented with some tremendous opportunities to travel, and to work a lot more closely with a number of firms in both Canada and the United States. I have become a traveling trainer, and as such spend a lot of time in airplanes and airports.
The downside to that, as far as living in Montreal goes, is that it is getting harder and harder to fly direct anywhere from here. Depending on my destination I have to fly through either Chicago, Newark, or of course Toronto. From time to time it is not something I would think twice about; when it is every single week (or let’s say thirty-five weeks per year) those connecting flights take a lot of time. If we figure that each connector flight (through Toronto) adds two and a half hours to each leg of travel, that adds up to more than entire week – one hundred and seventy-five hours per year wasted on connecting flights.
Montreal is a great city, but even if it were my intention to just train in my home city at a Certified Partner for Learning Solutions (CPLS) it would hardly make sense for me to choose Montreal over Toronto. There just seems to be a lot more IT certification training being done in Toronto (and within an hour’s drive) than there is in the entire province of Quebec… and the rates are better. It is just a bigger market, and despite the fact that I could teach in English or French, there are just more people taking courses in the Greater Toronto Area.
I have always loved Montreal… the people, the culture, the food, the atmosphere. I consider it one of North America’s great cities, and wonder how different things would be here without referenda and the constant threat over the past thirty years of separation. However I want to be clear that my decision to leave Montreal (and Quebec) has nothing at all to do with politics. I returned to Montreal after living overseas in 1996, shortly after the referendum that came so close to going the other way. As a baby of the early seventies I remember the first referendum and have grown up speaking both English and French, and though I consider myself Canadian I am also a Quebecois, though an Anglophone one.
So since I started telling people I am moving the common statement is ‘but you’ll visit, right?’ Of course I will. I have so many friends here and will definitely be back. To the chagrin of the woman who cuts my hair I intend to find myself another stylist over there… when I do come back to Montreal I want to have as much time to see my friends as possible without worrying about getting my hair cut.
For the Montreal IT Professionals Community I am and will remain President Emeritus of that group, and have no intention of relinquishing that title or my membership in that group. Just like my friends, I consider MITPro too important to leave behind.
And what does the future hold? My crystal ball is in the shop so all I can tell you is that whatever it has in store for me I will as I always have look forward to it, face its challenges head-on, and do my best to succeed, even when at times that success seems elusive.
And for those of you who want to see me? The 401 is shorter than it looks!