Toronto

That old yarn. It's quasi-true at times. I had a conversation with a guy in Tim Hortons in the Plateau once where he would speak only in French and I would only respond in English. Not in an interesting, "oh! we're bilingual" sort of way. In a kind of "fuck you. you're in Quebec. I will speak French!" sort of way. But really it's pretty rare in Montreal. And if you wanted, you can just stay in the West where everyone's English. It's a bit more usual once you get outside of Montreal where you meet people who don't actually speak English (can you imagine such a thing?).

There's a guy who ran an English language bookshop in Montreal and refused to follow the law in making sure that the signage in French larger than the English. Makes sense really given that he didn't stock or sell anything in French. After being fined for this for the third time he stripped all of the signage off and put it up in Latin. The Quebec authorities tried to fine him for this but it was overturned as this isn't prohibited in legislation.

When I first moved to Canada I considered moving around to experience the country doing temp work. I was told by a couple of Quebecois not to bother going there as I was pretty much guaranteed not to get a job due to not being a native/immersed French speaker.