We were in Montreal a couple weeks ago, just overnight (staying in Vermont).

I was surprised and impressed and grateful to all the people we spoke to. When they said "bon jour" and we said, "Hi", they were almost apologetic that they didn't figure out that we spoke English and not French, and happily repeated everything they'd said in French for us to understand.

I rode for a while with a cyclist in Vermont who said he rode from his home in Middlebury to Montreal and back once a year (150 miles one way). He said the hardest part was trying to find a place to use the bathroom once he entered Quebec. ?? He said the farmers between the border and Montreal tended to speak a dialect of French that even people in Montreal didn't understand. I don't know if that's true, but I thought it was interesting. (By the way, the man was 70 years old.)

Karen