I regret living in the Plateau - I have lung problems and there are a lot of people in my neighbourhood who smoke and/or wear perfume/cologne :( I’m told other neighbourhoods aren’t so bad and that the Plateau is bad for this since there are a lot of people from France but have yet to live anywhere else in the city.

For me the other pain points are Loi 96, how many offices/clinics/etc close at 4pm (or even 3pm now), and the heat of the summers here.

I actually find the winters an improvement over Toronto! There are so many cross-country skiing routes within the city parks and the bike paths are actually plowed in the winter, so going outdoors in the winter is far more enticing for me. I also have more tolerance for cold than for heat. (I bought a used pair of cross-country skis off kijiji and it was the best 60$ I spent on combating seasonal affective disorder.)

Primary care medicine is an absolute disgrace but I will say the specialist care I’ve been getting has been hands down the best I’ve had in my life. Getting referrals from random walk-in clinics was annoying but now that I have a team of quality specialists I’m actually getting better care than I did in Toronto, Vancouver, or Calgary.

Also intersex, and am looking forward to the movie. I’m with you that we’re starved for representation.

If reading is your jam, I recently found this big list of intersex ownvoices books here: https://www.bogireadstheworld.com/intersex-ownvoices-books/

And this is a personal plug but I’m co-organizing an online Intersex Book Club where we read those books: https://intersexbookclub.tumblr.com/

Figuring out that I’m intersex explained a lot for me and gave me a way to make sense of traumatic things from my pubescent years. Meeting people with similar experiences, even though they are traumatic experiences, was something very joyful for realizing I was not alone nor a weird freak.

Learning the term ipsogender was also a joyful thing for me since gave me a way to articulate that even though I agree with my assigned gender I have a lot of baggage about it and honestly relate more to trans people than to cis people.

(I’m also bi but I figured that out at an early age, my parents were reasonably supportive, and it wasn’t the same kind of galaxybrain process for me as figuring out sex/gender.)

Ah! Très utile, merci!

Thanks for the intel - hope you are able to get some better camping trips in the future! Gonna have to strategize about the bugs. 👀

Planning to explore the different Routes Vertes out of Montreal to the nearby parks. Gonna do a bike camping trip to Oka once mosquito season dies down, then later on do Ptit train du nord to Mont Tremblant. If time allows gonna try and bike out to some of the parks in the Eastern Townships.