Two Different Worlds - Same Country

Recently the Lester B. Pearson School Board, the English school board on the western part of the island of Montreal, decided that three schools would close and that more French would be taught in the schools. The reason for the closures is falling enrollment.

During our last few years in Vancouver, the Vancouver School Board, went through a similar process and ended up closing a few schools. Reason...falling enrollment.

On the surface the fact that the stories are similar seems odd. After all one city, on the west coast, continues to boom as it has for most of the last two decades. People are moving to the area in droves. Hardly a place where you would expect falling enrollment. The other city, in Quebec, has seen a fairly stagnant growth state for the last two decades. You might expect falling enrollment there, especially in an English school board that is not open to all citizens due to language laws.

However, in the story is the same. People are leaving the city of Vancouver and the West Island of Montreal due to housing prices. They have gone up to the point where the average family living in these cities is no longer able to, or no longer wishes to, spend what is required to buy the average house in their respective cities. In Vancouver people are moving further and further into the eastern suburbs. In Montreal they are moving off island.

But again the story could not be any different. And here, finally, is the quote that inspired this Ideeah. It comes from the January 6, 2010 edition of The Chronicle - The voice of Montreal's West Island since 1925. The Editorial speaks about the schooling issue and states:

"...young families are fleeing the West Island in bunches leaving only high-earning professionals or house-rich, cash-poor seniors citizens...to make up the population. Unless you have $250,000 hanging around, it's tough to purchase a detached, single-family home that is in reasonable condition anywhere in the West Island, and that's a lot of money to pay for a bungalow with a lawn and an unfinished basement."

To my many friends in Vancouver reading this quote will make them fall over in laughter or maybe tears or maybe envy or, then again, maybe in complete understanding. You can't even buy a condo in the eastern suburbs of Vancouver for that kind of money. A house will set you back much more. I just searched, on mls.ca, the Lower Mainland of Vancouver for a house at $250,000 and the results showed seventeen properties...the majority of them in Mission and Abbotsford - a 75 km drive away from Vancouver's downtown core. The same search criteria for the greater Montreal area shows 2444 results many within 10 km of the downtown core. For you Montrealers reading this 75 km gets you, going south, about 10 km into New York State, or to the north to Saint-Sauveur in the Laurentians or, going west, just across the Ontario/Quebec border. Can you imagine driving this far every day just so that you could buy that $250,000 house?

I compared prices for a detached bungalow between Richmond, BC and Pointe-Claire, QC - two similar suburbs. In 1974 the average price in Richmond was $49,000 and $46,000 in Pointe-Claire. Today the prices are $531,000 and $248,500.

I will leave it to you to determine what happened during those twenty-five years.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!