LETTER FROM MONTREAL
At the start of the morning, in the working-class district of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, in Montreal, the kitchen is fired up. The “tchac tchac” of the knives cutting the vegetables punctuates the conversations of the twenty or so people who are busy at the stove. Some are mothers who have come to “cook” together to reduce the cost of the meal they will take home, the others are apprentices.
Formerly homeless people, unemployed single-parent mothers, adolescents with autistic disorders, newly arrived immigrants without resources, all far from the job market, they follow a six-month training course at the Collective Kitchen which will help them find a job as cooks. or server.
At the head, for ten years, of this social and solidarity economy company, a Frenchman, Benoist de Peyrelongue, 54 years old. Based in Montreal since 2009, he arrived with a BEP in cooking and experience in the restaurant and hotel industry. He invented a new professional life here. “In France, even if I already had a social fiber that pushed me to do something else, I would have been asked to go back to school and obtain at least an MBA in management. », laughs the man who is now at the head of around forty employees and manages an annual budget of 4.5 million Canadian dollars (3 million euros). “In Quebec, we trust you, whatever your previous professional background. Everyone is limited only by themselves “, he assures.
Exceptional attractiveness
On January 10, the French consulate in Montreal announced that “the milestone of 200,000 French people living in the constituency had just been crossed” : a record that allows us to measure the exceptional attractiveness of the Quebec metropolis. This French community, the largest established outside Europe, contributes to the economic dynamism of the city: French companies such as Alstom, Air Liquide, BNP or Accuracy attract expatriates curious to taste “the Quebec experience”.
For a long time, bakeries and pastries in “French from France”, as they are called here, exude, in all Montreal neighborhoods, the smell of “real” bread and pastries. But French workers are now present in all sectors of activity; most discover a ” business spirit “significantly different from that of France.
Adrien Peyrache, 42, followed the classic path of a young neuroscience researcher: engineering school in France, postdoctoral work in New York, he applied in 2016 to the prestigious English-speaking McGill University in Montreal. Barely hired, he has 1 million dollars (700,000 euros) to carry out his research on neural circuits in his laboratory of around fifteen people. It is then up to him to learn how to raise funds to develop his projects.
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