After dwelling in 15 cities throughout the US, Britain and Africa, Katie Fahrland plotted a course to a life in Canada. She didn’t anticipate that it might lead via Colorado and Florida.
Ms. Fahrland, who grew up in Connecticut and graduated from McGill College in Montreal, labored in software program gross sales earlier than a profession pivot to worldwide growth work in Africa. Her daughter Zoe, now 9, was born shortly after she moved again to Washington, D.C., for a brand new job. In 2018, after shedding each that job and a trusted au pair, she decamped to Denver, the place a brother lived.
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“I’m a single guardian and it was quite a bit to deal with,” mentioned Ms. Fahrland, now 44. An skilled world traveler, she acquired a job with a non-public tour operator. “I used to be sad,” she mentioned. “I had no associates. My folks had been in Montreal, the place I went to highschool.”
In 2020, she utilized for everlasting resident standing in Canada, which might permit her to buy a house regardless of Canada’s ban on most overseas patrons.
“I needed to reside someplace that aligned with my values,” she mentioned. “Folks listed below are form, pleasant and supportive. And backed training, together with nationwide healthcare, was essential.”
Ms. Fahrland bought her Denver home and set out for Montreal, solely to study that her residency utility had been delayed. Frantic, she made one other detour to Jupiter, Fla., the place associates had invited her and Zoe to remain. Lastly, in 2024, the paperwork got here via, and the 2 landed in Montreal. “It was a venture 4 years within the making,” she mentioned.
Her first cease was a rental condominium in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a leafy neighborhood northwest of downtown stuffed with century-old brick properties. Zoe enrolled in a faculty there, and the realm enabled a car-free life-style. Its essential artery, Monkland Avenue, supplied loads of eating, purchasing and companies.
“She knew precisely the place she needed to be, and had very particular standards for the condominium,” mentioned Ms. Fahrland’s agent, Monique Assouline of The Company.
The appropriate place would have no less than 4 rooms — one every for her and Zoe, an workplace (she now works remotely for a New York-based hospitality advertising agency) and a visitor room. Two loos had been additionally a should. However Ms. Fahrland’s funds of 900,000 Canadian {dollars} (about $660,000) can be a problem in Montreal’s scorching condominium market.
“I had needed to spend much less, however realized I wouldn’t discover what I wanted,” she mentioned.
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