After residing in 15 cities throughout the USA, Britain and Africa, Katie Fahrland plotted a course to a life in Canada. She didn’t anticipate that it might lead by way of 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 improvement 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 loads to deal with,” stated Ms. Fahrland, now 44. An skilled world traveler, she obtained a job with a personal tour operator. “I used to be sad,” she stated. “I had no mates. My individuals 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 wished to stay someplace that aligned with my values,” she stated. “Folks listed below are type, pleasant and supportive. And backed training, together with nationwide healthcare, was necessary.”
Ms. Fahrland offered 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 mates had invited her and Zoe to remain. Lastly, in 2024, the paperwork got here by way of, and the 2 landed in Montreal. “It was a undertaking 4 years within the making,” she stated.
Her first cease was a rental residence in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a leafy neighborhood southwest of downtown full of century-old brick houses. Zoe enrolled in a faculty there, and the world enabled a car-free life-style. Its important artery, Monkland Avenue, provided loads of eating, buying and companies.
“She knew precisely the place she wished to be, and had very particular standards for the residence,” stated Ms. Fahrland’s agent, Monique Assouline of The Company.
The suitable place would have a minimum of 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 finances of 900,000 Canadian {dollars} (about $660,000) can be a problem in Montreal’s scorching condominium market.
“I had wished to spend much less, however realized I wouldn’t discover what I wanted,” she stated.
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