My father’s side of my family has many historic connections to Montreal (though he himself only lived in Canada very briefly with those relatives due to an immigration problem during the Holocaust and I was born and raised much later in the US). Though it still has a decent-sized Jewish population, it is a very historic community whose numbers have greatly shrunk in the last 30 years. Many Jewish (even in parts of the US that are relatively near Canada) do not know that the Jews of Montreal produced a rival style of bagel and “deli meat” to the much more well know “New York” style (and even this lifelong NY-er thinks their food is just as yummy! ).

John is right that Canada, even more so than the US tries to be very “sensitive” and “politically correct”. In fact, what has reduced the community is not anti-Semitism at all, but the French-English “language conflict”. Most Jewish immigrants to the city opted to learn English and when the French speaking populace became much more of a majority by the 1980’s many left for other parts of Canada or even the US (and sometimes for aliyah) rather than learn another language. I always take pride in my grand uncle (for who my middle name was named for), who came to the city in the late 1920’s from Poland on a med school scholarship to English-speaking McGill University but observing the community around him took the effort to learn both languages and serve as a pediatrician to both communities for many years after (Yael, I know you know a couple of languages and are struggling to learn Hebrew so I thought I’d mention him for inspiration).

You’re welcome!

These two Wikipedia articles talk about the “Montreal style” Jewish food:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoked_meat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_bagel