`I wouldn't live anywhere else'
Both rural and urban parents tout the benefits of their locations for raising kids
The Bigs and Littles are nowhere to be found.
It's a day off for them, and the Andersons' farm is more than 400 hectares, so they could be anywhere.
The Bigs — Kristen and Sean, 14 and 13 — and the Littles — Jonathan and Chloe, 10 and nine — are free-range children who wake up at 5 a.m. Their playground includes a trampoline, a pool and a ring-andrope setup in a barn where they can literally swing from the rafters.
There's no traffic on their narrow Howick-area road, and the air is still except for the occasional sound of a tractor or a cow lowing. Barn kittens strut out from the garage to the edge of the barn, refining their hunting skills by attacking wildflowers.
Eventually the children emerge from various corners of the farm and even though it's their day off they're eager to give visitors a hint of Canadian dairy-farm life.
They are among the 191/2 per cent of Quebecers who live in rural areas, according to Statistics Canada. More than 59 per cent of the population lives in an urban setting; the remainder are in medium and small population centres.
Kids are the same everywhere ... except when they aren't.
These children don't spend a lot of time in front of screens, but they know technology. Their cows sport health trackers that send real-time information to an app. The barn is fitted with temperature-controlled fans and a sprinkler-misting system. There are 210 cows on the Andersons' farm, and 95 of them must be milked twice a day, before and after school. Every cow has a name and — the children will tell you — a personality.
“My favourite cow is Penny,” Jonathan says. “She's named for my grandma.”
The Littles work in concert, supervised by the Bigs and father Mark, to prepare the cows and attach teat cups that pump milk to a giant vat for processing. Seeing their teamwork is like watching a square dance.
They've been doing this since they were tall enough to reach the cows, mother Jodi says. When Chloe was small, she stood on a bucket to help. Jodi is a sixth-generation farmer and dairy vet who can't imagine raising children in any other environment.
“There's so much air and room to be independent and stress-free,” she says, extending an arm toward the open field that is transformed into a skating rink in the winter.
In the Before Times, the children took a school bus, but since the COVID-19 pandemic, their parents have been driving them after morning chores to the local school, which is 15 minutes away. They are involved in a variety of extracurricular activities including basketball, choir, soccer, the 4-H Club and leadership.
They used to go to Montreal for hockey games at the Bell Centre, where they found the noise irritating and the traffic frustrating.
“We'd have to park pretty far away and walk for a long time,” Sean says.
They are competitive but get along, Jodi says. Having four children in two age groups helps, she adds, making a connection with the calves, who are each paired with a friend in the calf barn. “They're clean, fed, warm and vaccinated,” she says. “Just like our kids.
“You take care of them, and they never get sick.”
Maya Angenot and her husband, Horia Bundaru, left their apartment in the Old Port more than five years ago, when their oldest daughter was a toddler.
“We were on a very small street, but there was a bar a block down,” Angenot says. “When it let out at 3 a.m., it was incredible how loud the people were. There were street fights, throwing bottles, screaming, revving car engines.”
It was more than a white-noise machine could overcome, so the small family moved to western N.D.G., where Angenot grew up and where her parents and other members of their extended family still live. Daughter Ariane is seven now, and Éloïse is five. The family shares their home with Hobbes, a nine-year-old orange cat.
“The area is amazing because we're near the Benny Library and the sports centre, where they do swimming and activities. That's attached to a pretty big park where they have water games, a playground, a soccer field, so we'll go play soccer or go to Girouard Park.
“We have a small backyard, but it does the trick.”
Backyards are close together and people are excited to have guests over as COVID restrictions have eased, but Angenot says neighbours are respectful, and refrain from entertaining late at night. “You don't hear parties go on till two in the morning. They're dying down by 10 p.m., which is fine because we don't go to bed before then anyway.”
The girls' school doesn't provide busing, but during the school year it's a 15-minute drive — 20 with traffic. On more hectic days, with work, it can be a challenge. “We'll have to drive them until they're old enough to take the bus and métro on their own.”
The arts are very important to Angenot and Bundaru, who were involved in the theatre when they were younger.
“We like going to museums and love introducing our kids to new things. We go hiking with the kids, but in terms of being able to bring them to museums and the science centre and all of these different places that cater to kids with regards to the arts, Montreal has more to offer.”
“I wouldn't live anywhere else.”
The Roy daughters are in transition from rural to urban.
Bailey, Shannon and Lindsay Roy — who are 23, 22 and 21 years old, respectively — grew up in a farmhouse down the road from the Andersons. Among their first jobs were babysitting the Bigs and Littles. They've mostly flown the nest to pursue education in Montreal and Sherbrooke — a world of change from the farm that was built by their family in 1852 and was a dairy operation until 2011.
“We were lucky because we all went through CEGEP in Ste-annede-bellevue first,” Shannon says. “There, you can still see corn fields. You feel like you're living in town, but if you take a step back, you're not quite in the city.”
Given that CEGEPS and universities tend to be in urban environments, “most of our kids leave the house at 16 to get an apartment somewhere,” says their mother, Caroline. “Either they move into the city or they get a car — but then you deal with a young driver in treacherous winter conditions. Those are the trade-offs. They can't just live at home and go to school.”
Shannon and Bailey began their city adventure with an apartment in N.D.G. and help from their dad, Grant, who showed them how to use the métro and get around.
Despite the pandemic, they remained in Montreal during school months because of the access to reliable internet connections.
“It was kind of like when you go to the school library where you can actually do some work,” Shannon says. “If we were here, we would have just gone outside or walked over to the neighbours to see what was going on with those kids. We wouldn't have actually done our school work.”
These young women grew up outdoors, Grant says: “They were teenagers before they knew I had a Nintendo. It was a Nintendo 2.”
“And we're terrible at it,” Shannon says.
Rather than video games, country children learn skills like planning, because all outings must be organized around the cows' schedule. It's one of the reasons the Roy family rarely dined out.
“The restaurants around here are all like patate shacks anyway. It's poutine and hamburgers. Not exactly something you feel like eating all the time,” Shannon says. Besides, chores happen around supper hour.
Bailey is a city girl now, Shannon says. Shannon and Lindsay prefer the calm.
“I don't see myself with a small yard,” Shannon says. “I see myself in the suburbs or the country, where I have enough space to breathe.”
Grant has a smile and a catchphrase for his daughter: “All roads lead to Howick.”