Eiffel vs. CN
Pain au chocolat vs. pan of apple crisp
The River Seine vs. Lake Ontario
Think choosing between Paris and Toronto is easy? So does our Parisian founder, Lulu: Toronto wins, hands down. The Toronto Star recently caught up with Lulu, and a few other French ex-pats, to uncover the lure of our charming city.
Stylist-to-the-stars Roxana Tota (she’s the artiste behind the images of Salma Hayek) and I are chatting about her recent move from Paris to Toronto over a glass of wine. To keep her busy 3-year-old son Joseph occupied, I let him play with my pen and paper until his art project veers precariously close to the sleeve of my silk blouse. “Mais non, Joseph!” exclaims his mother. “C’est la soie!”
This is what it is to be French. You must learn about the properties of silk when you are 3 years old.
Say you know everything about silk, are keenly interested in style and culture, and happen to speak perfect French (because you are French) and you have the option to live in Paris or Toronto. No brainer, right? Surely you would choose the City of Light over our city of Nothing in Particular? Interestingly enough — and luckily for us — a growing number of French expats have come to the opposite conclusion. Poised and effortlessly chic, designer Françoise Turner-Larcade is everything you expect a Frenchwoman to be. Ten years ago, when she left Paris for Toronto, it was only because her husband had a business and family here. “I found the city absolutely not harmonious,” says Turner-Larcade. “Coming from Paris, it seemed quite small and not very exciting. There was no mix of small shops and restaurants, no terraces in the summer, and no life in the streets.”
For the first nine years, with the ready excuse of having to source for her Toronto showroom, the Roseland Gallery, on Queen St. W., Turner-Larcade flew back to Paris every five weeks. And then something happened. Turner-Larcade claims Toronto changed “a lot” since she first arrived. “Everything is here now — food, music, culture.” But her viewpoint began to change, too.
“It took time to understand, but there are so many places here that are charming, you start to forget it’s ugly,” laughs Turner-Larcade, who likens Toronto to a woman who has more charm than beauty. “Beauty is only on the outside,” observes Turner-Larcade, “but charm makes a deeper impression.” Last year, when her marriage ended, Turner-Larcade decided to stay here on her own.
“In France, perhaps because of all the tradition, there is a different mentality,” explains Turner-Larcade. “People live all their life in the same area; it’s difficult to move out of your social circles. But here, there are none of these rules. You are freed up to live more in the now.”
When Dr. Sylvain Baruchel and his wife Carole left Paris 22 years ago “with eight suitcases and three kids,” their first stop was Montreal. “We thought that it would be easier for us to adapt culturally,” says Carole. Yet, like other French émigrés I spoke with, the Baruchels described the family’s time there as “suffocating.” When Sylvain — a pediatric oncologist — received an offer from Sick Kids, the couple jumped at the opportunity. In Carole’s words, coming to Toronto “was like removing a plastic bag from my head.”
The same could be said for the Baruchels’ feelings for their native country. “In France, you do have access to ‘immediate culture’,” says Carole, making quotation marks in the air around the phrase. “But there is also always this history of violence and confrontation. Everyone is clinging to the past. It is almost impossible to change anything in France without violence, as we see on the streets of Paris today.”
For the Baruchels, coming to Toronto was “a breath of fresh air,” both personally and professionally. “Toronto is not Paris — the city is not beautiful,” adds Carole. “But there is more to life than architecture. Here, what is really exciting is the openness. You have carte blanche here to do whatever you want.”
Energetic, raven-haired entrepreneuse Lulu Cohen-Farnell has come to the same conclusion since her arrival from Paris 10 years ago. She founded a revolutionary elementary school and daycare catering program called Real Food for Real Kids that now feeds approximately 6,000 Toronto children locally sourced, all-natural snacks and meals.
“In France, people are very stuck in their ways and attached to their culture,” says Cohen-Farnell. “Everything is so deeply ensconced; there is no room for new ideas.”
Even working for a large multinational in Paris, Cohen-Farnell was disappointed by a professional atmosphere that she describes as “not about merit, your work or your ideas,” but more about the “promotion canapé” (the French equivalent of the Hollywood casting couch).
“It was really amazing for me as a French person, coming here, to find such generosity, and positivity and community spirit,” says Cohen-Farnell, who describes the “niceness” of people here as “so refreshing.”
Now firmly established in Cabbagetown, raising two young children with her husband and business partner David Farnell, Cohen-Farnell admits that she does still miss Paris’ physical beauty, “but there’s a lot of superficiality in that. Here, people can think forward. You’ve got a dream, an idea, here you can just do it. You don’t hear what you always hear in France, “oh, non, c’est pas possible.”
Bruno Moynie mockingly calls himself a “luxury immigrant.” Like Cohen-Farnell, the accomplished ethnographer and film-maker left Paris for professional reasons, but when a friend showed him around Toronto, he found the future.
“Sure, Paris is great, but the traditional comes with a burden at all levels,” says Moynie. “From insistence in the way things have always been done to xenophobia about other communities.” For Moynie, Toronto is ultimately modern: “the real, working multiculturalism of Toronto hands-down delivers. It reminds me every day why I choose to live here.”
Like many new arrivals, it took Moynie a while to find his place within the city, but now the committed foodie is home. “My Italian butcher is just around the corner,” says Moynie. “The best Cambodian food is two blocks away, and every morning I get a coffee at this place called Ellington’s where they play live jazz and the owner is a Jamaican Rasta.”
For Moynie, as indeed for all of the French expats I spoke to, beauty here is more spiritual than physical, less to do with silk, and more to do with attitude. “People — especially people from here — ask us all the time, how could you choose Toronto over Paris?” laughs Cohen-Farnell. “They just don’t get it.”
Says Carole Baruchel, simply, “Toronto is my country.”
To read the article on the Toronto Star website, click here.