I’m far from the first Central Floridian to fantasize about fleeing our floundering state — where paper-skinned politicians pander to an imploding president by petulantly painting over previously approved crosswalk memorials in the name of supposed traffic safety, while simultaneously dismantling speed bumps to fascism like due process and the rule of law — and relocating to a saner, safer space. A land where inclusion and diversity aren’t dirty words; where sustainability and equity are valued over unrestrained capitalism; and where the government proactively invests in infrastructure supporting vibrant public arts festivals, instead of paying lip service while nickel-and-diming them to death. A place like Canada, eh?
Unfortunately, I’ve learned the hard way that even having a Canadian step-parent is no leg up on getting residency, much less citizenship, in our neighbor to the north. But last week I got to live the dream briefly, when a short visit to family in Quebec was unexpectedly extended by a flight attendants strike that grounded Air Canada’s entire fleet for several days just as I was supposed fly home. Since the labor action — which was ruled “illegal” — wasn’t covered under the carrier’s compensation policy, my solidarity with the union (whose primary demand was compensation for unpaid hours spent working on the ground) cost me the equivalent of a mortgage payment, but the gift of additional time exploring the city of Montreal turned out to be priceless.
Orlando and Montreal are surprisingly similar in several ways: Both are relatively liberal enclaves located in the southeastern region of their respective nations, both are beacons for tourists from across the country and around the globe, and both are bedeviled by Kafkaesque road construction projects that never seem to end. (Believe it or not, Montreal’s omnipresent brigades of orange barricades make FDOT’s I-4 makeovers look like minor touch-ups.) And although every resident I spoke with instantly started raving about Florida’s weather upon hearing where I live, Montreal offers countless outdoor activities from April through October, which is about the same number of months out of the year that I can tolerate Orlando’s ever-warming climate.
As far as attractions go, Orlando and Montreal both have tourist districts that feature an iconic Ferris wheel and a big-top hosting a Cirque du Soleil show; the Mexico-inspired Luzia (which played in the Florida Mall’s parking lot a decade ago) is still stunning. Thanks in part to taxpayer support, Montreal also enjoys a proliferation of historical sites, as well as museums and galleries, most of which are affordable or even free. But crucially, in Quebec those tourism and cultural anchors are connected to each other by a walkable urban core, where pedestrians have primacy over private vehicles and parking lots don’t dominate the landscape.
It was on St. Helen’s Island, which I reached by water ferry from Montreal’s Old Port, where I most felt like I’d slipped through a multiverse portal into a bizarro inversion of Orlando — for better and worse. Partially constructed from landfill for the 1967 International and Universal Exposition (aka Expo 67), the island still holds remnants of that seminal event, which was in its own way as influential on Walt Disney World’s original EPCOT Center as the iconic 1964 New York World’s Fair was on Disneyland. Notably, although the monorail that ran through the American pavilion was demolished, they’ve preserved the architectural legacy of Buckminster Fuller, who birthed both the geodesic dome structure still surrounding the Biosphere ecology museum and the “Spaceship Earth” philosophy behind WDW’s big silver golf ball.
However, at the opposite end of St. Helen’s — in every sense of the word — sits La Ronde, the northeastern-most theme park in the newly merged Six Flags/Cedar Fair chain. Having purchased a Gold annual pass at California’s Knott’s Berry Farm only weeks before, I decided to test its advertised validity until 2027 at any of 40-plus parks at my most geographically distant option … much to my own peril. My comedy of errors began when I foolishly followed posted signs for pedestrian access to the park only to put in over 10,000 steps going up, down, back over, and finally around a near-vertical mountain; I finally resorted to following a French-speaking family down a sidewalk-less roadway, across a field, and past a bemused groundhog to a foliage-obscured entrance.
The good news is that when I eventually arrived at La Ronde’s gates, my mobile phone-based pass functioned flawlessly; the same cannot be said of any of the entry plaza’s restrooms, but at least the search for working facilities led me to find a pseudo-Western saloon where draft beer was conspicuously cheaper than in Floridian parks. Thus fortified, I set out to circumnavigate the park and find one ride that looked worth the wait.
This turned out to be far easier said than done, because La Ronde’s attractions sprawl along a curving shoreline, and current wait times weren’t available in the park’s app or website, or even outside most ride entrances. Despite it being a weekday and not uncomfortably crowded along the walkways, I soon discovered that even simple clones of Dumbo and Mad Tea Party had hundreds of guests in line. And very quickly after stepping into the deceptively short queue for Vampire (a B&M inverted coaster similar to Busch Gardens Tampa’s Montu), I discovered La Ronde’s Achilles heel: capacity.
Shortly after the confetti of Epic Universe’s grand opening was swept away, social media discourse began to focus on the new park’s reported problems with throughput and reliability. As legitimate as those issues are, I’ll never complain about them at Universal again after only a handful of hours witnessing the glacial ride operations at La Ronde, where taking seven or eight minutes to dispatch a single 24-seat train is considered completely normal.
Yet, even though they were standing virtually motionless for hours in completely unthemed, unshaded switchbacks, sans any air-conditioned preshows, the La Ronde guests I witnessed weren’t screaming or shoving each other, or even staring silently at their cell phones. They were smiling and laughing, talking with their friends and neighbors, and being polite to the employees, who were unfailingly friendly right back. There may not be a Wizarding World in Montreal’s La Ronde, but their ministry must have some kind of magic, because Orlando’s park-goers would be rioting under similar circumstances.
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This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2025.