Fifty years ago I left Belfast for Canada, and like most Irish I landed in the English-speaking part of the country. However, after three years, in 1978, I moved to francophone Montreal.My new city was love at first sight. This helped me to brush aside Québec’s “nation once again” fervour and its new language law. I embraced French and it embraced me right back. By keeping my ears open and parroting back what I heard, I quickly became fairly fluent. Two years after I arrived, on May 20th, 1980, 60 per cent of voters in the first Québexit referendum, chose to stay within Canada. Despite this reassuring outcome, all of my non-francophone colleagues in the cigarette factory resigned and left Québec.By early 1981, as the only remaining “Anglo” in the factory’s 800 employees, semi-jokingly I’d refer to myself as “the last of the Mohicans”.It seemed ironic to me that back home in Gallagher’s Tobacco Company, Belfast, as a “wee Fenian”, I was less a minority than I was here, as a “wee Anglo”.With separation off the menu, French acquired a new importance as the cornerstone of Québec identity. Thanks to my progress in French (and I suspect my Irish roots), I was well-accepted in the factory. But even a love of French couldn’t save my job as quality manager in Canada’s vicious 1992 recession. By now in my early 40s, as an “Anglo” and immigrant in francophone Québec, I feared my employability wasn’t great.To give me an edge in the jobs market, I decided to write, in French, an article about quality management, something I was (and still am) still passionate about.Montreal was love at first sight. Photograph: iStock Without a computer, word processing, translation or spellcheck software, producing the 600-word article took about three hours per day for a month. Once ready, I submitted it to a francophone daily newspaper that, amazingly, published it.The article helped me into a new job and career as an ISO 9000 consultant with the Québec government’s productivity research centre. My very francophone manager told me my article had won him over; it showed I understood that French was a pillar of Québec identity. By now, French had already become part of my own sense of identity. I had discovered this during an ill-fated attempt to settle back in Belfast. Despite finding a job and somewhere to stay, I missed French, its sounds and its warmth. Returning to Montreal, reunited with French, I felt more complete. Recently I took another big step outside the English language. In 2025 I registered for a six-month Irish-language course at the Department of Irish Studies at Concordia University. I felt some trepidation about this. After all, in my school years Irish was even more incomprehensible than French. However, in Montreal, my success with French gave me the courage to have another go at Gaeilge.It was amazing. In the first three-hour class I had learned more Irish than I had in three years at St Mary’s in Belfast. Surprisingly soon I knew enough to show my neighbours that Irish is a language, not a dialect of English, and that “Anglo” label didn’t do me justice. Most of all, I no longer experience the shame of not being able to back up my claim to Irishness with a few words of Irish.If French made me more complete, Irish has taken me further along that path. It would be very strange if it hadn’t. I am learning more Irish each day, and while I may never get to fluency, I am enjoying making my way towards it.So that’s the story of how emigration, Montreal and French led me back to Irish and, I believe, to a more complete version of my own wee self. Patrick McKenna left Belfast in 1975 and lives in Montreal, Canada Are you Irish and living in another country? Would you like to share your experience in writing or by interview? You can use the form below, or email abroad@irishtimes.com. Irish Times Abroad submission guidelines hereFollow us on Instagram to keep up with the latestSign up to The Irish Times Abroad newsletter for Irish-connected people around the world.