This First Person article is the experience of Kelly Duval, a Montrealer who now lives in Finland. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ .
In my mid-20s, I made a decision that might have baffled my Finnish grandparents: I left Canada for Finland.
They had done the opposite. Seventy years earlier, both left post-war Finland by boat for better economic opportunities in Canada. They met in Montreal where they started a new life — and a family of nine children.
Born and raised in Montreal myself, I heard stories about Finland from my grandmother, often translated by my mum or aunts when she slipped into Finnish mid-sentence. The country felt like a distant, almost mythical place.
In 2017, my sister Liisa and I finally travelled there on what we called our “heritage tour” — which coincided with Finland’s 100th ye
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