” I’m fine “, assures Ilyès on several occasions, as if he wanted to be convinced of it. But, over the course of the conversation, this Frenchman concedes that he “Sometimes real slack”. Assigned to take his courses online in his room located in the residence of the University of Montreal, the young man in third year of international relations, usually overflowing with activities, has not set foot on campus since Several weeks. When he wakes up, he reaches out to turn on his computer camera and attends his first class. It’s gone again for an endless day. The only valve that he agrees is going to swim three times a week in the university swimming pool which has remained open. “It allows me to forget that the only thing we have the right to do is to do nothing. “
The French who study in Montreal – there are more than 10,000 – were numerous to have taken advantage of the summer to recharge their batteries in France with their families. But, coming back, they knew what to expect: from the spring, most higher education institutions in the province had announced that with the exception of rare practical work the autumn semester would be provided remotely. .
But the prospect of taking their online courses from Metz, Toulouse or Paris with six hours of jet lag, as well as their desire to reconnect with what they hoped would be a return to normal in Quebec student life, have often caused them urged to cross the Atlantic again. Not all, however, had anticipated the ordeal that awaited them. Especially since in Quebec as elsewhere, the second wave of the pandemic provoked social restriction measures at the end of September: the closure of cafes and restaurants, and the strict ban on receiving friends at home forced everyone to relive an imposed solitude, all hundreds of kilometers from their family circle.
” You are fine ? “
A young Frenchwoman in her fourth year at HEC Montréal, Juliette confesses, despite being naturally optimistic, that she regularly experiences anxiety attacks. “The fact of being bullied in your freedom and in your sociability, of not being able to project yourself into your future at an age when you are ready to conquer the world, it’s very hard mentally”, she admits. In a shared apartment with four classmates in a duplex located in the Plateau district of Montreal, the student has the chance to escape isolation, “Even if sometimes it’s war in the apartment”, she has fun, “Because we are all stressed in turn”.
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