“It’s funny ’cause I don’t see much Montreal as an underdog city. I prefer the term small pond. There’s advantages to being in a small pond. The advantage is if you’re a big fish in that small pond, well, you’re still a big fish if you go to New York of if you go to Toronto. No matter where you go and you go speak with those other big fish, well, you’re their equivalent. You’re the big fish here, therefore, you have their respect.

You’re not trying to be the big fish in New York, you’re not trying to be the big fish in Toronto. You’re the big fish where you are. So when you go somewhere else, that big fish and this big fish get together and they talk. I learnt that doing trade shows for over 10 years in the clothing industry. Montreal is just a market, it’s a place.

Now small ponds, what’s cool too is because it’s small, but because it’s so dense and so many people are involved in so many of the same things, it forces people to have a really strong sense of community. But in a big pond, there’s twice as many people doing the same thing, you’ve got the same kind of layout, but there’s a lot more people cutting each other’s throat and doing everything because it’s really about survival of the fittest.”