On a sunny terrasse on Monkland Ave. earlier this month, an interview with Gracia Kasoki Katahwa flowed effortlessly from French to English and back again, as conversations in Montreal so often do.

“We can do that N.D.G.-style,” joked the incumbent Projet Montréal borough mayor of Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, referencing the easy interplay of the two languages in a neighbourhood that has traditionally been popular with Montreal’s anglophone community, but is also increasingly French, bilingual and diverse.

Indeed, 36.6 per cent of the borough’s more than 185,000 residents speak primarily English at home, versus 28.5 per cent who speak mainly French, according to data from the 2021 census available on the City of Montreal’s website. Another 24.3 per cent communicate most frequentl

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