Day: October 26, 2025

• Erin Smith, 47, had lived in New York for most of her life and never planned to leave.
• But when her husband landed a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity in Quebec, she knew she had to go.
• Smith thought the move wouldn’t suit her, but said she’s much happier than she expected.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erin Smith, a 47-year-old a freelance marketer and founder of the travel blog Gluten-Free Globetrotter, who moved to Montreal in 2024. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in New York and spent my last twenty years living in Brooklyn. I just didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Not even in 2016, when I moved with my then-boyfriend, who is now my husband, to Santa Cruz. Even though it was beautiful there, I just wasn’t happy. I had to get back to the city, back to New York. So we moved after only two and a half years in California.

I thought I wouldn’t be moving again, but in 2024, my husband got a really good job opportunity in Montreal. He’s an agronomist who works in indoor agriculture. He had the opportunity to help start up a greenhouse division for a national company there, which was right up his alley.

As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of agriculture in New York City. I’m a freelance marketer and can work from anywhere, but for my husband, it really was the perfect job at the perfect time.

I hired a relocation coach to help me with the move

We had to wait for my son to finish the school year in New York, so from January to July, we focused on planning the move.

The thought of leaving New York was really hard. I mean, all my friends and family are there. And even though Canada isn’t geographically far from New York, it’s still a different environment — especially Quebec, which is a French-speaking province.

I kept thinking back to when we moved to California, which hadn’t been a good fit for us. “Oh God, this is going to happen again,” kept running through my mind. This, plus the overwhelming feeling of how much we’d have to learn about Quebec, led me to hire a relocation coach.

She’s a digital nomad who’s lived all over the world, and she helped me a lot — not so much with the logistics of moving, but more with realizing that the things that were important to me in New York would still be important to me in Canada, and that there are ways to incorporate them into my new life.

We’re paying less for housing in Montreal

We visited Quebec a few times before our move to scout out neighborhoods and schools. It was important for me to visit during the winter because it’s very cold and snowy here, which I wasn’t used to living in New York City.

Our last visit before the move was in April, and we literally had a week to find a place. Unlike in New York, where you can find a rental at any time of year, in Montreal, many leases start on July 1 and run through the end of June the following year.

My husband works in rural Quebec, and we couldn’t live there for many reasons, but we’re very happy with where we landed. We live in a great neighborhood in Westmount, in the southwest part of Montreal. We’re right near a metro station and can walk to downtown Montreal from our apartment. I feel very lucky.

When we moved, our goal was to spend less on rent than we did in New York. In Brooklyn, we lived in a duplex with a backyard, which is pretty rare there — we got really lucky during COVID-19, when everyone was leaving the city. We paid about $3,500 there; here I’m paying roughly $1,000 less. While we’ve lost our outdoor space, we gained a washer and dryer, a luxury I never had in 20 years of living in Brooklyn.

We had to make new friends and set up new bank accounts

Quebec’s primary language is French, so navigating the region’s bureaucracy and school system has been challenging.

In Montreal, there are two main school boards, one English and one French. We needed specific paperwork to qualify for the English system. My son now attends an English school with a French immersion curriculum.

Making friends here hasn’t been easy, either. Because I work for a New York-based company, I’ve really had to put myself out there to meet people. Most of my community has come from meeting other parents through my kid’s school organizations and connecting with our neighbors.

The biggest challenge we’ve faced has been setting up our finances. Since we had no financial history in Canada, we had no credit. Even basic things like getting a credit card or opening a bank account took about six to eight weeks to sort out.

The cost of living here is pretty comparable to New York. We spend about the same on groceries, and while we’re saving on housing, my husband spends more on gas because he’s commuting and driving farther outside the city. I, however, work from home.

The healthcare system is affordable but difficult to navigate

I have been living with celiac disease for over 40 years. In Canada, it has been much easier to eat gluten-free due to the country’s food regulations and labeling laws. And thanks to my work with gluten-free restaurants and brands — and my blog — I already had a built-in gluten-free community when I moved here.

I’ve never lived in a place with socialized healthcare, so there has been a huge learning curve in finding doctors and handling prescriptions. I have to use Google Translate for everything.

Health insurance is affordable here. We no longer pay out of pocket for coverage, which is a big change — in New York, health insurance for a family of three costs almost as much as rent.

It’s different from province to province, but in Quebec, you’re required to have an assigned family doctor. Since moving here, I’ve had to see a few specialists for checkups, and the service has been covered. Sometimes, I still find myself waiting for a bill to show up, and it never does.

Something else that surprised me about the medical system here is that you can actually make an appointment with a pharmacist, and they can prescribe medication if you have proper test results.

Montreal now feels like home

I really love Montreal and I’m happy here. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do. Life feels calmer — the city is beautiful, cleaner, and safer. People here are so much nicer; they have this polite, laid-back attitude.

Our Canadian visas last for three years, but we hope to extend them. For now, I’d like to stay as long as possible.

A year ago, I probably would’ve wanted to move back to New York. But now, especially with our child in school, I don’t want to disrupt that. I also don’t know if we could afford to go back.

I’ll always see myself as a New Yorker first and an American second; that’s my identity through and through. But in New York, I never really felt like I could slow down. In Montreal, we’re not in that constant, heightened state anymore. Life here just feels different.

• Erin Smith, 47, had lived in New York for most of her life and never planned to leave.
• But when her husband landed a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity in Quebec, she knew she had to go.
• Smith thought the move wouldn’t suit her, but said she’s much happier than she expected.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erin Smith, a 47-year-old a freelance marketer and founder of the travel blog Gluten-Free Globetrotter, who moved to Montreal in 2024. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in New York and spent my last twenty years living in Brooklyn. I just didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Not even in 2016, when I moved with my then-boyfriend, who is now my husband, to Santa Cruz. Even though it was beautiful there, I just wasn’t happy. I had to get back to the city, back to New York. So we moved after only two and a half years in California.

I thought I wouldn’t be moving again, but in 2024, my husband got a really good job opportunity in Montreal. He’s an agronomist who works in indoor agriculture. He had the opportunity to help start up a greenhouse division for a national company there, which was right up his alley.

As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of agriculture in New York City. I’m a freelance marketer and can work from anywhere, but for my husband, it really was the perfect job at the perfect time.

I hired a relocation coach to help me with the move

We had to wait for my son to finish the school year in New York, so from January to July, we focused on planning the move.

The thought of leaving New York was really hard. I mean, all my friends and family are there. And even though Canada isn’t geographically far from New York, it’s still a different environment — especially Quebec, which is a French-speaking province.

I kept thinking back to when we moved to California, which hadn’t been a good fit for us. “Oh God, this is going to happen again,” kept running through my mind. This, plus the overwhelming feeling of how much we’d have to learn about Quebec, led me to hire a relocation coach.

She’s a digital nomad who’s lived all over the world, and she helped me a lot — not so much with the logistics of moving, but more with realizing that the things that were important to me in New York would still be important to me in Canada, and that there are ways to incorporate them into my new life.

We’re paying less for housing in Montreal

We visited Quebec a few times before our move to scout out neighborhoods and schools. It was important for me to visit during the winter because it’s very cold and snowy here, which I wasn’t used to living in New York City.

Our last visit before the move was in April, and we literally had a week to find a place. Unlike in New York, where you can find a rental at any time of year, in Montreal, many leases start on July 1 and run through the end of June the following year.

My husband works in rural Quebec, and we couldn’t live there for many reasons, but we’re very happy with where we landed. We live in a great neighborhood in Westmount, in the southwest part of Montreal. We’re right near a metro station and can walk to downtown Montreal from our apartment. I feel very lucky.

When we moved, our goal was to spend less on rent than we did in New York. In Brooklyn, we lived in a duplex with a backyard, which is pretty rare there — we got really lucky during COVID-19, when everyone was leaving the city. We paid about $3,500 there; here I’m paying roughly $1,000 less. While we’ve lost our outdoor space, we gained a washer and dryer, a luxury I never had in 20 years of living in Brooklyn.

We had to make new friends and set up new bank accounts

Quebec’s primary language is French, so navigating the region’s bureaucracy and school system has been challenging.

In Montreal, there are two main school boards, one English and one French. We needed specific paperwork to qualify for the English system. My son now attends an English school with a French immersion curriculum.

Making friends here hasn’t been easy, either. Because I work for a New York-based company, I’ve really had to put myself out there to meet people. Most of my community has come from meeting other parents through my kid’s school organizations and connecting with our neighbors.

The biggest challenge we’ve faced has been setting up our finances. Since we had no financial history in Canada, we had no credit. Even basic things like getting a credit card or opening a bank account took about six to eight weeks to sort out.

The cost of living here is pretty comparable to New York. We spend about the same on groceries, and while we’re saving on housing, my husband spends more on gas because he’s commuting and driving farther outside the city. I, however, work from home.

The healthcare system is affordable but difficult to navigate

I have been living with celiac disease for over 40 years. In Canada, it has been much easier to eat gluten-free due to the country’s food regulations and labeling laws. And thanks to my work with gluten-free restaurants and brands — and my blog — I already had a built-in gluten-free community when I moved here.

I’ve never lived in a place with socialized healthcare, so there has been a huge learning curve in finding doctors and handling prescriptions. I have to use Google Translate for everything.

Health insurance is affordable here. We no longer pay out of pocket for coverage, which is a big change — in New York, health insurance for a family of three costs almost as much as rent.

It’s different from province to province, but in Quebec, you’re required to have an assigned family doctor. Since moving here, I’ve had to see a few specialists for checkups, and the service has been covered. Sometimes, I still find myself waiting for a bill to show up, and it never does.

Something else that surprised me about the medical system here is that you can actually make an appointment with a pharmacist, and they can prescribe medication if you have proper test results.

Montreal now feels like home

I really love Montreal and I’m happy here. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do. Life feels calmer — the city is beautiful, cleaner, and safer. People here are so much nicer; they have this polite, laid-back attitude.

Our Canadian visas last for three years, but we hope to extend them. For now, I’d like to stay as long as possible.

A year ago, I probably would’ve wanted to move back to New York. But now, especially with our child in school, I don’t want to disrupt that. I also don’t know if we could afford to go back.

I’ll always see myself as a New Yorker first and an American second; that’s my identity through and through. But in New York, I never really felt like I could slow down. In Montreal, we’re not in that constant, heightened state anymore. Life here just feels different.

• Emma Stone has a filmography filled with critical and commercial hits.
• Like any working actor, Stone also has her share of duds.
• Here are the best and worst Emma Stone movies, according to critics.

Emma Stone, 36, is regarded as one of the best actors of her generation. She’s been nominated for four Oscars and won two in the best actress category (“La La Land” in 2017 and “”Poor Things” in 2024).

Her range is seemingly unlimited, tugging at hearts in the rom-com “Crazy, Stupid, Love” (2011), playing tennis legend Billie Jean King in “Battle of the Sexes” (2017), and even getting a taste of the superhero genre starring opposite Andrew Garfield in “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) and its sequel.

Stone’s latest movie, “Bugonia,” marks her fourth feature film collaborating with director Yorgos Lanthimos. In it, Stone plays a CEO who is abducted by two conspiracy theorists who believe she is an alien. Like her previous work with Lanthimos, “Bugonia” is being praised by critics and holds an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of publication.

But Stone hasn’t always been a critical darling. Here’s a breakdown of the best and worst movies in Stone’s career, according to the critic rankings on Rotten Tomatoes.

Emma Stone’s best movies

5. Emma Stone teamed with Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin to battle the undead in 2009’s “Zombieland.”

Critics Score: 89%

This spoof on the zombie genre stars Stone as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse who teams with three others on a cross-country trip to find a sanctuary zone.

3. (tie) Stone played the troubled daughter of Michael Keaton in 2014’s “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).”

Critics Score: 91%

In Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ambitious dark dramedy, Stone plays Sam, a recovering addict and the daughter of actor Riggan (Keaton). The two try to re-establish their broken relationship when Sam works as an assistant on Riggan’s Broadway show.

3. (tie) Stone and Ryan Gosling navigate Hollywood in the 2016 musical “La La Land.”

Critics Score: 91%

An aspiring actress (Stone) and a struggling jazz pianist (Gosling) fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Damien Chazelle’s breathtaking musical. Stone would go on to win her first best actress Oscar for the role.

2. Stone earned another Oscar playing a free spirit in 2023’s “Poor Things.”

Critics Score: 92%

In this outlandish Yorgos Lanthimos tale set in Victorian London, Stone plays Bella Baxter, a woman who died by suicide who is brought back to life thanks to a scientist (Willem Dafoe) who replaces her brain with that of an infant. Bella then takes on life in childlike wonder.

1. Stone and Rachel Weisz battle to be the Queen’s confidante in 2018’s “The Favourite.”

Critics Score: 93%

Marking the first time Stone worked with Lanthimos, this dark comedy set in 1700s England features Stone and Weisz as cousins who engage in absurd antics to outdo each other and become the favorite of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).

Emma Stone’s worst movies

5. Stone played the femme fatale in the forgettable 2013 crime noir “Gangster Squad.”

Critics Score: 30%

Stone teamed with “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer for this gangster movie starring Gosling, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte, and Sean Penn as infamous real-life mob boss Mickey Cohen. Critics and audiences were less than enthusiastic.

4. Stone probably wants to forget being in 2009’s “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” an awful Matthew McConaughey rom-com.

Critics Score: 27%

Early in Stone’s career, she signed on to this romantic comedy headed by McConaughey and Jennifer Garner with a plot based on Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol.” (Yes, you read that correctly.) Needless to say, the movie was hammered by critics.

3. Stone found herself at the center of controversy starring in 2015’s “Aloha.”

Critics Score: 20%

Not only is this movie writer-director Cameron Crowe’s lowest-rated score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Stone was also thrust into a whitewashing controversy for playing a character who is part Chinese, which she is not in real life.

2. Stone voiced one of the characters in the forgettable 2010 comedy “Marmaduke.”

Critics Score: 9%

This big-screen version of the legendary comic strip stars Owen Wilson voicing Marmaduke. Stone voiced Mazie, an energetic Australian Shepherd.

1. Stone is among the all-star cast in the panned 2013 film “Movie 43.”

Critics Score: 5%

Stone joined the likes of Richard Gere, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, and Elizabeth Banks to star in this anthology comedy made up of 14 short movies. Some critics regard it as one of the worst movies ever made.

• At this year’s HLTH conference in Las Vegas, AI was inescapable.
• Healthcare executives were feeling the AI fatigue and fears of a bubble amid a deal frenzy.
• AI giants like OpenAI and incumbents like Epic are posing new threats to healthcare startups.

HLTH is one of the biggest and flashiest healthcare conferences of the year, so it’s no surprise that 2025’s edition delivered the health AI hype in full force.

But beneath the sheen lurked mounting AI fatigue, fears of formidable new competitors, and a plaguing awareness of an AI bubble.

Healthcare VC is facing many of the same boons, and the same predicaments, as the tech world, albeit hundreds of billions of dollars short. Investors are pouring money into top startups promising enterprise savings, while critics fear those tools won’t pay off as expected. Big Tech companies like Google and Microsoft, as well as new AI juggernauts like OpenAI and Anthropic, are threatening to snap up startup business. And complaints are growing that key markets, like hospital administrative AI, have become oversaturated.

At this year’s HLTH in Las Vegas, those tensions hid under plenty of buoyancy. On the conference floor, companies touting AI agents were ubiquitous. “Your data. Our agents. Real outcomes,” healthcare AI unicorn Innovaccer‘s booth read. Public voice tech company SoundHound suggested I “say hi to our agentic AI agents for healthcare.” Enterprise AI startup Regal’s booth promised a free popsicle to anyone who called its phone number to talk to its voice AI agents.

The show floor also boasted a massive “AI Zone,” complete with an “AI Theater” for startup presentations, distinctions that felt redundant at an event where AI was inescapable.

To some attendees, the sameness was exhausting.

“Everyone is framing themselves as the most generic, enterprise-wide agentic AI solution. It makes me want to vomit,” said one health system executive, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak with the media. “I get it, you want to tell this cool story about how many things you can do. But I need to know what your company actually delivers, today, in the real world.”

The apparent glut of homogenous startups wasn’t surprising given the amount of capital going to healthcare AI. According to Rock Health, digital health startups raked in $6.4 billion in VC dollars in the first half of 2025, with 62% of that funding going to AI startups.

But incumbent competitors are further complicating that investor optimism. While medical records giant Epic was conspicuously absent from the show floor, its presence loomed large. Epic said in August it planned to sell its own healthcare AI tools, including an AI scribe to compete with Abridge, the $5.3 billion startup that Business Insider reported Epic previously took a stake in — before selling those shares earlier this year.

And, for the first time, an OpenAI executive joined Big Tech giants on HLTH’s main stage. Nate Gross, OpenAI’s new healthcare lead, didn’t share many specifics about the company’s healthcare plans during his panel with Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia on Tuesday; Gross only joined OpenAI in June, and the AI giant’s healthcare product efforts are still early days. But investors and founders are already feeling the heat.

“In my portfolio, people view OpenAI and Anthropic much more as a threat than people have ever viewed Amazon or Microsoft,” said Blake Wu, a partner at NEA. “I think that’s because OpenAI and Anthropic have just moved a lot faster than Amazon and Microsoft in expanding into every category.”

Agentic giants

At times, HLTH is an oxymoron. The entire conference, from its daytime presentations to evening cocktail hours, takes place in the audacious Venetian Resort. The convention center is connected to a sprawling casino, carrying the faint clink of poker chips and the smell of cigarette smoke into pitch meetings. If gambling’s not your thing, you can always ascend an escalator and ride a gondola in the hotel’s indoor canal. And, as attendees often joke, you can easily spend HLTH’s three-day run without ever seeing the sun.

The show floor, even aside from the AI glitz, is just as ostentatious as the resort. This year, founders and investors could play pickleball at a WeightWatchers court in between booths, pet dogs at a puppy park sponsored by Zelis Healthcare, and take pictures with one of several inflatable or costumed unicorns.

“It’s like the Dreamforce of healthcare,” said Karen Knudsen, the CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

AI’s presence in every panel, company booth, and sidebar conversation only added to the feeling of superabundance. Healthcare hasn’t seen the same degree of AI bubble concerns roiling the broader tech ecosystem, seemingly because healthcare VCs haven’t thrown nearly as much capital at industry-specific AI, and have mostly avoided the eye-popping valuation multiples. But VCs haven’t been shy about backing new healthcare AI bets, either.

On Monday, medical AI search startup OpenEvidence announced it had raised $200 million at a $6 billion valuation. It was the biggest raise announced at HLTH, but certainly not the only one. Hyro, the “responsible AI agent platform,” landed $45 million in a funding round led by Healthier Capital, the VC firm helmed by former One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin.

Some investors defended healthcare AI’s fundraising boom heartily. Dr. Brenton Fargnoli, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said during an investor panel Tuesday that he’s seeing some healthcare startups “growing faster than you’ve ever seen before, more efficiently than any company ever before.”

For those AI-first startups, “I think as much capital as possible is very important to grow a business and get as much market share as possible,” said GV general partner Frédérique Dame in the same panel.

But that philosophy worries some other investors, including now that incumbents like medical records giant Epic and AI heavyweights like OpenAI are planning their own healthcare AI plays. Anthropic is pushing further into biotech and pharma — the company released Claude for Life Sciences on Monday — while OpenAI is nodding at potential pushes into consumer health and hospital AI.

As Gross noted on his Tuesday panel, ChatGPT now sees around 800 million active users per week, a customer base unthinkable to any single healthcare company. Consumers, as well as clinicians, are increasingly asking ChatGPT their medical questions. As those users keep coming back to ChatGPT to seek more healthcare information over time, “the real value comes from when you have a longitudinal relationship with that patient or that consumer so that the answers themselves can be improved,” Gross said.

Not all hospital stakeholders are sold that OpenAI or Anthropic can win big in healthcare. After all, Big Tech has tried to disrupt the industry many times, with a graveyard of health projects to show for it.

“I’ve seen a lot of really great technologies fail from other industries because they don’t understand how it works in healthcare,” said Mary Beth Navarra-Sirio, vice president of market development at UPMC Enterprises, the innovation and investment arm of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “You could have the best technology in the world, but if you really don’t understand how it needs to support a clinical process, you won’t win in this space.”

Everything is AI

This year’s HLTH attendees made friends by commiserating about the conference’s sheer volume of AI mentions. In a LinkedIn post that by Friday had over 1,600 reactions, healthcare marketing advisor Brett Jansen wrote, “Every booth at HLTH sounds exactly the same. ‘AI-powered platform for healthcare transformation.’ Cool. So is literally everyone else here.”

HLTH’s organizers themselves acknowledged the problem in a panel titled “If Everything is AI, Then Nothing is AI.”

“The AI gold rush has reached its peak, where every startup with a ChatGPT integration is suddenly an ‘AI company’ and every pitch deck is seasoned with enough machine learning buzzwords to make a computer science professor cringe,” the panel description read.

Still, there were plenty of bright spots of AI’s impact in healthcare. Several attendees noted biotech and pharma’s prominent presence at this year’s conference, an event typically dominated by healthtech. AI leaders from GSK, Novartis, and the cancer research center City of Hope told Business Insider in a Tuesday panel that they’re embedding AI across their operations, seeing particular benefits for better, faster research and clinical trial recruitment.

Women’s health led several onstage conversations, a welcome sight for many industry advocates who’ve seen the sector be overlooked time and time again by researchers and investors. New winners in areas like menopause care are leading the charge: JPMorgan digital ads featuring Midi Health CEO Joanna Strober lit up in the conference’s main hallway.

And in an industry where the stakes of AI hallucination are so high, more healthcare organizations are pushing for careful AI development. Spring Health debuted a new benchmark, a set of large language models that evaluate how mental health chatbots handle concerning inputs from patients. The American Heart Association announced an AI assessment lab to validate predictive AI for cardiovascular diseases in partnership with Dandelion Health.

“Smart money is really thinking about startups that are worried about, how do we build this? It’s not about shipping the fastest product anymore, it’s about shipping responsibly,” said Milad Alucozai, cofounder and general partner of Pamir Ventures.