Thank you everyone for your wonderful responses, useful information, and interesting personal stories. The site
mld had much more of the information I was looking for, including a map of daycares by locations, and some explanation of the the different types in the program which seemed tricky to figure out at first glance.
In a foreboding* sign, the English version of the site had some very inconvenient dead links: "click here to register" for example* but by switching between the English and French sites I was able to manage. The one thing I could not find, at least yet, was any sort of map of which locations had "open" space, or an approximate waiting time: i.e. where you could enroll immediately, or could estimate when a spot would open up.
Our personal case is a bit different than typical, and part of this is mainly curiosity about the Quebec system, as I have only heard about it from the outside. My wife and I both quit our jobs last year, and we are relatively location independent. Montreal pops up as an interesting city to relocate to for many reasons.
In our case, I think I would at least be interested in the preschool aspect as much, if not more than the daycare aspect (though really, I love daycare), and I was curious how it integrated with this system. It seems like it depends on a provider by provider basis? For example, are there daycares/preschools in the system that follow the Montessori method (just to pick one randomly that I know of)?
A lot of useful information here and somewhere to start from. Thank you!
I (and most of my ex-pat friends) was frequently horrified at the way the daycares treated the kids when they were out in public. The best way I can describe it is that the kids were herded around like animals. Little attention was paid to them as long as they weren't grievously injured. The staff only ever stood around chatting with each other while the kids ran wild.
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. That is good to keep in mind, and I'm glad to hear you have a better solution now in BC.
In all fairness though, the bloded part made me slightly smile, because that sounds similar to how I would treat my kid. And he's had at least one grievous injury under my watch/fault (nurse-maids elbow), and he constantly goes around with scrapes and split lips now that he's travelling full time with us. He likes to run and fall and climb, I mostly attribute it to "boys will be boys", so he might be safer in a Quebec daycare than with us :)