I moved to Montreal in 2012.
The phone was the hardest part.

In person you can point. On the phone you cannot.

When I arrived, I could get through a counter visit. You point, you show a document, you read the room, the other person slows down for you. Half of understanding is not language at all.

The phone strips all of that away. No face, no paper to point at, no time. Someone answers quickly, says a sentence you half-catch, and waits. And the calls that matter most — government offices, schools, appointments, anything with a deadline — are the ones that happen by phone.

So I needed a person every time.

For years my answer was to ask someone. A friend, a colleague, whoever was nearby and spoke better French than I did. I would explain the situation, hand over my phone or sit next to them while they spoke for me, and then ask afterwards what had been agreed.

It worked. It also meant every ordinary errand cost me a favour, and it meant waiting until that person was free. Some calls I put off for weeks because asking felt like too much. A few I never made at all.

The part nobody talks about.

Needing an interpreter for a five-minute phone call is not just inconvenient, it is diminishing. You are a capable adult — with a job, with a family, with opinions — reduced to sitting quietly while somebody else speaks in your name and then summarises it back to you.

What I wanted was not a translation app. I had those. Typing into one while a real person waits on the line is worse than useless. I wanted what I actually had on the good days: someone fluent, on my side, who would make the call with me and keep me in it.

I did not want to be translated. I wanted to be able to make the call.

That is what we built.

Montreal Reception is the person I used to have to ask for. You write what you want to say in your language. Melanie dials, introduces herself as calling on your behalf, and speaks for you in theirs — a real voice, at a normal pace, that the other person does not have to be patient with.

You stay on the call the whole time. Every sentence comes back to you as text in your language while it is still happening, so you can change your mind, add a detail, or push back — and Melanie says it. Nobody speaks in your name without you hearing it.

You are not asking anyone for a favour. You do not wait until someone is free. And when the call ends you keep what was agreed in writing, in your language, which is the part I never had.