[belval]

The first part of your comment was pretty spot on, but the rest I think is biased from living here in a different time, the populated areas around Montreal (Brossard, Laval especially) all have significant English-speaking-only populations. In downtown during lunch time it's pretty much 50/50 whether the fast food/cafe worker will speak French at all.

[rerdavies]

Not so much the suburbs as the countryside. I live in Ottawa these days, where you don't have to go far across the Quebec border at all before you end up in Pur Laine country.