This is a guess but Quebec and even Montreal are quite unique in North America. There's influence from both North America but also Europe. It may sound cliche but it is true. E.g. try to ignore or cut through the language politics of various parties and it will be hard to find equivalents in many other places in NA. Maybe some of that is something that spoke to him and made him go there. If he went to Montreal specifically it is even true what he said: He didn't have to learn French to be able to live and survive in Montreal, depending on the area he lived in and frequented.

Side note: apparently there are "agencies" in some countries that let you pick an equivalent city in their own country as a "benchmark" for the kind of lifestyle you'd like to have and they tell you which North American city to immigrate to and how to do that (i.e. how to meet the legal requirements, paperwork etc.). Maybe he used one of those services.