Living Alone in Montreal? A Daily Check-in Keeps You Safe

Montreal's vibrant independence culture means many live alone. A free daily check-in gives your loved ones peace of mind — especially through brutal winters.

Download Free See How It Works

Free forever • No credit card • iOS & Android

I'm Alive app showing the I'm Okay check-in button

The Problem

Sound familiar? You're not alone.

Worrying about an aging parent living alone in Montreal

Daily phone calls are hard to schedule across busy lives

No reliable way to know something's wrong without constant checking

How I'm Alive Solves This

A simple solution that actually works.

One-tap daily check-in takes seconds from their routine

You're notified the moment they miss a check-in — not before

No pendant, no hardware, no GPS tracking — location only in a real emergency, auto-deleted in 72 hours

Why This Works for You

Montreal has the highest proportion of people living alone among major Canadian cities, from Plateau and Mile End walk-ups to homes in Verdun, NDG and out to Laval and the South Shore.
Harsh Quebec winters — heavy snowfall, ice storms and extreme cold — sharply raise isolation risk, keeping solo residents housebound and out of contact for days at a time.
A large student population at McGill, Concordia, UdeM and UQAM lives alone for the first time, often away from family in another province or country.
A monitored pendant such as Telus Health Medical Alert / Lifeline runs roughly $30-$65 a month plus equipment and only helps if worn and pressed. I'm Alive is free on iPhone and Android, needs no hardware, and raises the alarm from a missed daily check-in instead.
Privacy-first: the daily check-in collects no location at all. Only during an active missed-check-in escalation is an approximate location shared with your contact, and it is auto-deleted after 72 hours — no continuous tracking.
Quebec's emergency number is 911. If a check-in is missed you decide what to do next. See /location/canada for the country-wide picture and /living-alone for solo-living safety guidance.

How It Works

Three simple steps.

Set Your Time

Choose when to check in each day

Tap I'm Okay

One tap confirms you're safe

Auto-Alert

Miss a check-in? Contact is notified

Features

One-Tap Check-In

Large, easy button - done in seconds

Customizable Schedule

Set your perfect check-in time

Smart Alerts (Protect Me)

Escalating notifications to your contacts if you miss a check-in

Check-In Notes

Add context like 'Going hiking today'

History Tracking

See all your past check-ins

Free to Start

Daily self check-in and reminders are always free; add Protect Me for contact alerting

Frequently Asked Questions

I'm a student at McGill living alone off-campus.

Set a parent or friend as your emergency contact, and one tap a day gives them peace of mind — no daily phone calls, just quiet confirmation you are safe. They are only alerted if you actually miss a check-in, so a late night on campus never triggers a false alarm. It is an easy way to keep worried family calm from another province.

My father lives alone in Laval after my mother passed.

He taps once a day to confirm he is okay, and the free check-in reminds him if he is running late. On Protect Me, if he misses it you receive escalating alerts and can see his history on your own dashboard. For a recently widowed parent it is a gentle safety net that supports his independence rather than feeling like surveillance.

Montreal ice storms can knock out power for days.

On Protect Me, if a storm and a long outage prevent a check-in, your contact is alerted — which during a Quebec ice storm is exactly when someone should be checking on you. The app works as long as the phone has battery and a brief moment of connectivity, and a missed check-in becomes an early prompt to go and look in on a family member.

Is this available in French?

The app interface is currently in English, but the daily action is a single large button to tap, with no reading or menus involved, so language is not a barrier to checking in. Notifications to your emergency contact are short and clear. A French version is something we are looking at, and we would rather say so plainly than overstate it.

Is this free?

Yes — the daily check-in and the reminders to you are free forever, with no hidden subscription and no card required. Automatic alerting of your family when a check-in is missed is part of Protect Me ($29.99/year), which also adds up to ten contacts, a caregiver dashboard and SMS alerts alongside push and email.