Good question. The Canadian HQ of the company I work for is located in Old Montreal (St. Jacques Street) and I am there typically once every two or three weeks. I always stay in Old Montreal and dine out in Old Montreal, as well as several other parts of the city.
I'm very familiar with Montreal, and have forged great friendships with many people there. Because of this familiarity with both cities and the people that inhabit them, I have come to realize how utterly ridiculous these outdated stereotypes are, yet how some people can't seem to move past them. Syn put it right, you can say that people "live to work" in Toronto if you're focusing on the type-A crowd on Bay Street, just as you can say that people in Montreal "work to live" if you focus on some faux-bohemian that lives in the Plateau and works at the independent corner coffee shop. What you're missing out on is the millions of people that don't fit into either of these demographics, yet people somehow seem to think it's okay to lump these people into one camp or another and paint the entire city with the same brush.
The artist that lives in Parkdale doesn't "live to work", nor does the CEO that works on Blvd. Rene-Levesque "work to live".
How much time have you spent in these two cities, unimaginative?