Caroline Prakash, an American businesswoman, and her French husband, Nicolas Chossudovsky, are among the best-known of dozens of Russian business travellers who have emigrated to Canada. “A few years ago, a group of us, who are mainly friends from Moscow, decided to start a business in Canada,” says Ms. Prakash, who now runs Salya Group, a financial technology agency, in Montreal.

She and Mr. Chossudovsky decided to set up shop to avoid the pitfalls of what Mr. Putin was calling “foreign penetration” in Russia — the risk that business and political ties might be compromised by the presence of the wrong kind of people.

The couple met through their mutual friend and fellow entrepreneur, Mr. Chossudovsky. Ms. Prakash was working at her husband’s business in Moscow; with her experience in business in Russia, Salya was just the kind of enterprise the Russian market desired.

In the spring of 2008, when the ruble collapsed, Ms. Prakash was one of the first employees in Montreal’s city planning department to see clients. The couple came to North America hoping to launch a business of their own. But, just as Mr. Chossudovsky did, Ms. Prakash found that Canada was too expensive and her prospective clients weren’t interested in her expertise. Instead, they wanted her to set up some kind of accounting practice.

She became enamoured with the lifestyle and the lifestyle wasn’t what she had expected. “The life in Montreal was very glamorous and expensive. The food is not that great in Canada. If you are a businessman, you feel like you are living in New York or London. But here, it’s wonderful, especially Montreal,” says Ms. Prakash.

She decided to stick around for one year and then go back to Russia, to work at Salya.

Ms. Prakash has seen lots of entrepreneurs. Her husband is a stockbroker. They have two young sons and they are a good example of the kinds of Russians many Canadians are finding wanting: hardworking, hard-working, successful despite what they can’t see. “It is very easy to feel the Russians’ resentment over things they see as unfair. But there was nothing unfair about having a business in Canada,” she says.

There’s also a sense that the vast majority of