popping out of the woodwork to ask for some urgent help

to cut a long story short, i was set on going to the university of helsinki (finland) for exchange until a few months ago and now i don't know. i'm currently choosing between McGill (montreal, canada) and Helsinki and i honestly have no clue how to choose. i've been planning exchange since 2010 and now applications are due in two weeks and i still need to write my essay & get subjects approved oh man i don't know if i'm going to make it in time. c&p'ing from LJ: i've weighed up the points and one seems to clearly come out on top but the points in favour of the other one are.. pretty big points and i'd feel a bit dumb explaining them in detail. to put things (extremely) simply, canada simplifies some things regarding subjects and i wouldn't have to choose a major right now (i also know some friends going there but i don't know if this is a good thing? i kind of want to be completely independent) but finland would be an extremely different experience (and i'd like to be able to say i've studied somewhere different from mcgill which is where everyone goes; this is admittedly quite vain of me. also finland's education is meant to be ace). the thing is, i'm not exactly sure if i'll be able to cope with this difference. culturally, finland & australia are extremely different from what i've heard and though i do want a unique immersion i don't want to estrange myself to the point of misery and regret, haha.

it's a lot more complicated than that but in any case i just wanted to ask for just.. general opinions of the two cities (Montreal & Helsinki); whether any of you guys live in either city or have visited either/both, it'd just be really useful to hear your points of views because i'm getting really desperate h-haha
and if it makes any difference i'll be there from roughly sep-dec 2012, so autumn/winter-ish? thanks heaps guys

_{(also i finished my first year of uni and i'm about 90% sure i don't want to do this line of work because i was never really sure about biomed or anything really - out of all my choices it just made me sound like i was doing something [regretting that everyone keeps asking if i want to be a doctor, should've really researched it beforehand], but by the time i come back from exchange i'll only have a year left of the course so i might as well finish it and say i've done something vaguely useful with my life. even though it doesn't really lead to any jobs without postgrad. and then i can resume stressing out about my ~life direction~ ahaha... .. ;; but yeah that's an issue for another time)}