The flights were fine with just a little hiccup. 
Virgin Atlantic had us in the US with minimal delay and we were through customs in about 20 minutes contrary to the 3-4 hours we were told to expect.
With 5 hours to wait for the connection to Montreal we settled in to Newark airports way of life which turned out to be continually changing the departure gate before deciding to cancel the flight after 10 hours waiting. Then we we're put up in an airport hotel to fly on the following day. There were no seats available on any direct flight to Montreal so we had to catch a flight to Quebec then connect to Montreal just to pick up a car to drive back to Quebec which was our intended first night stop. 
Our most comfortable plane journey was in this Dash-8 which reminded me most of our MG, but had better acceleration and wings obviously.
Unfortunately our luggage went somewhere else and we may receive it today, so it's lucky we had planned for that and packed the industrial strength deodorant.
If no bag turns up we will have to start shopping! There are some nice boutiques in town.
