You got me.

I lived in West Leb for 6 months in 2021 and worked at Dartmouth College on a construction project (my current permanent address is 20 minutes south of Boston and I grew up in southern Maine).

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1. I couldn't imagine living without personal transport in that area
2. If outdoors is your thing, the area is awesome. I was always finding new places to MTB every single weekend I was there. I also have zero desire for night life so that never skewed my perception of the area. Rush hour traffic on RT12A was also a joke compared to 93S Boston and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
3. Lebanon center is walk-able (and there's a really long walking path that goes through both Leb and West Leb) but there isn't a lot there and it's small (Lalo's Taqueria and Smith Brothers Deli are bomb though).
4. There really isn't a town outside of Hanover that I'd deem walk-able. Claremont maybe fits that... but I've driven through Claremont enough times to know I wouldn't want to live there. Newport would really be the only other place nearby in NH that isn't rural and it definitely seems like a step up from Claremont.
5. I'm a white guy with long hair and a beard and I work construction so I can't really speak toward the multi-cultural aspect. I may as well have been a pine tree and I would have elicited the same response from every stranger I ran into. Hanover certainly has a lot of people from all different backgrounds but majority of them being 18-20 something year old students. I'd wager that for every mile you drive away from the center of Hanover, it gets 25% more white.

Someone else mentioned Portsmouth. Portsmouth is really nice and almost everything you need is within a walking distance if you're near the center of town but good luck finding a house there right now. It's also one hell of a commute to Hanover, NH so unless he has opportunities further south (or his job is remote) Portsmouth would be kind of crazy. That being said, a lot of the rural towns I drove through in the UV were really nice. There's nice rural and then there's western Maine-but-east-of-Rangeley rural...

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Side note: I dunno what your husband does for work but I'm assuming something to do with colleges. Burlington, VT obviously has UVM and a few other colleges and it's my second favorite city outside of Portland in all of New England. Might be worth checking it out. It's also not a far drive from Montreal.