MAD-DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW An adrenaline-fueled, unconventional tour of Quebec
words :: Leslie Anthony
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In 1964, Québecois singer-songwriter Gilles Vigneault penned “Mon Pays,” in which his lyrical phrases on cold, snow and ice capture both the solitude of winter landscapes and the camaraderie of those who brave them. While most Canadians can relate to its theme of Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver (my country isn’t a country, it’s winter), the song is a de facto anthem for Quebec’s passionate snow aficionados, reflecting both an ardour for outdoor recreation and the joie de vivre that drives it. Indeed, with its interwoven odes to sport, art, culture and gastronomy, the hibernal season in Quebec projects a magically different “more life, less hibernation” character. Although most of my winter trips to Quebec revolve around alpine skiing, this time our group sought a broader palette of winter experience—a choc-a-bloc, no-minute-wasted litany of activities, accommodations, foods and beverages in which the understood rule was “no ski turns allowed.”
balsam fir. At a yurt deep in the forest Jean’s wife dished out sapin-flavoured sausages wrapped in bannock and dressed in a sapin mustard and foraged berry sauce, all washed down with tea made from chaga, a fungus found on birch. A more traditional lunch ensued at the classic Auberge du Lac-à-l’Eau Claire in the neighbouring Mauricie region. The food was good, but all our attention was on the lake—some 25 km long and so extraordinarily clear you could see 10 metres to the bottom through ice-fishing holes augured into the ice. Scrunching bait onto a hook (sorry, worms) we manned a wooden tipper rig while balancing glasses of chardonnay. Lest we think the “white-with-fish” credo applied even while obtaining dinner, it all made sense when the speckled trout we hauled up were sizzling in a pan behind us. Late afternoon saw us driving hours through a snowstorm, an endless forest pelage punctuated only by the mute church steeples marking every
Faithful pilgrims that we were, we’d kicked things off at the Val Notre-Dame monastery in the Lanaudière region northeast of Montreal. Inhabited by the monks known for Oka cheese, this architectural masterpiece of wood and slate was a perfect stop for provisioning the rest of our trip with handmade cheese, meats, preserves and other local products (pickled quail eggs!). Many of these delicacies derived from the forest, as we learned on a stormy snowshoe tour with master bushman Jean, who soon zeroed in on the king of forest culinary savvy—Sapin baumier, or
village in Quebec, until the log palace (not a phrase used lightly) of Hôtel Sacacomie materialized from the pine. Conducted on an outdoor aerie with commanding views of Lake Sacacomie and its cradle of ancient mountains, check-in was an unheralded ode to winter fun that included ritual downing of ice-glass maple-whisky shots and the liberation by hammer of room keys from ice-block tree decorations. As the storm retreated behind a stellar sunset, we scattered to the hot and cold comforts of a labyrinthine spa.