In Quebec’s Eastern Townships, skiing has happily resisted ‘resortification’ | Canada Voices

The first challenge of our family’s midwinter trip to the Eastern Townships in Quebec was persuading my teenaged sons that their footwear of choice – rubber slides with white athletic socks – was not going to cut it.

We left Toronto in a downpour, but by the time we reached our hotel on the edge of Mont Orford provincial park, 120 kilometres east of Montreal, the rain had turned to heavy, fat flakes. And by the next morning, as we were digging out our car, my sons were not complaining about their winter boots.

The second challenge was coming up with a game plan for our party, which included my mother, who is deeply interested in Quebec history and culture, and my sons, who want little more – and little less – than action.

The Eastern Townships is a largely rural region of rolling hills, windswept fields and open lakes. The villages that dot its valleys have an intimate and prosperous feel: part New England, part Clarence Gagnon painting.

Tourism has flourished here and for good reason. Sitting down to our first dinner in the hotel’s bistro, my sons plunged headfirst into the menu. Soon, one was staring down a plate of East Coast oysters swimming in fruit mignonette, as the other poked his fork into a puck of pan-seared foie gras. “Dude, this is fancy,” said my 14-year-old.

The fanciness continued. The region prides itself on its local fromageries and ingredients (Brome Lake duck, gourmet mushrooms, haskap berries) as well as a remarkable concentration of wineries, cideries and microbreweries. But amidst all the sophistication, the old fixtures endure, like fèves au lard and every conceivable variation of poutine.

There are plenty of ways to offset all this eating. The Townships’ four main ski hills, while not quite as high as their Laurentian counterparts, abound in variety, crawling with ski-adjacent alternatives like fat biking, snowshoeing and increasingly popular alpine touring.

We pulled into Mont Orford in the driving snow. Like better-known Mont Tremblant to the north, it is situated in a provincial park, but unlike Tremblant, with its faux Swiss village and massive residential development, Orford’s base is no-nonsense: just a recently expanded lodge and a bunch of trails heading off into the woods.

My mother assessed the cross-country options, listened to a friendly park warden explain she was unlikely to be found in this weather if she got lost, and opted to read a newspaper in the lodge instead. My sons, Ontario boys, were blown away by the mountain’s height – at 850 metres, it’s the highest skiable peak in the Townships – and nearly blown off the summit, which is notoriously gusty.

The next day, we drove through the continuing snowstorm to Owl’s Head, which sits majestically on the shores of Lake Memphremagog. This hill is renowned for its views, which revealed themselves over the course of the day: the half-frozen lake to the north and the Appalachian Mountains in Vermont to the south.

The Townships’ ski hills are pretty. Much of their terrain is given over to glades, mogul-packed runs through woods that are challenging to ski and beautiful to behold. Mont Sutton is famed for its “sous bois” slopes, which are sprinkled with sculptures by local artists – a wooden bear cub clinging to a tree, a porcupine fashioned out of old ski poles.

Developed in 1960 by a local dairy farming family that wanted to provide its staff with winter employment, the hill is stubbornly unpretentious. But it’s innovative in its own right: one of the few ski hills in North America to rent yooners. The hybrid ski-sleds allow riders to travel fast and low to the ground, braking only with their boots, a technique (or lack thereof) that appealed instantly to my sons. Soon they had found their hillside tribe: a pack of yodelling adolescents, ripping down the hill, snow rooster tails in their wake.

Their grandmother, meanwhile, had found her place just down the road at Plein air Sutton, which offers 16 kilometres of groomed cross-country trails that she said were among the most beautiful she had ever skied.

Because these hills have resisted mass resortification, the après-ski scene spills over into local towns. We spent two evenings in Magog, a former textile centre that sits atop Lake Memphremagog and caters to its prosperous cottaging community. It has a cozy microbrewery and pub – with steamed-up windows and live music – as well as more elevated restaurants.

The mountain at Bromont seems to rise out of the town. Having deposited my sons at its base and my mother at a bookstore, I headed for Balnea, an off-the-beaten-track spa in the hills to the south. Dusk was falling as I arrived. What was once a summer camp has been converted into a spectacular array of thermal pools, saunas and reflection rooms, all ensconced in the stillness of a conservation area.

After a prolonged soak, I shuffled through the frigid night air in my robe and – yes – rubber slides, steam rising off me like a blissful hot potato. The inner core heat carried me through several hours of night skiing back at the Bromont hill, the largest illuminated ski area in Canada.

At this point in our trip, the snow had been falling more or less steadily for five days. My sons had learned to wear – even appreciate – mittens and hats.

Before returning to Toronto, we took one final stroll through Bromont’s old town and stopped at Brault Boutique, purveyors of quality footwear and the softest, warmest socks on Earth. My older son came home in a new pair of winter boots.

If you go

The L’EST GO ski pass allows you to ski the Townships’ four main resorts at discounted rates.

Those looking to dine well and sample local flavours should check out Bistro Koz in Magog and Chardo, a wine bar in Bromont.

Espace 4 Saisons Hotel is a two-minute drive from the mountain and has an excellent bistro. Rooms from $97 per person, double occupancy. The elegant Hotel Château-Bromont offers spectacular views of the mountain from its rooftop hot tubs and has shuttle service to its base. Rooms from $113 per person, double occupancy.

The author was a guest of Tourisme Cantons-de-l’Est. It did not review or approve the story before publication.