{"id":438999,"date":"2026-01-28T16:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/438999\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T16:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:40:08","slug":"this-rustic-lodge-two-hours-from-montreal-is-the-place-for-true-quebec-winter-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/438999\/","title":{"rendered":"This rustic lodge two hours from Montreal is the place for true Quebec winter fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Pourvoirie du Lac Blanc is a popular pit stop but also a destination for francophone Europeans looking for a true Quebec experience.Supplied<\/p>\n

Having attended university in Quebec, skied its hills and had a stepmother from the Beauce who filled our kitchen with tourti\u00e8re and the music of F\u00e9lix Leclerc, I felt I knew the province. But last March, as my son and I drove east into Lanaudi\u00e8re-Mauricie \u2013 the region that runs north of the St. Lawrence River, between Montreal and Quebec City, which tourist literature calls the \u201cheart of the province\u201d \u2013 I realized there was much I didn\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

We traded a beach resort for an ice slide on our family escape to Quebec City<\/a><\/p>\n

Our destination was the Pourvoirie du Lac Blanc. Pourvoirie, I learned, is the Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois term for outfitter: someone or something that provides (from the verb pourvoir). Driving past interminable fields, forests and the odd chicken farm, it struck me that humans were remarkably sparse in the province\u2019s heart, but that all changed when we arrived at the Pourvoirie<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Its parking lot was packed with pickups, trailers and snowmobiles. Inside the lodge \u2013 a long three-storey building overlooking the vast and frozen Lac Blanc \u2013 a fire roared in the hearth and staff in plaid shirts bustled around. Not a word of English was to be heard.<\/p>\n

The lodge\u2019s aesthetic was cozy and rustic, something between a Roots store and a hunting camp. We settled into our room, which could have comfortably housed an entire family, and headed for the dining room, where we joined a mix of dressed-for-dinner couples and ruddy-faced men in bib pants and heavy-duty rubber boots.<\/p>\n

As we came to realize, the Pourvoirie is many things to many people: a popular pit stop on Quebec\u2019s snowmobile highway, a magnet for recreational anglers and a coveted destination among francophone Europeans looking to experience le Quebec authentique.<\/p>\n

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The Pourvoirie has a cozy, rustic atmosphere.Supplied<\/p>\n

At 9 a.m. on our first morning, after a breakfast fit for a lumberjack \u2013 baked beans, toast, eggs, bacon and pancakes drenched in maple syrup \u2013 we were introduced to Olivier, a wiry man in constant motion, and his pack of sled dogs.<\/p>\n

Over incessant barking, Olivier demonstrated how the musher balances one foot on the sled\u2019s runner and the other on the iron claw that digs into the snow as a brake. My notion that dogsledding would be a leisurely, hand-muffed experience gave way to the reality that we would be driving the things ourselves.<\/p>\n

My teenage son and I assumed our positions, the dogs straining at their tuglines, and we were off: across the lake, into the woods, up and down hills. The entire landscape was drenched in intense vernal sunlight. It was thrilling, and my son and I took turns mushing. Being featherweights, we flew.<\/p>\n

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The three-storey lodge overlooks Lac Blanc.Supplied<\/p>\n

After rewarding the dogs with hacked-up frozen fish (minus the heads), we piled into a school bus with a convivial cross-section of la Francophonie (some Parisians, a couple from Lyon and a family from Guadeloupe) and were driven to one of the many lakes on the Pourvoirie\u2019s 6,800-acre property.<\/p>\n

Given the lake is regularly restocked with speckled trout, ice-fishing in it was not a skill-testing exercise. We each chose a predrilled hole and a handmade fishing pole, hooked a worm and waited a matter of minutes, if not seconds, for the fateful tug. Prizes in hand, we gathered at the lake\u2019s edge where Tony, our guide, ignited a massive campfire, filleted the fish with dazzling facility and deep-fried it in skillets of spattering oil.<\/p>\n

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The lake is regularly restocked with speckled trout.Naomi Buck\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

It is true: fish tastes best when it\u2019s fresh. It also tastes good smoked, and the Pourvoirie\u2019s kitchen presents trout in all imaginable variations. In fact, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve eaten so much rainbow and speckled trout in all my life. Everything on the menu was hearty and delicious, especially the silken vegetable potages, a new one each day.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no guarantee that a holiday alone with your teenaged son is going to be a success, but the Pourvoirie offered the right mix of activities, personalities and the unexpected. One morning, four ski planes landed side-by-side in front of the lodge and disgorged small parties who came in for a coffee before taking off again. All in all, one had the feeling of being away from everything and at the centre of something else.<\/p>\n

My son\u2019s one and only disappointment came when he was told that, at 16, he was too young to drive the snowmobiles. Worse, he was directed to ride as a passenger behind his mother. To his credit, he kept his mouth shut as I tutored my hands on the gas and the brake, while engaging the throttle oh-so-tentatively. It turned out to be dead-easy. Again, we flew through forests, down roads and across frozen swamps, all glistening in early-spring melt.<\/p>\n

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The cost of overnight stays includes access to outdoor equipment, with additional fees for motorized activities such as snowmobiling.Supplied<\/p>\n

The Pourvoirie\u2019s owner, Gaston Pellerin, is something of a local celebrity. During the paper industry slump of the 1990s, he decided to take the family\u2019s forestry business in a new direction, converting one of its properties into a fishing camp.<\/p>\n

It was a radical move in Quebec\u2019s pulp and paper heartland, but it worked. Framed photos on the lodge\u2019s wall show Pellerin brandishing trophy fish with the likes of hockey legends Guy Lafleur and Carey Price. Now a year-round operation with more than 60 employees, the Pellerin family business has become the Pourvoirie.<\/p>\n

The place won us over for good when Gaston\u2019s son Georges invited us into his gleaming black helicopter. My son sat shotgun, speechless as we lifted off in tilted forward motion, the Pourvoirie shrinking beneath us. As we flew over a rolling blanket of forest and lakes, with Georges pointing out various points of interest \u2013 fish hatchery here, moose habitat there \u2013 I felt a surge of patriotism. <\/p>\n

Later that day, I spent the better part of an hour pickling in the Pourvoirie\u2019s Jacuzzi, which overlooks Lac Blanc. The young couple from Lyon pickled next to me in vegetative silence. \u201cI feel like I can breathe here,\u201d the young man told me later, rather breathlessly, when we met in the lobby. His wife nodded next to him, her hair wrapped up in a towel. They rhapsodized about Canada\u2019s huge, open spaces and friendly, relaxed people. As a Canadian, it\u2019s good to be reminded of that \u2013 and of how much of our own country we have yet to discover.<\/p>\n

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Overnight stays also include the use of an indoor pool and spa.Supplied<\/p>\n

If you go<\/p>\n

Accommodation is available in the main lodge (starts at $225 a night for a double) and in chalets of various sizes. Guests can opt in or out of meals; the full meal plan costs $102 a person a day and does not include alcoholic beverages or gratuities. The chalets come with fully equipped kitchens.<\/p>\n

Included in all overnight stays is access to the aquatic centre (indoor pool and spa), plus all outdoor equipment (snowshoes, cross-country skis, skates and snow tubes in the winter) and the network of trails. Additional fees apply for guided or motorized activities such as snowmobiling, ice-fishing, clay-pigeon shooting and helicopter rides.<\/p>\n

The Pourvoirie du Lac Blanc<\/a> operates year-round and has different seasonal offerings. See pourvoirielacblanc.com.<\/p>\n

The writer was a guest of Lanaudi\u00e8re-Mauricie, Authentic Quebec. It did not review or approve the story before publication. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The Pourvoirie du Lac Blanc is a popular pit stop but also a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,2922,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-438999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-noastack","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}