The Eastern Townships and Unfinished Business in Chambly

For our final day in Montreal we decided to do a day trip to the Eastern Townships. My brother and sister-in-law in Ottawa have often visited here for skiing, camping, and rugby tournaments, and it always seemed like a mystical place – a Canadian Rivendell, Eden, Asgard, Elysium. Part of the mystery for me was that I didn’t know where the Eastern Townships were and had never taken the ten seconds to look them up online. So when I realized we were only 90 minutes away from these promised lands we just had to go.

As we approached our first targeted town of Magog, the landscape changed from flat St. Lawrence River Plain punctuated with random and lonely Monteregian hills, into a beautiful foothill area decorated with dazzling fall colours of changing leaves in the thick canopy of ancient oaks and maples. This led into some larger peaks of the Appalachian Mountains and the highway cut through openings of blasted vertical rock walls.

What we found in Magog was not quite Rivendell, but mostly a collection of tourist friendly shops and cafes along a long, arrow-straight main street. The prominent location of a Queues de Castor (Beaver Tails) franchise told me everything I needed to know about Magog. The weather had turned very windy and cool, and we wore our jackets zipped up as we walked the shop line. Ana stopped to check out a couple of shops but didn’t find much of interest so after a bathroom break at McDonalds and a quick walk along the path winding alongside Lac Memphremagog (that’s a mouthful) we returned to the vehicle and headed towards the next town on the route – North Hatley.

The twenty-minute drive snaked through a portrait of autumn – small farms, creeks, ponds, reds, yellows, greens, and golds. North Hatley was a cute little village, snuggled into the north shore of Lac Massawippi. Sadly, as we were cruising for a parking spot, a large yellow tour bus pulled up and started unloading its cargo of explorers. They trailed out in a loose gaggle of Velcro sneakers, yarn sweaters, tweed hats, and one old feller was wearing full cowboy garb - boots with spurs, beaten leather jacket, dinner plate buckle, shabby jeans, and an iron face. This man, you could not beat in a staring contest.

We stayed long enough to snap a few photos, take a short walk, and peruse the menu board of the sandwich shop featuring lobster rolls for $29, which we decided to kindly leave for the tour bus folk. There was a third village on our AI-generated travel route for the day, but we felt we’d seen enough of the Eastern Townships and opted for a final stop in the town of Chambly instead on the return trip to Montreal.

I had unfinished business with Chambly. Last year, my son Magnus, my brother Curtis, and I passed through this town on SeaLight, taking a modified route back home due to the unexpected closure of the much more direct Erie Canal. Curtis had a flight back to Saskatoon from Montreal the next day and we’d gotten caught up earlier in another Quebec town called Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu due to some canal malfunctions, which cost us a couple of days on our schedule. There, we spent the time mostly drinking with backalley Quebecers which suited us just fine and really helped to pass the hours. So when the Chambly Canal finally opened, we were way behind schedule and hung over, but ready to push hard to make up for lost time. Chambly is the terminus of the final three locks of nine of the Chambly canal. These locks are tiny and we had to jam SeaLight in with a nautical shoehorn, leaving precious little wiggle room between us, the rear gate, the lock walls, and the other two smaller boats crammed in with us. So as we exited the final lock, all frazzled, exhausted, and dirty, the only thing we could think about was pulling over, tying up, and hitting the pubs for a few pints of Blanche de Chambly, the delicious Belgian wit beer brewed right there in Chambly at Unibroue, a famous Quebec brewery. We could see the patios of the pubs, all packed with people pounding pints, and it took everything we had, every gram of character, every grain of grit, every lump of restraint we had to sail away from Chambly and not look back wistfully or otherwise.

I felt like we really put the bull in responsible that day. And Curt did make his flight the next day…barely.

Ana and I drove into Chambly and it was about a hundred times larger than I was expecting. We did a little tour then found parking and went for a walk to check out the town. There wasn’t a lot going on, but it was nice enough. After showing Ana the locks and her not believing it possible that SeaLight and two other boats had actually fit into them, we found a worn out pub on the main street, ordered a burger and a nacho, then I finally got to enjoy a fine pint of Blanche de Chambly, while Ana had a halfer of Kronenberg Blanc. I sent Magnus and Curtis a photo of the pint, proving that SeaLight’s crew did indeed get the last laugh (well, me at least). While we enjoyed our lunch and beers we watched an older feller out on the patio wrestling with an ice cream cone as it melted all over his arms and hands. He gave up and hurled the cone onto the street where it splattered and probably became an ant oasis. That was all the excitement we found in Chambly.

Before long we were back at the hotel and Ana realized she picked up a cold somewhere along the way and was feeling quite shitty. So our final meal in Montreal was take-out beef pho and vermicelli, eaten on the bed watching the MTV video music awards, which was among the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. But the food was delicious.

Magnus Takes the Helm and a Visit with Tula in Montreal

Ile aux Fermiers to Club Nautique, Montreal - 10 nautical miles sailed, 5 miles in dinghy, 7 kilometres walked

I woke up to a secluded anchorage that was calm, flat, and strangely peaceful considering we were on the doorstep of the second largest city in Canada. 

We were back on the water by 8:30 am and sailed ten miles to the Club Nautique, which was very close to tomorrow's first lock and a short dinghy ride to Montreal's Old Port area. We'd decided that from here on in, Magnus would be at the helm as he really wanted to learn how to handle SeaLight during this trip and so far I'd done all of the tricky piloting in the locks. It was time to rip off the band-aid.

Magnus was on the phone with the marina owner who guided him into the mooring field and sent us to ball number three. I grabbed a boat hook, readied the lines, and positioned myself at the bow as he skirted by a dangerously shallow area then made a sharp turn just in time to ease up to the mooring ball, which I snagged with the hook then attached our lines. It was an utterly perfect maneouver on Magnus's part.

After checking in with the marina and paying the $60 mooring fee, we dinghy'd upstream two miles to the Old Port tourist epicentre. I tried sweet talking the dockhand for a free tie-up but he would hear nothing of it and confirmed there are no free places for dinghies anywhere. So I coughed up $30 for a three hour stay and we were on our way.

Magnus and I did what one does in Montreal - strolled around gawking at the magnificent architecture as you sniff out food options. It was a picture perfect, sunny day with the temperature headed up to 26 degrees, making for a lovely walk. We stopped at an art gallery then moved onto the Crew Collective & Cafe, a co-working space and premium coffe experience in a stunning, cathedral-like ex-RBC building. This is a place I've been wanting to visit for a while and it did not disappoint. Well, actually, it disappointed a bit as the queue to get coffee was a mile long and there were no available seats, so instead we found a quiet cafe down the street and sat at the streetside patio enjoying their five dollar blueberry muffin and coffee special.

From here we circled a few more blocks and found a lunch spot - Van Winkle Sandwiches - and sat down for Montreal smoked meat and poutine, which we enjoyed at a leisurely pace as we people-watched the many tourists passing back and forth on the street.

Our three hours passed quickly and soon we were back at the marina to meet our friend Tula, who is Magnus's age, and one of the two daughters of our friends Dave and Kira. She is in Montreal attending university and her and Magnus have been great buddies for many years. It was very nice to see her again.

The dinghy ride back to SeaLight was choppy as hell as the hundreds of Sunday boaters had waked out the channel. I was a bit worried for Tula as I remembered she was prone to seasickness, but she did fine and seemed to actually enjoy the rollecoaster ride. We made it back to the boat in one piece and settled in for an afternoon beverage and some long conversations. I left Tula and Magnus alone much of the time but popped in frequently to take drink orders, deliver snacks, or join in the conversation. It was Tula's parents who visited us in Bahamas for a week in February and I told Tula it was probably the best single week of the entire trip as we experienced so many things and covered so much ground, with fancy gin and tonics along the way. I also told her how we'd spent hours discussing the journey to adulthood our combined four kids were undertaking and how immensely proud we were of all of them. After I said my piece, I used the incredible pineapple slicer to eviscerate the pineapple resting on the countertop and delivered a perfectly cut stack of pineapple slices and a fancy rum drink mixed in the hollowed out pineapple chassis. They seemed to like it.

Our snacking and drinking rolled right into dinner and I made the kids a big cockpit feast of roasted chicken, beans, broccoli, and corn and we washed it down with rest of the goon bag - good to the final drop.

8 pm arrived and as promised, I set out to dingy the kids back into Montreal for a night on the town. Unfortunately, we only got a few hundred feet before the engine (which had been acting up the last few outings) decided it would go no faster than idle speed and sputter out every thirty seconds. We hobbled back to the boat and I tried the few tricks I know to fix an outboard but none of them worked. I did manage to get them into shore where they called up an Uber to meet Tula's sister Esme and their friends downtown for some Montreal shenanigans.

I played around with the engine for a while then gave up and retired to my bed for a call with Ana then a bit of doom scrolling then a gentle nap. Magnus called me for a pickup around 1 am and I managed to drag myself out of bed and collect him at the dock. He'd had a great night and discovered a fantastic "new to you" hobo beer - Colt 45 that he wore on his breath proudly.

I shielded my face and scurrried back to my cabin.

A Power Weekend in Montreal - Our 20th Anniversary

We last visited Montreal at least 12 years ago when our kids were little, our patience was thin, our attention diverted, and our pace frenzied. My only memory of that trip was sitting on the patio of our rental apartment in Little Italy with my father-in-law, drinking a beer and enjoying the peace provided by the ladies taking the kids for a walk to the park. That’s it.

So when Ana and I recently visited Montreal to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, I felt like I was visiting a brand new city. And what a city it is! Accompanied by magnificent late September weather, we explored the core of Montreal by foot over two days and as we discovered amazing sites one after the other, we wondered aloud many times how we could have neglected this jewel of a city for so many years.

We left Paris just after noon on a Friday and endured a grueling 7.5 hour drive to get there. There really is only one route to get to Montreal, on the 401 highway which seems to have been designed to offer a minimum of interesting views while attracting the maximum amount of traffic. But we have spent many hours on that highway this year as our sailboat was docked at a marina east of Toronto, so although you never get used to it, we have become more numb to the pain of its use.

The downtown Marriot is where we chose to stay and its location was perfect for a weekend walking tour. After checking in and offloading our bags we set out for St. Catherine Street, which is a long, wide, and mainly pedestrian street cutting through the dense network of tall and short buildings. As we began our stroll, we were stuck by the level of activity – people everywhere, in cafes and restaurants, wandering around, sitting on steps and public furniture, laughing and having fun under comforting public lighting, with music streamed loudly from public speakers. It truly felt like we’d parachuted into a different world after the months of lockdowns and utter lack of activity in our town and area.

There were many restaurants to choose from and we walked around for a long while before deciding on one, which turned out to be a vegan restaurant, but was not obvious from the menu as there were many “meaty” items that, upon closer inspection, contained only meat substitutes. The vegan house curry and nachos were great, the beer was cold, and the atmosphere was welcome with dozens of other patrons enjoying time together, unmasked at tables, all vaccinated due to the vaccine passport program implemented in the city. It felt safe, it felt fun.

Anytime you are finishing dinner with your partner at 11pm, chances are you are somewhere exciting having a great time – and we were. We went back out on St. Catherine Street and slowly meandered our way southward towards Crescent Street – a place Ana vaguely remembered from her trips to Montreal in her 20’s when she lived in Toronto. The scene here was unlike anything we’ve seen for what felt like years – a pedestrian-only street PACKED with people visiting the dozens of bars lined up one after the other. I realized instantly that this is what a vaccinated population and the path back to normality looks like. After perusing all the venues along the length of the street and coming across an enormous mural of Leonard Cohen artfully painted on the side of a tall building, we decided on the Aussie Bar, a place that looked to be marketing cheap pints of beer to university kids looking for blackout. I hadn’t even noticed the average age of the hundreds of people we passed until Ana said, “Do you realize we are the oldest people on this street?”

I looked around, scanning the crowd, finally focusing on one dude, barely visible far up the road, and pointed at him proudly saying, “Nope, there’s somebody older. But now that you mention it, I do notice that every person I see on the street looks like either Magnus or Stella.” This sparked an idea and we decided that we’d start badgering the kids into attending university in Montreal to give us reason to visit more frequently.

Ana and I had an amazing conversation as we sat together at a patio table, talking about some of our old travel adventures, but more importantly, those yet to come. Despite only consuming a single witbier, she started coming up with some audacious travel ideas (my own good ideas need at least 6 witbiers to germinate). She told me she wants us to backpack through Iran. Iran! I love this woman. We decided we would sail to the Azores and spend a year living there and hanging out with all of Ana’s crazy cousins.  We decided on another Southeast Asia backpacking trip, but this go around we’d really take our time revisiting all the countries we’ve been to previously. We decided to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain and Portugal. We also decided that, despite the recent inexplicable lunacy of our neighbours to the south, we need to visit all 50 states of the US (and I added later that we might as well tack on the 14 territories the US oversees, especially as many of them are in the South Pacific). With minutes of Googling, Ana had found us a nifty truck cap that turns your Ford F-150 Lightning into a mobile camper and the plan was complete.

It was close to 1am when we returned to the hotel, both of us exhausted and exhilarated by our first evening in this fine city.