Where Travel and Life Intersect

Breakfast With a Hurt Friend

The Canadians we met were angry with Washington and kind to us.

The Canadians at the B&B breakfast table had just finished telling us that the Eastern Townships were one of the crown jewels of their country when they realized my wife, Diane, and I were American, not just inept French speakers.

There was a pause as everyone at the table decided what to say. It was our first morning at Auberge La Raveaudière, a small inn in North Hatley, in the corner of Quebec just above Vermont.

Around the table were two couples and twin sisters, all in their 50s and 60s, all exploring the region. Someone acknowledged the difficult period between our two countries, and the floodgates opened.

They talked about a country they had always felt close to, and how baffling it was to hear about tariffs and the talk of Canada as a 51st state. They used the word betrayal. They also told us they were working hard to direct that feeling at the government in Washington and keep it from Americans. Mostly we listened. It felt like sitting with a hurt friend.

Maple Syrup and Hockey Sticks

Their frustration has specifics behind it. In August, the United States put 50 percent tariffs on more than 500 kinds of Canadian goods, from cheese and alcohol to maple syrup and hockey equipment. The president has said tariffs on Canadian cars and auto parts will double to 50 percent on January 1. In a Pew Research Center survey earlier this year, 35 percent of Canadians called the United States a reliable partner, down from 83 percent in 2022, and only a third viewed it favorably. Most Americans don't feel the same way. In a poll this summer, 81 percent of Canadians described the relationship as negative, compared with 31 percent of Americans.

These were strong people, proud of their country and clear about its long history with ours. The hurt came from how much that friendship had meant to them. They made their point, and then they moved on. Within a few minutes, the table was telling us about their own towns and what we should go see.

That happened all week, in Knowlton and Sutton, in restaurants, coffee shops, and the bars where we stopped for a drink at the end of the night. People wanted to express their hurt, frustration, and anger, then tell us where to eat.

The Chairlift

We reached Sutton on the last weekend of the mountain's fall festival. We took the chairlift up Mont Sutton, hiked to the campground near the summit, and walked back down. We talked with people the whole way, which is hard to avoid on a chairlift. When it came out that we were American, the same conversation followed, and then everyone went back to the mountain.

There are smaller signs too. As expected, we couldn't find a bottle of American bourbon anywhere we went, and we looked. Quebec's liquor board pulled American alcohol from its shelves in March 2025, and aside from a one-time sale of older stock last winter, it hasn't returned. I love a great deal about Canada. Canadian whisky is not on that list.

The welcome is there for anyone who goes. Last year, hotels in the Townships were taking calls from Americans asking whether they were still welcome, and the region answered with an ad campaign inviting them to come hug it out. More Americans are making the trip now. According to Statistics Canada, their trips to Canada have risen year over year for eight straight months. Canadians have been coming back too, but more slowly. Their car trips to the United States in September were still down almost a third from two years earlier.

The Breakfast Table

The people we met did us a courtesy. They kept their argument with our government separate from us. We try to do the same when we travel to countries whose governments we disagree with.

Governments set their own timetable, and travelers don't have to wait for them. We can keep going. We can listen when someone needs to say something hard, and explain what we can about where we come from. Those conversations, at breakfast tables and on chairlifts, are how people in two countries stay connected while their governments argue.

Diane and I have been to Canada many times, yet we still feel as if we have only begun to explore this wonderful country. We left the Townships with a long list of places people told us we had to see. We got to about half of them, which seems like a good reason to go back.

by Paul M. Rand, founder and editor of Nomadic Spirit

Destinations worth traveling for, and understanding once you arrive

The Eastern Townships, Canada

A Trip Built on Small Inns

Most people who know the Eastern Townships know them as the part of Quebec you drive through on the way somewhere else. It deserves a trip of its own.

The region sits southeast of Montreal, just above Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. You’ll find back roads, small villages, lakes and low mountains, a good inn at the end of each short drive, and people who are happy you came.

English and French sit side by side here. Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution settled much of the region, and you will hear both languages at most stops. A few French phrases help, though nobody will hold it against you if that is all you have. If you pay in U.S. dollars, your money goes a long way right now, at about 1.40 Canadian dollars to one.

North Hatley

North Hatley wraps around the top of Lake Massawippi. In the 1880s, families from the American South began arriving for the summer, some in private rail cars, to escape the heat. They built big houses on the lakeshore, and the village still feels like a summer colony.

The best-known of those houses is Manoir Hovey. Henry Atkinson, who founded the company that became Georgia Power, built it in 1900 as his summer home, inspired by Mount Vernon. It is now a 36-room inn, owned by the same Quebec family for decades. It is grand, yet it still feels like a house. A very, very nice house. Atkinson's books are still in the library. Have a drink and a casual meal by the fire in the Tap Room, and save Le Hatley, the main dining room, for a long dinner.

Down the road, Auberge La Raveaudière is a seven-room inn in an old house across from the golf course. Breakfast is served in a single room, at one long table and two smaller ones. The rest of the day, guests drift between the two sitting rooms with books and coffee.

The Abbey

Under an hour's drive away, on the shore of Lake Memphremagog, about 30 Benedictine monks live at the Abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac. Monks exiled from Normandy founded it in 1912. Visitors can sit in on the 11 a.m. Mass, which the monks sing in Gregorian chant, and it is worth planning the day around.

Afterward, go downstairs to the shop. The monks have been making cheese since 1943, and they make cider from their own orchard.

Knowlton and Sutton

Knowlton, on Brome Lake, is home to noted author Louise Penny. Penny spent 18 years as a CBC radio journalist before publishing her first novel, Still Life, in 2005. Her series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache now includes about 20 novels. Several have reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list; she has won the Agatha Award five times, and the books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Most of the books are set in fictional Three Pines. Penny has called it a state of mind, and she built it from the real towns around here. Manoir Hovey became the lodge in A Rule Against Murder, and the abbey inspired the monastery in The Beautiful Mystery. Her fans come on pilgrimages. Brome Lake Books keeps a corner for her novels, along with a bench and a mural of three pine trees. Each October the town holds the Knowlton Literary Festival, and this year Penny was its featured author.

Sutton, about half an hour south, is a mountain town. In the fall, Mont Sutton runs its chairlift for leaf-peepers. You can ride up, walk the trails near the summit, and hike back down through the color. In winter, it is a ski hill. Either way, the town below has a good run of restaurants, bars, and shops, and locals who will tell you how much they love living there.

Montreal at Either End

Most visitors fly into Montreal, and the drive to the Townships takes between one and two hours, depending on where you are headed. Save time for Old Montreal at the start or the end. Its old streets are lined with shops, galleries, and one good restaurant after another, and a few hours isn't enough.

Three or four nights in the Townships, split between two inns, is about right. A week lets you slow down. Readers with more time often add Quebec City, about three hours to the northeast, though that is a trip of its own.