Food, fun and history in and around Ottawa
GREAT CANADIAN ROAD TRIPS
To commemorate Canada’s 150th birthday, Driving has covered the country with a series of Great Canadian Road Trips, with itineraries revealing not just fun-todrive routes, but also the pit stops, scenic views and local culture — all the things that make a road trip fun. This month Sarah Staples shares her family’s drive from Montreal to Ottawa for a weekend getaway.
At Lake of Two Mountains, where the Ottawa River widens as it drains into the St. Lawrence, Canada geese lift off in a gently undulating V. The birds fly in formation beyond the treetops, past a silver church spire and the red-brick storefronts of Oka, Que. I finish photographing them and hop back into my rental car. It’s the first of many stops I’ ll make on this leisurely fall getaway.
Every year, our family zips up Highway 417 from Montreal for a long weekend of museum- hopping and assorted fun around pedestrian- friendly Ottawa. But this trip is all about the detour. Instead of bland highway driving, we’re exploring Western Quebec’s Montérégie and Outaouais regions as we follow secondary roads that wind alongside the Ottawa River — the original TransCanada Highway.
For this road trip, my ride is a 2012 Mini Cooper, rented through Turo.com, an online community that works like an Airbnb for rental cars. I search listings near my home, pay via the website, and deal directly with the car’s owner, Philipp Boulanov, for pickup and drop-off.
Boulanov started renting out his Mini Cooper in June. Now, he’s accumulated a fleet of five rental cars, including a Nissan Sentra SV, Volkswagens and a Porsche Cayenne, with another Nissan Versa on order. He earns a decent living as one of a growing number of microentrepreneurs who have multiple listings through Turo. Smart guy.
I catch up to my husband, Mike, and our children, who have forged ahead in the family Jeep, and we continue around Lake of Two Mountains, to Hudson, for breakfast.
In the 17 th and 18th centuries, French fur traders paddled from Montreal to Ottawa en route to trading posts on Ontario’s Lake Nipissing and Lake Huron, a grand loop known as the Route des Voyageurs. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the river brought steampaddleboat passengers, supplies and mail, nourishing the economies of places along its banks, such as Hudson.
Stately homes, porchfringed Victorian inns, restaurants and pubs line Rue Main. The town, settled first by the French and later the English, has a popular St. Patrick’s Day parade, an English- language theatre, and even a specialty shop selling nothing but imported British foods and gifts.
Rue Main c arries on through the countryside, past orchards and Canada geese resting near the water. We drive beside Voyageur Provincial Park and Long Sault, a powerful waterfall that the voyageurs had to portage around, and across an iron bridge at Hawkesbury. We pick up Highway 148 to Montebello, the next pretty riverside community.
“Time to pay our toll,” says Serge Lussier, chief zoologist at Parc Omega, minutes from t own. Without warning, baby elk have pushed their snouts into open windows of Lussier’s truck, looking for carrots that the children dole out as treats. It’s the start of a 15-kilometre driving safari through 2,000 privatelyowned acres inhabited by wolves, bears, deer, elk, wild boars and more.
Parc Omega is open and the animals are outdoors year-round; they’re all northern-hemisphere species that are accustomed to Canadian winters. Visitors can hike or snowshoe on kilometres of trails, and they can stay overnight in teepees, canvas prospector tents or log cabins.
Further on, we visit another of the park’s four wolf packs. They are seated up a gently-sloping hill, observing us as we observe them from either side of a new, glassedin Wolf Observatory that Lussier helped design and launch this year.
After leaving the park, we check in at Fairmont Le Château Montebello, which was once a private getaway for heads of banks and politicians from the power corri- dors of Ottawa, which is less than an hour away. My son and I practise underwater handstands in Canada’s largest hotel pool before we all head to dinner at Les Chantignolles, the hotel restaurant overlooking the river.
In the morning, Papineauville, Plaisance, Thurso, Masson- Angers pass by quickly as we keep the water on our left, flecked with morning sunlight and bordered by fields of grazing cattle, all the way to Gatineau. There, the Canadian Museum of History has a newly opened Canadian History Hall, the largest such display ever. We browse everything from 15,000- year- old stone tools to Centennial- year ball gowns. Later we cross the Alexandra Bridge, leaving the Ottawa River behind.
At the Canadian Museum of Nature, a permanent Arctic Gallery, open since June, is dedicated to far- northern geography, climate change, s ustainability and ecosystems. The children reach out to press their fingers into sculpted ice that dazzles with colour and movement. It’s called Beyond Ice, a multimedia installation projecting snippets of National Film Board reels and animations by Inuit artists.
Meanwhile, I move on to rooms full of rare artifacts. There are pieces from the lost Franklin expedition, for instance, and a walking seal, a sort of evolutionary missing link that’s now been found thanks to the worldclass scientists attached to this museum.
As evening descends, we’re on our way to the highlight of the weekend: Saunders Farm Fright Fest. This is an annual Halloweenthemed festival held on a 100- acre theme- park- style farm in Munster, Ont.. A cold rain has started, yet the parking lot is full.
First we visit attractions such as the Barn of Terror and the Big Top Fear House (manned by a creepy clown).
We all step onto a wagon next, speeding into the shelter of a small forest at the rear of the farm. The kids hug us and shriek in pretend terror as spooky costumed characters jump out of hiding. Then the skies open and big raindrops fall through the moonlit treetops.