INEXPENSIVE FUN FOR BREAK
Parks Canada pass is a free idea for family trip
Before we get started, there are a couple of things you should know. I don’t like camping. And I had a cold.
Yet when I got all choked up during our first 10 minutes at La Mauricie National Park, it wasn’t for the reason you (or my family) might have thought. Standing on the welcome centre’s deck with wood smoke heavy in the air, looking down on chalky trails emerging from shadowed woods backdropped by low mountains thick with evergreens, I was filled with the sort of patriotism propagandists can only dream of sowing. I am Canadian. And that’s how I was going to get through the weekend.
We — wife Melani, daughter Jilly and I — were taking our 2017 Parks Canada pass for its first spin, just two hours north of Montreal.
Those of you still looking for a last-minute March Break jaunt with the family can take inspiration from our outing. As part of Canada’s 150th birthday celebration, the federal government has made access to Parks Canada sites accessible to all Canadians by giving away Discovery passes. They can be ordered online or picked up at any national park, historic site or marine conservation area. You only need one pass per vehicle (so get one for the family), and it covers entry to the site, but not camping, activities or outside fees like parking or equipment rental.
We’ve had our pass since before 2017 started and it was burning a hole in our glove compartment. We decided to try winter camping during that golden pre-spring time when you can play in the snow but it’s warm enough to have your coat’s zipper open, but because I hate camping, setting up a tent in the woods and full-on roughing it wasn’t an option.
“This isn’t like camping,” I said joyfully when we arrived at lucky camp site No. 13. “This is like a thing that I enjoy.”
“This isn’t like camping,” said 5-year-old Beaver Scout Jilly, less joyfully. “With camping you need a real tent, not a thing like this.”
“A thing like this” is a tentshaped, canvas cabin called an oTENTik. It has a wood floor and room for six people to sleep on real mattresses, plus a fully equipped cupboard across from a heavy, family-style dining table. There were 13 oTENTiks in our campground, yet they were far enough from each other, and surrounded by enough thick old trees, that we could pretend we were deep in the wilderness — except with actual beds and a wood stove and an iron fire pit just outside.
About 200 metres away was a common building with tables and hot plates and hot running water, and more importantly, the bathrooms. It was a short, pleasant walk that ended in what doubled as a pretty good sledding hill.
There were fox tracks right outside our tent, but other than one bold chipmunk, we didn’t see any wildlife during our whirlwind, 24hour stay.
The warm winter air was so heavy, sound didn’t travel. We heard neither neighbour nor bird, but only the sounds we made, like sniffling or the crinkling of newsprint for kindling — or, “Stop dancing around the fireplace! Dance outside instead!”
Though we’re not a family that cross-country skis or snowshoes or winter-cycles — all activities that are offered at La Mauricie — we do love a good hike. Many of the trails at the park are closed for the winter, so it wasn’t possible to check out the waterfalls or cliffs, but we did a tour of a well-maintained trail that was accessed from our campground. Trail No. 1 wound through woods backdropped by brown and gold mountains, with inclines gentle enough to heave a sled laden with child and lunch, yet steep enough to send the same child and lunch barrelling down through the trees, screaming gleefully (which could be why we didn’t see any wildlife).
We stopped at a trail way station, where Melani started a fire in the wood stove while I unboxed leftovers from a Montreal BBQ joint we’d been to the night before. We shared marshmallows with a couple visiting from France whose young sons were nearing the end of their patience. They would be the only other people, aside from the astonishingly cheery Parks Canada staff, whom we would talk to during our stay.
La Mauricie was opened as a national park in 1970, protecting 536 square kilometres of Canadian Shield that was transformed by the area’s rich early logging industry. Just around the corner from Shawinigan and about two hours northeast of Montreal, the park has a mandate to protect and restore the forest’s and lakes’ ecosystems, and visitors are nearly universally respectful, following carry-in, carry-out protocol and sticking to trails so as not to overly disturb the land.
Just after dusk at the campground, other campers appeared, lanterns and head lamps bobbing like a scene from Tangled, but unlike summer campers, these people didn’t make small talk, or even eye contact. They were seeking peace and solitude, I guess, and we had a 5-year-old. We had intended to stick to ourselves anyway, cooking hotdogs and roasting marshmallows in the outdoor fire pit, which was protected from wind by fivefoot-high snowbanks on three sides, then reading a chapter of Ella Enchanted before putting an extra log on the wood stove and taking turns running down for one last trip to the loo.
Jilly and I were alone when that most dreaded of sounds broke into the eerie silence of the forest: “Mum. Mum I have to pee. I have to pee right now!”
I’m no fool. I had a plan. Up. Snow pants. Jacket. Zipper. Boots — no time for socks.
What we didn’t have was the lantern. It was down at the bathrooms with Melani. But no problem. I’m a country girl. I can navigate a starless night.
The little green sled was parked right outside. I rarely use my sledpulling muscles, and we’d been up and down a few hills already. My shoulder and carpal-tunnel-abused hand throbbed.
My first thoughts — “I think I can I think I can” — were followed by vague daydreams of the 40-pound weight in the sled just vanishing. The image had barely made it to my thought bubble before I got that terrible tailbone-to-neck-bone chill unique to times when there’s nothing but black behind you. If the sled suddenly got light, it would probably mean she’d been eaten by a chupacabra. No, no, we were too far north for that.
Sasquatch, then. The dog-shaped tracks outside our oTENTik were fresh on my mind. It was so much darker behind me than ahead. I couldn’t turn to check that she was okay because what if I turned around and it was there — Big Foot or a coyote or … what? It was a mother’s instinct to protect battling with a normal human’s instinct to Never Look Behind You. I made one last falling-forward pull toward the lit restrooms with the dark close on my heels and that burst came just as we reached the top of the hard-packed incline.
“Muuuuum,” came the cry as the sled overtook me and the rope fell from my crippled hand, child and green sled spinning down and away from me and there was nothing I could do but wait till the sled reluctantly stopped just shy of the common building.
And once in the circle of light, with the rush back on to get to a toilet, but her betrayed, joyful face frowning at me, I doubled over laughing so hard I probably scared off the Sasquatch. And it was a good thing we were right by the bathrooms.
HOW TO GET YOUR FREE PARKS CANADA PASS
I’m not saying Parks Canada is the cure for the common cold. I mean, I sometimes get such simple medical procedures as kissing a boo-boo wrong, so who am I to judge. But I can say that by the end of the weekend, I was breathing easy and I had an extra (tired, slightly sore) spring in my step.
A Parks Canada pass gives admission to all national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas. However, that includes entry to the park only — it doesn’t cover fees for camping, firewood, activities, etc. (Our onenight stay in the oTENTik cost $120 plus taxes.) A 2017 Discovery Pass is valid for everyone arriving in the same vehicle at a national park, marine conservation area or historic site. You can pick one up at a national park or order it online.