Après ski in Mont Sainte Anne

The Québecois love of the outdoors is matched by their fondness for the good things in life. In the cities when the sun goes down, the lights come on in sidewalk cafes, jazz clubs, comedy clubs, cabarets and theatres. A traditional night out would be a visit to a "sugar shack" (cabanes a sucre) where maple syrup is produced. The aboriginal Indians taught the first colonists how to collect the watery maple sap and boil it down to obtain a rich, golden syrup prized for its colour and flavour. That ritual spawned a booming industry which now accounts for 85% of all the maple syrup, maple taffy and maple sugar produced in Canada. Everyone's avourite, maple taffy, is made by pouring a ribbon of hot syrup on a bed of clean snow; as the syrup begins to harden, you wrap it around a little wooden stick and you have a maple taffy. March and early-April, when the sap begins to rise is when everyone heads for the sugar shacks and big wooden tables groan with maple-based desserts. Traditional rural music generally accompanies the country-style feast and of course the transport is by horse-drawn sleigh. Mont-Sainte-Anne has very its own sugar shack located in the trail La Pichard at mid-mountain elevation. Another tradition handed down by the indigenous peoples and currently practised just about everywhere in Québec is ice-fishing. As soon as the ice is thick enough, colourful little wooden shacks are dragged out onto frozen lakes and rivers. The shacks, which are usually rented, provide varying degrees of comfort but basically they offer shelter from the wind and allow ice-fishers to extend their time outdoors. Ice fishing is now newly offered at Mont-Sainte-Anne at its base.