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Taking the Train to Charlevoix

Mention the Charlevoix region to a Quebecois and they’re bound to sigh, thinking of the mountains and long inlets that dot the shoreline of St. Lawrence Seaway northeast of Quebec City. Home to the classic Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu, built in 1929, it has long been a summer retreat for families from Montreal and Quebec City who come to the region to fish for salmon, hike in national parks, and kayak next to beluga whales. Lately, it has earned its reputation as the foodie capital of the province, known for its farm-to-table restaurants, locale cheese, pates, and microbrews. Then there is the abundance of arts and culture in Charlevoix. It was in the small arts community of Baie-Saint-Paul that Guy Laliberté, Daniel Gauthier, and others formed a theater troupe in the early 1980s called “The Stiltwalkers of Baie-Saint-Paul,” entertaining summer crowds with their juggling, fire breathing, music, and dance. Laliberté and Gauthier would soon co-found Le Cirque du Soleil. Gauthier would sell his share of the company to Laliberté in 2000, but he certainly didn’t turn his back on the Charlevoix region. 
 
In 2002, Gauthier would buy a struggling ski resort with majestic views of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the largest vertical drop east of the Canadian Rockies, Le Massif. In September 2011, Gauthier unveiled a new train from the outskirts of Quebec City traveling 140 kilometers northeast to La Malbaie. This past June, Gauthier’s 145-room Hotel La Ferme opened in Baie-Saint-Paul. Thus, having spent over $300 million, Gauthier has created a lasting legacy in the region. 
 
I’ll talk about Le Massif and Hotel La Ferme in upcoming days, but first I want to describe the magnificent train ride. I boarded the train at Montmorency Falls, the towering waterfalls just outside Quebec City. Blue skies peered into the double-decker train as I sat back in my comfortable seat and awaited a breakfast of mushroom frittata, yogurt with blackberries and blueberries, a maple caramel pastry and hot chocolate croissants for dessert. It was a leisurely ride alongside the icy St. Lawrence River, passing small towns and their requisite church, including the massive basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. At Le Massif, we stopped for 15 minutes to allow day skiers the chance to retrieve their equipment and venture onto the gondola for a day of skiing, before the train picks them up on the return trip. Soon, we were at our final stop (in winter), the town of Baie-Saint-Paul.
 
The train works with many local outfitters, who can take clientele on a food or art lover’s tour of Baie-Saint-Paul, or snowshoe along the St. Lawrence shoreline like I did. Wisely, I decided to spend several nights in the region to ski and luge Le Massif and check out all the art galleries in town. Not to mention, the stylish Hotel La Ferme is a gem of a resort, soon to garner many architectural awards and make the top hotel lists of many international travel publications. But remember, you heard it hear first! 
 
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Musee de la Civilisation A Must-Stop in Quebec City

Quebec City’s Musee de la Civilisation might sound like some vague museum of anthropology. Venture inside and you’ll be surprised to find one of the most intriguing museums in North America. On my last trip to Quebec City, I was treated to an exhibition called Urbanopolis, an architectural study that shows how cities around the world are preparing themselves for the future through apartment design and public transportation. When I returned this weekend, I saw a fascinating show on Nigerian art from private French collections, rarely seen by the public. The 187 objects from 44 various ethnic groups in Nigeria included a series of large masks created from, among other things, the human skull, facial hair, antelope horns, and lion’s teeth. I especially enjoyed the films of anthropologist Arnold Rubin from the 1960s that showed remote Nigerian tribesmen dancing with several of the masks and costumes on display. Another worthwhile exhibition at the Museum showcased New Zealand’s Maori culture and featured large wooden carvings from ancestral meeting houses. 

 
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Time to Party With Bonhomme at Winter Carnival

If you love Paris in the springtime, then you’ll adore Quebec City in the wintertime, where, for 17 days, the party never stops. Quebec City’s Winter Carnival is the largest in the world, attracting more than one million people. I was one of those fortunate people to arrive in this fortified city on the first day of the 2013 Winter Carnival. I spent the morning sledding down an ice chute, viewing the impressive ice castle, made from 1600 blocks of ice, eating maple syrup on snow, and playing a human game of foosball. Attached to bars with seatbelts, you slide all over the ice trying to kick the ball into the goal. But the party really started on Saturday night, when top DJs from Montreal and Toronto played a mesmerizing mix of hip-hop and electronica to a crowd of revelers outside the ice castle. Locals carry cane-like red sticks filled with a potent drink called Caribou, made of whiskey, red wine, and maple syrup, which certainly added to the dancing frenzy. When Bonhomme, the popular snowman and revered host of the festivities started to boogie, the crowd went wild.
 
This is just the start of the 58th edition of the Quebec City Winter Carnival. Still to come is Le Grande Virée, a dogsled race that cruises through the heart of the historic Old City, and the ice canoeing competition, where paddlers sprint across the turgid waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway. New this year is a video installation, where filmmakers project images onto four of the iconic buildings in town, creating a 3-D interplay. There’s also a brasserie, serving 25 microbrews from across Quebec. So if you have no plans yet for February vacation week, it might be the time to experience some joie de vivre in Quebec City. 
 
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Modernism Comes to the Portland Museum of Art This Summer

William S. Paley (1901–1990), the media titan who built the CBS broadcasting empire, amassed an extraordinary collection of modern art. He also became the catalytic force behind The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which opened in 1929. When he died, he donated his entire collection to MoMA. Now MoMA is sharing 62 of those treasures with other art museums. The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism, will be on view May 2 through September 8, 2013, at the Portland Museum of Art. Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, and Francis Bacon, are among the 24 artists whose paintings, sculpture, and works on paper will grace the walls. The Portland Museum of Art is the only New England venue for this blockbuster show, which will then move on to Quebec City. 

 
Talking about Quebec City, I’ll be reporting live from the biggest Winter Carnival in the world next week, before traveling to Baie-Saint-Paul and Le Massif ski resort. So please return often! 
 
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Newly Renovated Ten Acres Lodge Offers Affordable Lodging in Stowe

Perched on a quiet hillside just down the road from Trapp Family Lodge, Ten Acres Lodge always had a fabulous spot in Stowe. Now they have a passionate owner to match their stellar locale. Linda Hunter has quickly made a name for herself in town, opening a bistro that’s winning kudos from locals like Vermont PR maven, Emily Bradbury. Now Hunter has her sites set on the rooms, renovating tired interiors into stylish and comfortable getaways. She’s having a soft opening right now. Tell her I sent you.

 
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Liftopia Offering Discounted Lift Tickets for Super Bowl Sunday

Liftopia, the largest online marketplace for discounted lift tickets, is launching its biggest sale of the year today. Grab savings of up to 70% off lift tickets at more than 200 ski resorts for Super Bowl Sunday. With the game starting at 6:30 pm EST, you have plenty of time to hit the slopes before the game. In Vermont, lift tickets at Bolton Valley start at $10, Jay Peak at $46, Okemo at $59, and Stratton at $60. New Hampshire’s Ragged Mountain will be offering lift tickets for $27. In Utah, the Canyons has lift tickets for $69 and Solitude is offering tickets for $50. In Colorado, ski Copper for $55. The list goes on and on! 

 
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Larry Meehan, In Memoriam

“Steve, do you realize we’re standing at the junction of King and Queen Streets?” Larry Meehan asked in his typical animated tone. “No, Larry. Actually, I thought we were dining at a seafood restaurant,” I muttered. “This is the heart of Colonial Boston,” he would say to me, even more passionate. “Where it all happened!” Every conversation I had with Larry Meehan was peppered with some historical tidbit about his beloved city. Sure, he often spoke about the success of his wife and boys, biking around Martha’s Vineyard the week after Labor Day, when most of the crowds were gone, all the new hotels and restaurants that were popping up all over the city. And he couldn’t resist teasing me about my next Sabena Belgium assignment. One of the first stories I ever wrote was on a store in Faneuil Hall that sold detritus from the city, like seats from the old Boston Garden or a century-old street lamppost. “Is this for Sabena magazine?” he would say with a smile years later, referring to the now defunct inflight magazine. 

 
Larry Meehan was the head of media relations for Boston’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. In the past 23 years as a travel writer, I’ve dealt with PR from cities and countries across the globe and few, if any, were as genuinely fond of the locale they were promoting as Larry. He loved the history of Boston and was so dedicated that he persuaded me to start a local New England Writers (NEW) group with him, to get the word out to travel and food writers on all the topical events happening in the city during the course of the next year. Those meetings resulted in at least two dozen stories for me and countless other stories from the other writers. 
 
Then Larry found out he had cancer and I started seeing him less and less. He didn’t want to burden me with his illness, he told me over the phone. So I started writing letters to him and he would send letters back, drawings on the side, stemming from the days before the Boston CVB when he was a graphic designer. In December he died far too prematurely at the age of 60. This afternoon, there’s a tribute to Larry at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Of course, I’ll be there. But I wish he was there with me, telling me some anecdote about JFK’s life aboard a Navy ship or Jackie O’s wedding dress on inauguration day. Life moves on in Boston, but with the loss of Larry Meehan, there’s a huge void that’s impossible to fill. 
 
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Visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the Spring

Last week, I talked about some of my favorite national parks to visit in winter. There’s one park where I would wait until the flowers bloom, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 45 miles from Knoxville or 60 miles from Asheville, the Great Smoky Mountains are in bloom almost year round. There are more than 1,600 kinds of flowering plants within the boundaries of the park. These include the summer display of bright red cardinal flowers and purple-fringed orchids, and autumn’s bounty of goldenrod and sunflowers. Add flowering shrubs like mountain laurel, rhododendrons and flame azaleas, and trees like sourwood, that form bell-shaped white flowers that attract honey bees, and you understand why this wildflower-laden park is the best natural greenhouse in America. A good place to stop and smell the flowers is the self-guided Harwood Cove Nature Trail that begins at the Chimneys Picnic Area. 
 
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Visiting Grand Canyon National Park in Winter

At the mile-deep Grand Canyon, it’s not uncommon to start in down parkas at the South Rim (7,000 feet) and, two hours later, meet hikers in shorts and tank tops. Indeed, temperatures can be 20 degrees warmer on the shores of the Colorado River. The warmest winter corridor to the bottom is the route from Bright Angel to South Kaibab.  Hike down the steeper 7-mile Kaibab Trail and then loop back on the far gentler 9.5-mile Bright Angel Trail. You’ll find that the canyon’s colors look even more dramatic as winter’s sun casts long shadows. All campgrounds on the South Rim stay open year-round while the much colder and snowier North Rim (1,000 feet higher than the South Rim) requires a backcountry use permit and is inaccessible to cars. 
 
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Visiting Voyageurs National Park in Winter

Two centuries ago, only Native Americans and French Canadian “voyageurs” saw the pelt-rich terrain of northern Minnesota. Today, Voyageurs National Park is still a haven for furry animals and hardy souls in winter. Brave the often extreme weather conditions (ice on the lakes, for example, can be five feet thick) and you’ll be in the good company of moose, white-tailed deer, mink, beavers, bald eagles, and the eastern timber wolf. Rangers at Voyageurs’ Rainy Lake Visitor Center teach clinics on how to make your own snowshoe and, once finished, take people deep into the forest of pines, birches and cedars on evening wolf howls. Two of the best ways to get lost is on the 2.5-mile Sullivan Bay snowshoe trail and the 11-mile Black Bay cross-country ski trail. Sullivan Bay is a hard-packed up-and-down route on the shores of Kabetogama Lake (one of Voyageurs network of 30 lakes). The groomed Black Bay Trail zips past beaver ponds under a grove of aspens. Spearfishing for northern pikes is popular on Kabetogama in winter, but that’s one sport rangers don’t teach. However, the park staff does plow a 7-mile road on Rainy Lake so anglers can set up their ice houses to fish for walleye and burbot.