WEETREAT and THE TRAILSIDE LARDER
The begining and what came next...
There are many things about living in Montreal.
There is the joie-de-vivre (often written about), the winters (often complained about), the Europe-in-North-America thing…the little big place or the big little place depending on who is talking…and the “definitely-not-Toronto” thing – which mostly everyone agrees on.
Having grown up and lived in the city core, I can just as easily praise its virtues as dump on its shortcomings, or I can shrug (gallically) at the that’s-the-way-it-is that embodies Montrealer’s views on many things – municipal politics, the never ending litany about streets under construction, bagels (St. Viateur), bests of, worsts of...…or struggle with deciding where to eat in a city beset with amazing restaurants and the wonderful people that run them.
A big attraction to living in Montreal is that within a little more than an hour’s drive from the city, lies incredibly beautiful lake and mountain cottage country – the Eastern Townships to the East and the Laurentians to the North.
Although one would think that Montrealers are divided based on language or religion, it often is more a matter of whether you are a Townshipper or a Laurentians goer. Relationships and friendships have ended over less. Think “which soup did you grow up with?”.
According to someone I know who for a time was a senior exec for a major soup company, the huge amount of dollars spent annually trying to convince Quebecers to switch brands of tomato soup from the one they know from birth are dollars was largely wasted – (BTW, Aylmer’s was, and is, the number one brand in Quebec).
I grew up spending summers and weekends in the Laurentians, went to summer camp as a kid in the Laurentians, learned to ski and patrolled x-country ski trails in (yes) the Laurentians.
So it should come as no surprise, that I would eventually come to call the Laurentians home.
And so it began...
How Trailside came to be and what exactly is a larder?
WeeTreat, Trailside
120 km north of Montreal is a wonderful bit of paradise called Valdurn and it was here that ground was broken in 1991 and WeeTreat sprang from the arboreal forest and bedrock to take its place looking over an unbelievably pure lake surrounded by first growth forest.
In a corner of WeeTreat (it actually is quite small but appropriately so) is the kitchen that came to be known as Trailside.
