BCAA Travel Blog

On our way to Reford Gardens, we stop to pose for photos with what may possibly be the largest Adirondack chair in Canada. This shot on the left makes me look like some sort of grotesque shrunken doll; a Mini-Me in shades. To tell you the truth, I don’t why the monster chair was sitting there, but you see similar oversize items along the highways in Quebec from time to time. Earlier in the day we passed two giant dogs outside Beaupré. The larger of the two, a St. Bernard, was wearing a plaid tam o’shanter. Again, I can offer no explanation.

Reford Gardens (Jardin de Métis) is a national historic site. Located on the banks of the Métis River, near the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, the gardens were created in the mid-1920s by Elsie Reford, a dynamic woman and plant lover, on property that she was given by her uncle, George Stephen, one of Canada’s richest railway barons. The gardens cover 17 hectares and include some 3,000 species and varieties of native and exotic plants, which is a major accomplishment considering that the area gets only 110 frost-free days each year.

We are given a tour of the grounds by Alexander Reford, Elsie’s great–grandson, who has managed the property since 1995. An historian by trade, Alexander wrote a book in 2004 entitled Elsie’s Paradise, which recounts the story of the how this horticultural Eden came to be. While summing up the history of the place, he escorts us to the Blue Poppy Glade, home to Reford Gardens’ signature flower–the exotic Himalayan blue poppy. Evidently, Elsie Reford was one of the first North American gardeners to attempt growing this ”marvel of the plant world.” Discovered in 1924, high in the Tibetan mountains, the poppy, which grows at altitudes of 3,120 to 4,000 metres, was a challenge for Elsie, but by 1936, she had hundreds of flowers thriving in her garden. Today the gardens contain 13,000 blue poppies, one of the largest collections in the world. Although it is notoriously difficult to grow, Alexander says that the soil here has the perfect acidity for the poppy to thrive and also the large disparity between night and day temperatures that the species prefers.

Alexander also shows us a few of the installations currently on display in Reford’s annual International Garden Festival, which features 13 contemporary gardens designed by teams of artists, architects and landscape architects from all over the world. The piece that instantly draws our attention is a holdover from 2007’s festival–Pomme de parterre (potato flower bed). More than 1,000 heirloom potatoes are displayed, growing in the ground and on shelves inside a partially buried clapboard shed. Each spud in the hut is wired for sound and light. It’s an odd sensation to stand inside and listen to them beeping and squawking. The first instinct is to laugh. The second is to marvel at all the work that went into creating the installation.

After tucking into lunch in Reford Gardens’ Estevan Lodge, an elegant 37-room historic home that was once Elsie’s resdience, we proceed to Bic National Park, where we hook up with a speed-talking park ranger named Camille. Running late, we have to settle for a quick tour of the beautiful, 33-square kilometre park, which is host to more than 800 different species of plants and large colonies of seals and sea birds. Camille drives us up to a scenic lookout where we admire the jigsaw of islands, coves and inlets far below. It is likely that Champlain paddled through these same waters on his way up the St. Lawrence in 1615.

In the evening we arrive in the town of Le Bic and check into Auberge du Mange Grenouille, which translates as The Frog Eaters’ Inn. An eccentric hostelry, it is jam-packed with lace, red velour, candelabras, gilded frames, romantic posters, strange sculptures and Byzantine décor. The restaurant’s award-winning menu offers Quebec lamb, seared halibut, braised buffalo shortribs and guinea fowl breast, but oddly, no frog.

Carole Faucher, the inn’s co-owner, drops by our table to greet us. A former professional comedian, Carole declares that she likes my voice and starts massaging my shoulders. She also decides that my name should be Brad, and christens me on the spot. Chuckling at my perplexed expression, Suzie explains that Brad is one of the stars of Le Coeur a Ses Raisons (The Heart Has Its Reasons), a popular Quebec TV soap. Suzie assures me that Brad is a sexy, he-man character, but she leaves out a few details. Later when I do some checking, I discover that Brad is an evil, scheming cosmetics tycoon who buried his twin brother alive in one episode. 

(To be continued …)

Filed under: Writing from the road