Off-Center Views: Small Towns: Sutton and Knowlton, Quebec

8/14/24

Small Towns: Sutton and Knowlton, Quebec

Not every town in the Eastern Townships of Quebec is charming, but crossing the Canadian border can be a sobering lesson for Americans who can’t imagine that a “socialist” country surpasses the USA in quality of life. The other side of that dotted line from economically challenged locales in Maine (Calais, Houlton), New York (Buffalo, Massena, Rouses Point) or Vermont (Alburg, Highgate, North Troy, Richford) is a startling contrast. We recently crossed at Richford, which has struggled to adjust to post-industrialism. It is marked by boarded shops, potholed roads, dire trailer parks, and a 20% poverty rate. The Canadian side features smooth roads, tidy farms, clean lakes, happier people, and towns that invite you to poke about. Here are two nice Quebec towns that gained renewed interest courtesy of author Louise Penny and her Three Pines novels.

Sutton, Quebec, is less than nine miles from Richford and has but 4,548 residents but its main street is abuzz with shoppers. You’ll find non-chain store retailers, galleries, a microbrewery, concerts, heritage trails, and eateries. We didn’t eat dinner there, but our foodie traveling companions recommend Á La Fontaine, a French restaurant. We had a different destination in mind: La Rumeur Affamée (The Hungry Rumor). If you’re a Louise Penny reader it’s the model for Sarah’s boulangerie praised by Gamache and Jean-Guy for fresh croissants and sandwiches. Maybe I’ve not consumed as many croissants as someone who grew up in France, but I’ve pulled apart enough buttery delights to say that the croissants from La Rumeur are as good as any I’ve eaten. Better yet, the half of the store that’s not a patisserie is a fromagerie. On the latter score, I can understand the rapture felt by Remy, the Little Chef rat in the movie Ratatouille.

Sutton’s economy is also bolstered by being in the midst of a wine-producing region–a small slice of microclimate, I’m told–and you can visit numerous neat-as-a-pin chateaux and vineyards in the area. Maybe some other time, though I’m highly suspicious of wines produced from grapes that can survive in cold climates,. Predictably, I opted for favor of extra treats from La Rumeur. Sutton is also a base for skiing at nearby Mount Sutton, but if you think the town’s vitality is artificially enhanced, it doesn’t explain why Vermont towns near more and bigger resorts haven’t gotten as much spillover.

Pond across from bookstore. Rosa taking a swim?

Bench outside of bookstore dedicated to Penny's late husband.

Emily adding her thoughts to Penny's guest book in the Louise Penny corner.

Our overnight stop was Knowlton, which is roughly the same size as Sutton–roughly because it’s part of a larger entity called Lac Brome that collectively contains 5,609 residents. This confuses visitors, as there are numerous villages called Lac Brome and you have to note what’s inside the parentheses, as in Lac Brome (Knowlton). As the name suggests, it’s a lake town. It’s also where Louise Penny lives and we were fortunate enough to be in the bookstore when she walked in. (She’s also an owner of the store.) If you don’t know, there is no such place as Three Pines; it’s a composite of imagination and numerous places in the Eastern Townships. The Townships were a repository for United Empire Loyalists who didn’t want to break with Britain during the American Revolution. You can occasionally encounter those who sign U.E.L. after their names. For American travelers, the Townships are the place in Quebec with the highest percentage of people whose first language is English. No worries, though; more than half of all Quebecois understand and speak it.

We stayed at Le Relais Knowlton which is where Penny (fictively) housed Gamache and other investigators spending the night in Three Pines. It was fun to stay there and to eat in the downstairs restaurant, though I’d caution that the place isn’t the fastidious or gastronomically stupendous establishment of Penny’s Olivier and Gabri. It’s quaint in all that said adjective implies. The food–I had cassoulet–was tasty and reasonably priced, but not one of the most memorable meals I’ve had.

Speaking of cassoulet, you might know that Rosa the duck is cranky Ruth Zardo’s companion in the Three Pines series. That made Rosa (whose likeness is ubiquitous) one lucky canard, as duck is a food staple in Knowlton. There are duck farms and at least one duck-centered butchery and sales shop. You name it and it has duck when you sit down to eat: dark lardons in salads, pulled duck in poutine, barbecued duck wings, duck sausages, duck pasta, duck main courses…. If that’s a turn off, you might prefer to visit the Lac-Brome Museum, a seven-building complex that’s like rooting around in attics from the past. That is, if there’s a complete World War I German Fokker biplane somewhere in the rafters.

Sutton and Knowlton form the core of Penny’s Three Pines, but below are some of her other settings. As for the green, it’s up for debate but is probably the ultimate literary mosaic.