I was supposed to be in Sicily this summer. Then the plan changed. My dad had never set foot in Québec. My mom had, but only the city, the version most visitors see. I’ve spent time there myself over the years, always in the city too. I wanted to show them something different, so instead of a flight across the Atlantic, we drove east: about eight hours from Toronto.
That’s how we ended up in Lotbinière, a small municipality on the Route des Navigateurs, forty minutes outside Québec City. It’s tiny, just 855 people as of the 2021 census, named after the seigneurie granted to René-Louis Chartier de Lotbinière back in 1672. It’s no surprise the village has earned an official spot among the Association of the Most Beautiful Villages of Quebec, thanks to its ensemble of old stone houses and its early-19th-century church complex. And it’s a name I never would have spelled correctly if I hadn’t seen it written down myself.
Leaving the highway behind, the landscape opened into farmland: cattle in the fields, tidy pastures, the countryside rolling down toward the St. Lawrence. The river has always been the backbone of this part of Canada, and driving alongside it here, past small farms and old stone villages, it felt closer and quieter than it ever does in the city. Everything was green, clean, and unhurried. The kind of scenery that makes you slow the car down without meaning to.
One of my favourite moments of the whole trip happened by accident. We’d driven to Plage de Deschaillons, a stretch of fine sand along the St. Lawrence, and Pepe and Coco ended up playing frisbee with two local kids. Hearing them call the pups’ names in their French accents was adorable on its own, but the little boy went a step further: he figured out how to get Coco to listen to him and stop being nervous around him. “I think he’s more afraid of me than I am of him,” he told me, which is a smarter read on a dog than most adults manage.
What I hadn’t noticed was that somewhere on the walk down to the beach, arms full of towels and chairs, my car keys had slipped out of my pocket.
A little while later, a man walking the beach approached us and asked, in French, whether the keys he’d found on the ground were mine, “plaque de l’Ontario.” In absolute disbelief and gratitude, picking up my jaw from the sandy beach, I said, “Oui, merci beaucoup!” He’d gone from group to group along the beach looking for the owner. My French is okay, patched together with Spanish words and a lot of hand gestures, but none of that mattered. It was such a small thing, and it set the tone for the entire trip:
this is a place where people look out for one another, language barrier or not.
Then there was the afternoon we came across a runaway pony on the side of the road, clearly having slipped away from its owners, being gently coaxed and calmed by two people until it was ready to head home. It’s the kind of scene you only get to witness in rural places like this.
A Table at the Farm
The food in Lotbinière deserves its own chapter. Even living in Toronto, I hadn’t expected to eat the way I usually only eat in Europe: the bread (the bread alone was worth the drive), the meats, the vegetables, the fruits. Every meal felt like an event.
The high point was a farm-to-table dinner at Domaine de l’Oie Toquée, the resto-champêtre in nearby Saint-Agapit run by Chef Gaston Couillard. Between my patchwork French and his patience, we managed a real conversation, and what came to the table backed it up: every dish was flavourful in a way that felt like love on a plate. It wasn’t just delicious. Every item had a story, a source, a reason it was on the plate. Almost everything traced back to his own land, from garden to kitchen to table.
My parents were won over by the service and the attention as much as the food, and my mom went home with a small gift from Mireille, Chef Gaston’s wife. She lit up talking about her new grandchildren, clearly proud, and that warmth carried through everything she brought to the table. It’s the kind of gesture that says more about a place than any menu can. She even practiced her Spanish with my parents as I tried to keep practicing my French. Afterward we walked the property and met the animals, including two alpacas, Mango and Rainbow, who strolled around like they owned the place. I swear they even smiled when I told them they were “très belles.”
Eight Hours from Home, and Still Canada
What stayed with me most was the disbelief that this was still Canada. The local delicacies: the cheeses, the boulangeries, the homemade desserts (shout out to Caravane Café in nearby Sainte-Croix and their incredible carrot cake), were on par with anything I’ve eaten in Europe. I couldn’t believe I’d lived in this country my whole life and never eaten this well. It felt like I’d landed in a different part of the world. Which says a lot about how much this country has to offer, and even more about the fact that it was quietly waiting for me eight hours east the whole time.
Some of the best of it came straight from Marché Saint-Louis de Lotbinière, a local grocery and market built around the region’s own farms. I picked up the juiciest strawberries I’ve had all year there, alongside parmesan risotto, Cornish hens, and tomatoes, everything sourced from the fields just down the road.
Before the trip, some online research turned up a bakery near Saint-Apollinaire, Boulangerie et Pâtisserie DeMailly, a family business since 1917, well known and well respected for its bread, especially its cinnamon brioche. Getting a loaf, it turned out, would take some persistence.
On my first visit, they were sold out. Second visit, sold out again. The bakery isn’t open Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, so by the third try, one of the women working there, Josée, recognized me walking back in. In my mangled French, and with my mom mentioning that her birthday was coming up and that we’d driven all the way from Ontario hoping to try their bread, the owner, Gilles Mailly, came out. We talked in half French and Spanish, and I paid for two loaves of cinnamon bread on the spot, so they could set it aside for me to pick up the next day.
On my fourth visit, the two loaves were waiting. I thanked Josée and, honestly, double-checked that I’d actually paid. It felt like too little for what I was getting. By the time I got home and made French toast with it, I understood why: probably the best bread I have ever eaten in my life. I called the bakery and mentioned how incredible it was, and asked if I could please buy another two loaves. When I came back to collect that last order, Gilles told me not to worry about it. Those two loaves were on the house. I’m not sure my mangled French managed to convey just how touched I was, but I hope it came through anyway.
More Than a Vacation
By the end of nearly two weeks in Lotbinière, I’d fallen for the land, the people, the food, the quiet, and the sheer beauty of the place. My parents immigrated to Canada from Peru in the 1980s and have travelled the country a little since, but only the major cities, never this corner of Québec. Getting to share this specific experience with both of them, and to bring my little ones, Pepe and Coco, along for the ride, made it that much better. They ate just as well as we did, off the same local produce and farm-raised chickens, and couldn’t get enough of the cheese and ice cream from Fromagerie Bergeron in nearby Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly.
My mom joked that I’d brought her to the end of the world. All she could see from the car at times was thick forest and nature. She was exaggerating, but only a little. This kind of trip really is for people willing to step off the everyday path and actually immerse themselves in a place. We’re lucky to be able to do that, and even luckier that it was right here all along.
It was also the first time my parents got to see this side of me: the professional traveller and adventurer, at home navigating a new place in broken French with a smile and an open heart. My mom shed a few tears along the way, just from feeling grateful she could experience it all with me.
The Unsung Heroes
The more I think about the trip, the more I realize almost every good memory traces back to the same people: the farmers and small producers who rarely get top billing but quietly hold these communities together. Chef Couillard growing what he serves on his own land. Gilles Mailly still baking bread his family has made since 1917, generous enough to comp two loaves just because I clearly meant it when I said I loved them. Fromagerie Bergeron, family-run since 1989, turning local milk into cheese people drive hours to buy. Marché Saint-Louis, stocking its shelves straight from neighbouring farms so a stranger from Ontario like me can walk out with the best strawberries of her year.
None of that happens without people choosing, generation after generation, to keep farming, baking, and cooking in the same small region instead of chasing something elsewhere. That choice is what keeps a village of 855 people fed well, keeps its economy standing, and keeps visitors like me coming back. It’s easy to romanticize the countryside from a car window. It’s another thing to recognize that its beauty only exists because someone got up before sunrise to milk a cow, tend a garden, or fire up an oven at 3 a.m., and kept doing it for a hundred years. That’s the part of this trip I want to make sure doesn’t get lost.
One More Celebration
There’s one more stop still ahead: mum’s seventy-eighth birthday, at a small local restaurant in Lotbinière, where the three of us will run through our list of the best things we ate on this whole trip.
But honestly, the food is almost beside the point now. What I’ve loved most is that we have this experience together: the whole beautiful sweep of this country, trying new recipes with local ingredients, even watching the World Cup side by side. I’m just deeply, deeply grateful that this exists eight hours from home, and that I can keep coming back.
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