The Bas-Saint-Laurent is a 300-kilometre stretch of coast with a ton of personality: delicious food, surprise wine bars, technicolour sunsets, an artisanal chocolate factory you can sleep in. It’s also easy to miss entirely. I should know—I bypassed it myself maybe 50 times, travelling along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River between Fredericton, where I grew up, and Montreal, where I moved when I was 17. The goal: to get there as soon as possible, and that meant sticking to the Trans-Canada. The St. Lawrence always felt peripheral, and the tiny, remarkable towns that dot along its shores were completely out of sight.
Then I had kids, and the approach to the drive changed: leave early, stop often. A fellow New Brunswick transplant suggested Auberge sur Mer—an inn in the small town of Notre-Dame-du-Portage, south of Rivière-du-Loup—as a good place to break up the trip. Her happy place, she called it.
The first time we turned off the highway one August afternoon three years ago, I got it. The road—Côte de la Mer—was so steep I felt like we were about to be plunged into the water, which had gone from being out there in the distance somewhere to suddenly right in front of us. We snaked our way down to water level, where neat homes with names like Summer Charm, Island Shelter and Little Swimmers lined either side of the town’s single street.
Notre-Dame-du-Portage became my happy place, too. We swam in a heated outdoor saltwater pool. We had the best pepperoni pizza I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot) a few doors down at Pizzeria des Battures. We ate burrata and oysters and scallop ceviche perched over the water at the inn’s restaurant. We walked on the beach, played at riverside playgrounds, and had soft-serve ice cream as the sun set. And we marvelled, all day, at the St. Lawrence—its brilliance, its mood swings, and above all, its immensity.
In fact, its size is still a source of confusion and conversation for my oldest, who is all of four years old. “Look, Mom,” he said this past July. “The sea!” His little pant legs were rolled up, and his blond hair was all crusty and windswept from the salty air. His tiny toes were digging into the muddy sand. He was so delighted, so enchanted. So confident. I hated to burst his bubble.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I said. “But it’s a river, remember?”
He was adamant it was not.
And I couldn’t blame him. North of Quebec City, the St. Lawrence really starts to widen, and where we were standing, the word “river” just didn’t cut it, regardless of what a map might have told us. The water in front of us was so vast and relentless. The sky was overcast, and fog had obliterated any sense of horizon, creating a seamless backdrop of grey. So I suggested we call it the fleuve, as in the Fleuve Saint-Laurent. He was appeased—fleuve it is.
Our debate was in keeping with the environment. After all, in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, everything is fleuve-focused. It’s a straightforward philosophy that’s literally signposted in Kamouraska, the region’s southernmost county, where 26 fleuve et détente signs—literally, “river and relaxation”—beckon travellers to kick back and just watch the water.
Over the years, we’ve followed the fleuve up and down Route 132, the scenic highway that runs parallel to the Trans-Canada. It’s taken us from roadside lobster poutine in La Pocatière to a glass of natural Quebec wine on the back patio at Côté Est in Kamouraska to the sunbathing seals and mudflats of Bic National Park to a Nordic shrimp roll served in a squid ink bun with an oyster-mushroom antipasto at the Cantine Côtière in Saint-Fabien. This year, we ended up in the fleuve, on Île Verte, a tiny island a few kilometres off the coast with 28 year-round inhabitants, one small seasonal restaurant and zero ATMs. We booked our motel (a simple five-unit establishment with views of the south shore of the St. Lawrence that’ll knock your socks off) by putting a $50 deposit cheque in the mail a few months ahead of time and crossing our fingers. It was magical.
Since that first summer, a layover in the Bas-Saint-Laurent has become a part of our trip to the East Coast. Now, it’s not a stop—it’s the destination. And we’ll keep coming back. After all, you can’t visit the same fleuve twice
