A Winter Land

Hawkesbury,a small town,unrolls past the window,so beautiful that it is almost a cliche,with its neat streets and cerulean river. The houses are clocks,stained by time,a patina of age on the wood marking the seasons.

On the highway,you see signs Warning Deer Crossing progressing to elk and moose,a reminder that another,hidden way of life exists.

The immense workings of the earth are visible,a landscape stretched taut over time. These rocks are amongst the oldest on earth,forming the Laurentian Shield,which rose to the surface from the super-heated core of the planet more than two billion years ago. The landscape is bucolic,and belies no sign of its violent birth. Wind vanes spin,metal cows and roosters awhirl in the summer breeze.

We finally get to the village of Montebello. The houses are built close to the road,to avoid digging long paths when it snows. You get a sense that life here is adapted for the cold,of winters lived through and this the summer will pass. To the people here,after the winter is before the next winter.

Montebello was once on the rail grid,thanks to a spur line from the main Ottawa-Montreal route. The railways have receded but like prehistoric beasts,leaving behind their fossils. The former train station has now been converted into an artisanal chocolate restaurant called Chocomotive. The former waiting hall is now the main seating area. Tourists driving past often drop by,no doubt to pacify their shrieking children. Its rainy and quiet,I take a seat. A pleasant hour passes,leafing a huge stack of Tintins while sipping hot chocolate. A jukebox plays 60s rocknroll hits.

The rotund chef genially explains that the workers,who are all women,hail from the village and started off as customers. His first hire was a woman who had just gone through a painful divorce,got laid off and used to come to eat chocolate as a stress-buster. He offered her a job employment and free chocolate and Chocomotive got its first employee.

Outside the village is Parc Omega,a drive-through safari park. The gift shop is filled with stuffed toys,including giant plush moose. We pick up packets of frozen carrots,apparently they are like crack cocaine to the animals within. A bag of sausage is for the masahari denizens like arctic foxes and coyotes.

Unlike zoos,Parc Omega is emphatically all about feeding the animals. As soon as we approach the enclosure,various forms of deer elk,wapiti jam their snouts through the windows. Carrots disappear at a prodigious rate. Small fights break out amongst the clamouring hoofed beasts.

We wend our way through the park passing a herd of bisons who are too stately to scrounge around for handouts. The guide,appropriately called Eve,points out a lone wolf alone in his huge enclosure. The park had tried several arranged marriages bringing in female wolves but the wolf turned out to be a chronic bachelor,driving the prospective brides away.

The sight of the Chateau Montebello takes your breath away. It is the largest log structure in the world with six spokes radiating out of an enormous hexagonal central rotunda. The structure echoes the panopticon as proposed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham,familiar to us as the layout of the Cellular Jail.

It was built for the Seigniory Club,a gathering of high-ranking executives and business leaders in 1930. More than 10,000 logs of the finest red cedarwood,every single one cut and set by hand,were sent by rail from British Columbia. The rail line was specially laid thanks to one of the club members who was the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Architect Victor Nymark drew on the Scandinavian log cabins of his native Finland for the exteriors. But why would Benthams idea,which was to constantly monitor prisoners,be applied to a resort? Upon entering,the mystery resolves itself,instead of a watchtower at the centre is a vast six-sided fireplace of staggering dimensions,stretching nearly 70 feet high,all the way to the roof. The general aspect is that of a retirement home for Bond villains.

A golden retriever waddles towards me at the reception desk. He is called Monte and operates out of a kennel in the atrium. Monte worked as an eye dog before making the shift into hospitality. His job is to accompany guests on walks around the chateau. Sensing my disinterest,the temperature already is too cold for desis to function properly,he sniffs morosely and waddles back.

Later,we walk around the grounds,and go down to the riverfront. Nearby is an Olympic-sized pool,connected by a tunnel to the main building.

There are odd resonances of history the site of the hotel was originally owned by the French East India company,harking back to when Canada was still Nouvelle France.

It then passed to the seigneury of the Papineau family whose own chateau is nearby. The seigneurial system was introduced by Cardinal Richeliu in the 1600s. In principle,the king owned the land,but his vassals,the seigneurs would collect the rent. It was no coincidence that the chateau started as a project by the Seigniory Club,which hoped to bring back that gilded age.

I stop by for a quick dinner at the riverfront restaurant. The food is mostly from local produce,environment-friendly and promoting the village economy. The inhabitants of the village call the Ottawa River their refrigerator,as they get everything they want from her whether it is water or fish or a means of transport. The waiter proudly recommends a local wine,a triomphe cabernet merlot from the Niagara-on-the-Lake wine-growing region.

The manager tells us that the surrounding forest is best viewed in Fall when the autumnal russets light up the trees. During summer,visitors simply boat down the river,tie their vessels and have lunch and continue on their way.

The hotel still bears a faint tinge of its past. As a condition of sale,the hotel chain,which owns the chateau now,had to employ the old club stewards and waiters. The traditions of the English club,a generation which ruled the world,on whom the sun would never set,still live on in small ways.

I am unable to sleep because of the jet lag. I prowl about the silent hotel. The boards creak and shift.

The house is alive,restless. Dreaming of starlit nights,of northern lights,of the forest it once was.