Quebec: from €300,000Snowy winters, hot summers and a great exchange rate are drawing Irish buyers to invest all over Canada. Frances O'Rourkegoes on a whistlestop tour
IT LOOKS like a large field of snow, glistening in the bright winter sun, bordered by tall pines, a few buildings dotted here and there. But the field is not a field, it's Lac Supérieur, iced over like most Canadian lakes in the heart of winter, and its owner, Michel Beaulieu, a Quebecois ski director turned property developer, is animated as he gestures around his site on its shore, just 20 minutes' drive from Mont Tremblant, one of eastern Canada's most popular ski resort.
As in Ireland, the religious of Quebec had a sharp eye for scenic locations, and until a few years ago this was a place of retreat/holidays for priests, owned by the Fraternité Sacerdotale. Now Beaulieu is planning to build 100 luxury log cabins and townhouses here costing from around €300,000, each on about an acre: there will also be an ice-skating trail around the lake, a village centre with a petrol station, coffee shop and convenience store where visitors could meet locals, paths for cycling and walking, a clubhouse where owners can dine and drink, a children's club, and a spa/yoga camp/fitness centre. They'll be linked by eco-paths and trails - dubbed a "Green River" - and no unit will be more than a five-minute walk from the lakefront.
Fraternité-sur-Lac - like his first development nearby, Côte Nord, a year-round resort - will be pitched off plans at Irish buyers this week by UK agent Pure International, which is opening an office here at the end of the month. Beaulieu, a lively French Canadian who came to Dublin last October selling Côte Nord through Lisney, is confident he'll find buyers here because he's already learnt "that Irish people are renowned for wanting to get in first". (About half of Côte Nord buyers were English/Irish.)
He also believes there's a big market worldwide of people like himself, fit and vigorous baby boomers "with the same values and expectations of life", people who love outdoor activities and want to transmit that to their children. The properties will cost from €306,233-€846,270 (Cdn$475,000-$1.3 million).
Europeans, and Irish and English buyers in particular, have become enthusiastic investors in Canadian holiday developments in the past few years, sometimes to the surprise of Canadians. (Local Mont Tremblant real estate agent Jennifer McKeown linked up with Pure International recently after it found British/Irish buyers making their way to her office in the pretty original village of Mont Tremblant. Now there's an immigration lawyer in the office to advise people who want to relocate.)
The favourable rate of exchange between the euro/sterling and the Canadian dollar (€1 will buy Cdn$1.54) is a major draw - but so is the sheer size of Canada, where holiday homes often come with an acre or more of land around them, and the closeness to wilderness, even in the most sophisticated resorts. Wildlife - bear, deer - is never too far away. As I stroll around one scheme towards sunset, right on cue, some deer stroll not-too-shyly out of a nearby wood.
Beaulieu's are just two new developments amongst a number being developed in the Laurentians, a mountain resort area about one-and-a-half hour's drive from Montreal. The property boom in the area began after Canadian ski resort giant Intrawest bought the original Mont Tremblant resort - started by Philadelphia businessman Joe Ryan in 1939 - and massively redeveloped it.
Other new developments in the area around Mont Tremblant include Blueberry Lake, another lakeside scheme modelled by British/Canadian developer John Porritt on Humber Valley in Newfoundland, Pointe Heron and the more exclusive and expensive Lac Desmarais - a 1,000-acre site formerly owned by the Franciscans. (Residents here build on three to four-acre plots, jealously guarding their privacy.)
It's here that we run across two young English couples - one has just bought a plot for around €650,000 ($1 million) he plans to build on; his friends are thinking of doing the same. They're thirtysomething Londoners and keen skiers - but wouldn't it be easier to buy in Europe? "By the time you transfer from the airport to Davos, it could take you nearly as much time as flying from Heathrow to Montreal [five to six hours] and driving here ," says Paul Lawton. Looking around the quiet snowy fields, the lake below, Mont Tremblant in the distance, he adds "this is the perfect antidote to south-east England. And everyone here is relaxed and friendly, they're genuine - it's not like Europe, where it's all money money money."
Not of course that big money isn't an important part of what you could call the Tremblant Tiger. The rather Disneyish Quebecois/European-style ski village on the lower slopes of the mountain - where a one-bed condo now costs around €420,000 - is a bustling, attractive place of curved streets, open squares where entertainment is provided in summer, loads of coffee shops, restaurants, bars, lively nightlife, and a wide range of shopping opportunities that include minks for €3,800 (Cdn$6,000) and Prada sport jackets for €1,300 (Cdn$2,000).
The resort - soon to be extended - has given a dramatic boost to tourism in the Laurentians, and made developments like Fraternité and Blueberry Lake - both a complete contrast to the resort village, offering peace, even solitude - possible. It's also sent property prices locally soaring.
Michel Beaulieu, who was Tremblant's ski director for 12 years, is quick to acknowledge the opportunity it provided for him and his wife Danielle. Five years ago, he bought a 1940s inn, Auberge Caribou, 17kms away from the main resort and the land beside it, intending to develop just 10 holiday homes. That became Côte Nord, a development of 72 homes, of which just three remain for sale.
Danielle meanwhile ran the auberge, now a modern comfortable inn that's also the clubhouse of Côte Nord. It has an excellent restaurant: one of the pleasures of life in Quebec is the French attitude to good eating, and Auberge Caribou's chef Suzanne Boulianne, like Blueberry Lake's chef Jean-Michel Poitier, serves excellent sophisticated fare.
Summer and winter, there's lots to do in the area - it's not all about skiing, says Warren Spurr, general manager of Blueberry Lake, half-an-hour's drive from the main ski resort.
Winter sports include downhill and cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, dogsledding, skidooing, skating, even horseriding in the snow; in summer, there's canoeing, swimming, cycling, hiking, fishing and there are 15 good and inexpensive golf courses in the area.
If you hanker for the great outdoors, Canada's the place for you.
Getting there: via London to Montreal or direct to Toronto or New York, then to Montreal or possibly Mont Tremblant International Airport.
There are shuttle services from Montreal's Trudeau International airport to the Mont Tremblant resort, and shuttles between it and most developments, but hiring a car is likely to be necessary.
