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Celebrate at Manoir Hovey

Manoir Hovey is truly one of Canada's most charming and romantic inns where guests enjoy seclusion, luxury and delicious cuisine

By: Angela Cobban

Manoir Hovey, one of Canada's most charming historic resorts, is only 20 minutes' drive north of the USA border (I-91 to Vermont), and under two hours' east of Montreal, Quebec.

This Valentine's Day, Manoir Hovey - a Relais & Châteaux choice - is cleverly asking 'Why celebrate only on February 14th? We know we all have busy schedules, and so we are pleased to offer our very special Valentines' package on any night between February 6th and 16th, 2009!"

Stay for one night, in a double room, and you get a four-course Valentine's menu served in our romantic, candle-lit dining room overlooking Lake Massawippi, ending with a dessert flambéed tableside just for you. After that, a digestif (either Port, Banyuls or a specialty coffee) accompanies delicious post-dinner mignardises. Up in your room, you find heart-shaped chocolates placed on your pillow and rose petals sprinkled throughout the room as part of the night turndown service, and in the morning continental breakfast is delivered right to your door so you can linger in all morning.

WOW.travel did a reconnaissance trip, to find out what staying at Manoir Hovey is like. we particularly liked the two new Vista Suites, semi-detached, in a single-floor cabin 100 steps up from the main house, on the north-east banks of Lake Massawippi. They share seclusion, and a small private pool: both have multi-person outdoor hot tubs and barbecues. Oriole, is 1,200 sq ft, and has one bedroom. Heron, at 1,400 sq ft, has two spacious bedrooms and bathrooms, an enormous parlour and an even bigger covered terrace, with its own multi-person hot tub and barbecue. Stay in one of the bedrooms here and you look straight ahead to a real log-fire, with flat-screen television above. These are flanked by ceiling-high windows, giving a picture view down to the lake.

What a perfect way to spend a lazy Saturday morning, I thought, cruising gently on the soft waters of Lake Massawippi. It means deep water, and apparently it is some 500 feet deep in the middle of the lake, which is ten miles long, and a mile and a half wide at its maximum. All around wooded landscape comes right down to the water's edge, with few settlements to mar nature. Most of the surround is owned by just two families, the Bradleys and the Websters, and they do not want any spoiling. Much of their area is without power, so the few summer-only residences that dot the water's edge can be reached only by boat, and, once there, the owners use propane gas for power. To the east of the lake is North Hatley, a quaint little village with several good restaurants, and B&Bs (beds and breakfasts).

Manoir Hovey, which has been Relais & Châteaux since late 2007, is king of lodging in the area, and it is two miles from North Hatley. Jason Stafford, GM of the Manoir, is an excellent guide to what I see on that lazy cruise - he was brought up here, as first his grandparents and then his parents owned and ran Manoir Hovey. His parents' salmon-colored wood house, with white highlights, is pointed out, as is a nearby riverside house belongs to some in-laws. Everyone loves North Hatley so much that no-one wants to leave - and many want to come: Jason's wife is Sao Paulo-born food writer Alexandra Forbes, whom he met at boarding school, and now she runs her own operations, as well as looking after their daughter. Manoir Hovey had been built in 1898 as The Birches, a relaxing summer house for Henry Atkinson, owner of Georgia Power in Atlanta GA. It was later made into a hotel, named for Colonel Ebenezer Hovey, one of the area's first settles, a group of United Empire Loyalists, mostly farmers, who left New England in the years following the American Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The original long two-floor building has been extended, with one three-floor wing. It is meticulously painted white, with dark green highlights, and the gardens between it and the water are similarly exact, with not a flower out of place (and no-one ever heard the word 'weed' here). The gardens are different levels, with masses of private areas, some set with a couple of Manoir Hovey-signed hammocks, or pairs of Adirondacks seats for merely - oh so lazily - admiring that across-the-lake view. You have a tennis court, a fitness room, help-yourself bicycles (and helmets) and an oval heated outdoor pool. The leisure attendant has cold drinks to hand, with an array that includes pink splits of chilled Pommery. A few steps further down is one of the two beaches, with a wood pier stretching into the water. There are kayaks and pedal boats, complimentary to all guests - as are bicycles, and golf clinics.

This is year-round heaven, to be as relaxed or busy as you want. In Winter, when the lake is frozen over so that cars can drive across, activities include snowshoeing, skating, ice-fishing - and there are three superb ski ridges within 30 minutes' drive. You need that exercise as the price at Manoir Hovey - Valentine's special or not - always includes table d'hôte dinner, bed and breakfast, and dinner is, well, outstanding.

You have an allotted entry time, just like a theatrical performance. First you enter the bar, a bijou peach-coloured holding area that has a

bar fixture, with lots of glasses hanging overhead, in one corner. Then you are escorted into the main dining arena by the manage,. You pass not one but two superb selections of Quebec cheeses as you process, and a lady is at the grand piano some evenings. This main room is - thanks to Jason Stafford's special designer and close friend, John Hay, a former Hollywood set designer - a homage to William Morris, with sage and mustard floral wallpaper, and subtle sage and saffron chairs. Tables are set with lemon linens, white Bauscher china, and church-like white candles in tall pewter holders. The manager presents a sage leather-covered menu. There is a seven-course dégustation tasting menu, but you can opt for the four-course table d'hôte, which has plenty of choices.

I did not meet executive chef Roland Ménard but he is clearly a genius. Our amuse that night came on a long white china dish with a dollop of artichoke foam in its center, and little rows of baby chanterelles to either side. It looked perfection, exuded taste. The breadbasket had thin slices of good baguette, and marvelous whole-wheat or black olive-studded rolls, and the butter squares tasted really fresh. Our appetizer starters included a square of roasted foie gras on 'conifer' (baby broccoli heads), with morel and garlic crumbs and a dollop of surprisingly unsweet maple butter. Our main courses included light-as-air halibut, and a tranche of milk-fed veal with horseradish cream, celery and turnip dice, and lovage foam. Desserts included pasta-like parcels of fig with wild ginger sauce and noko infusion. We drank a Henry of Pelham Merlot 1999, from Niagara.

This is definitely dining for the food-mile conscious. As much of the produce as possible is farmed locally, and it tastes it too. Breakfast the following morning included more of those marvelous berries, and I swear the little open dishes of preserves must have been made on the spot (and was the butter churned nearby too?).

Manoir Hovey has 41 rooms, many of which have working fireplaces. The premium villa, Le Cartier - once the old house's icehouse - is a few minutes from the main house, with its own jetty. There are rooms in the main house and, up no less than 100 wood steps set into the near-vertical wooded hillside, the new suites (above) and another, older, pair. known as Treetops. We were in one of those, 47, which is next to the other Treetops lodging, 46: the only difference is that 46 has a side as well as a front porch, and 47's porch is all in front, looking out, just below the birch trees' tops, far down to the lake. It has an open cathedral ceiling, polished pale wood floors with a selection of oriental rugs, and a built in kitchenette in a closet. The bed dominates, the top of the mattress over three feet off the ground thanks to big mattress on top of big wood base raised high enough for a person to lie underneath it. The bed has open wrought iron posts. Rouched off-white net hangs down from the ceiling, past a supporting wooden ceiling pole and down to the wrought-iron, to loop around it and form a sexy 'four-poster'. The med has a cream quilt, and striped white Frette linens. The real-wood fireplace is laid and lit when the weather warrants it, and you can make coffee in your Nespresso machine.

You look out, to the left of the bed as well as in front of it, into these glorious trees. The walls of the statuesque bathroom, behind the bedroom, are also cleverly papered in an all-over birch tree pattern, which extends up into painted leaves on the ceiling. There is a freestanding oval whirlpool tub, and a glass-walled shower. Toiletries, as in the whole hotel, are Aveda. At night turndown, a pair of chocolates sits on a white Bauscher dish. Manoir Hovey's own CD, Mozart Church Sonatos volume 4 - CD 16, was playing on the Koss stereo-alarm.

In the morning nothing really seems to happen officially until eight but I was down in the main building by 7.15 (Treetops is the only unit that does not seem to receive any wireless signal at all). There were several other guests milling around, and coffee to-go was already popular. Breakfast is back in that lovely restaurant, which now has a cold buffet centerpiece. Juice is fresh, the stewed and other fruits are good, and the yogurt is mercifully unsweetened. Toast is brought already buttered, unless requested otherwise. An array of cooked dishes is offered. I return to the adjacent library, to get on the net again. I am surrounded by fresh flowers, a bowl of whole fruits, and the books, formed oh so long ago by Henry Atkinson (what was he doing, one wonders, with such tomes as Plain Mary Smith by Henry Wallace Phillips, published 1905).

Manoir Hovey, North Hatley, Canada
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