Spring’s first warm days jolt Québec into a season-long flurry of activity, amplified by a “We earned it” energy familiar to denizens of wintry places everywhere. The province’s Gallically chill aperitif hour — the cinq-à-sept — spills across sidewalks; frozen rivers pull back to reveal beaches; and pale human limbs unfurl like they’re photosynthetic.
And for Vermonters heading north, there’s plenty to explore this summer, spanning new urban hangouts and adventurous ways to get outside. In Montréal, social spas are reinventing the Québécois sauna scene, even as an Olympic Games semicentennial ushers in a long series of major sporting events.
Just north of the city, a newly designed network of gravel routes offers largely off-road pedaling through one of the planet’s oldest mountain ranges. And on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, a cultural center opening this summer explores Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) culture, as well as a community’s legacy of resistance.
Here is the best of what’s new in Québec right now — and how to make the most of the season.
Work Up a Sweat
Social saunas and spectator sports in Montréal
Québec Nordic spas have long been favorites among Vermonters willing to travel for a day of peaceful relaxation — but the steam scene has lately taken a convivial turn. Last September, the “thermal station” RECESS (217 rue Young, drop-in sessions from CA$35) opened in the city’s postindustrial Griffintown neighborhood, offering a stylish round sauna and cold plunges. You can leave your whispery spa voice at home; this one’s all about mingling. Club-like weekend nights feature DJ sets, and the nontraditional sauna shape arranges bathers in a conversational arc.
It’s the city’s first “social bathhouse,” a trend that’s appeared in North American cities from New York to Toronto in recent years, combining buzzy hot-and-cold contrast therapy with our post-pandemic yearning for offline connection. (Many such spots ask patrons to leave digital devices in the locker room.) Now, RECESS has company.
Last month, social spa JOY WellnessClub (2200 rue de la Montagne, single sessions CA$45) debuted in the Golden Square Mile neighborhood with daily guided sauna events. Even silent-spa standby Bota Bota (Old Port waterfront, spa access from CA$60) is starting “reconnection Thursdays,” for the first time allowing visitors to talk on the converted ferry moored on the St. Lawrence River.
Craft brew enthusiasts might opt instead for beer spa Bains Ninkasi (2120 rue de Bleury, from CA$79), which opened in December with its sauna, cold shower and two-person oak bathtubs where you can soak in an aromatic infusion of hops and herbs. It’s not as gimmicky as it might seem: Hop bathing has been a thing in central Europe since medieval times. Beer nerds will appreciate the selection of obscure cans and drafts paired with charcuterie boards featuring Québécois meats and cheeses.
Saunas aren’t the only places in Montréal celebrating sweat in 2026: 50 years ago, the city hosted the Summer Olympics, and now it’s marking the anniversary with a retrospective exhibit at the McCord Stewart Museum (690 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, adult admission CA$20) that runs through September 13. New tours of the Olympic Park (4545 avenue Pierre-De Coubertin, CA$23.50 for adults) let visitors peek behind the scenes (and into the locker rooms). Alternatively, you could toast the games at the new-in-December hangout Le Nadia — Guinguette Sportive (3213 rue Ontario Est, CA$14-17), named for virtuosic Olympic gymnast Nadia Comăneci. It’s dedicated entirely to women’s sports and screens games from around the world. Think of it as an extra-stylish sports bar, if sports bars were kid-friendly, inclusive and served housemade pumpkin soup.
The Olympic milestone comes in a sporty year: As this issue goes to print — and to the Québécois’ delirious, towel-waving joy — the Habs are still in the running for the Stanley Cup. In August, Montréal hosts the Canadian Open (qualifying matches from CA$15, finals from CA$225) men’s tennis tournament for the first time in over a decade. The UCI Road World Championships (free) in September will bring 1,000 professional road cyclists from more than 75 countries for races billed as Montréal’s biggest sporting event since the 1976 Olympics. After winning two World Championships in a row, Tadej Pogačar — perhaps the world’s second-most-famous Slovenian — will be going for a hat trick.
Celebrate Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Heritage
A cultural center in Kahnawake
Long-memoried Vermonters might know the Kanien’kehá:ka community of Kahnawake — on the south shore of the St. Lawrence just outside Montréal — for its role in 1990’s Oka Crisis, a 78-day standoff over a golf course planned on the site of an Indigenous burial ground. Two people died; the golf course wasn’t built.
Today, Kahnawake is home to Kahnawake Brewing (22 Route 138), the country’s first Native-owned brewery on First Nations land; the dimly cavernous casino Playground (1500 Route 138, playground.ca); and the 1720 St. Francis-Xavier Mission containing the National Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine (1 River Road) dedicated to the first Native American saint. (She’s the patron saint of traditional ecology.)
This summer will see the gradual opening of the Kanatahkwèn:ke Cultural Arts Center (6 Route 132), which will house a theater, a tourism office, and a museum exploring Kanien’kehá:ka culture, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Oka Crisis. It’s a major milestone in the community-led growth of tourism in Kahnawake, where the presence of outsiders has been historically sensitive. For additional perspective on Kahnawake culture, you can take a guided tour with a local or learn about the history of the Haudenosaunee game of lacrosse — known to the Kanien’kehá:ka as “the Creator’s game” — at the Kahnawà:ke Youth Center (kahnawaketourism.com/book-your-tour, tours from CA$8).
Dig the Dirt
Riding and running the Laurentians
New, multiday cycling routes have been proliferating in Québec lately, spanning the rugged Four by Four bikepacking tour of Saguenay and Charlevoix and the more leisurely, 67-mile La Doyenne des Vignes overnight through the Eastern Townships’ wine country. This spring saw the debut of Gravelle Laurentides, a nonprofit-led initiative that’s developed six routes — mostly dirt and gravel — winding through the Laurentian Mountains north of Montréal.
The flagship is the 158-mile loop La Grande Boréale, a ramble across Mont-Tremblant National Park with 63 percent dirt and 7,854 feet of climbing. (Vermont cyclists fresh off winter lulls will appreciate that even these storied mountains rack up mellower average elevation gains than the Greens.) Downloadable GPX maps detail every turn. The organizers — the same ones behind the Routes Blanches network of village-to-village ski trails — plan to update the maps with info on camping, accommodations and services as the season progresses.
This August also brings the first edition of an Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc World Series trail-running event: the Boréalys Mont-Tremblant. Courses start with the approachable 5.8-kilometer P’tite 5K and culminate in the 80-kilometer Odyssée that zips up and down a series of smaller summits before grunting over the top of 2,870-foot Pic White.
Go Wild
A new Eastern Townships cidery
Though the Eastern Townships that hug the international border are best known for vineyards, the region also has standout apple orchards. It was here that, in the 1990s, Québécois vintner Christian Barthomeuf invented ice cider — the super-concentrated sweet-tart elixir now also produced by a handful of Vermonters. This month brings the debut of Pomme Sauvage (327 chemin Hodgman, Cookshire-Eaton), a cidery producing drinks with wild and feral apples growing on-site. After sipping ciders in the tasting room, visitors can stroll a three-mile forest trail that winds through the property.
Located east of Sherbrooke, rural Cookshire-Eaton is admittedly a long haul from Vermont for an afternoon of cider tasting. But there’s plenty of reasons to stick around: Highlights include the tiny, hyperlocal restaurant Les Mal Aimés (429 Route 253, Cookshire-Eaton, multicourse tasting menus from CA$120) and the observatory at Mont-Mégantic International Dark-Sky Reserve to the east, which holds an annual festival for the Perseids meteor shower. This year is likely to bring a particularly fine showing, as the shower’s August 13 peak coincides with a sky-darkening new moon for the first time in years.
Get Thee to a Nunnery
Sister stories in Québec City
Housed in a gorgeously restored 1639 nunnery and run by a nonprofit since 2015, Le Monastère des Augustines (77 rue des Remparts, Québec City, from CA$204 a night) is an urban wellness retreat inspired by the Augustinian ethos of caregiving — all cultures, genders and religions welcome. It’s a quiet place, with silent daily breakfasts; some guests wear name tags indicating they’re staying contemplatively mum for the duration.
Fresh Digs
There are a handful of new places to stay in Québec, too, starting with the buzzy Montréal “immersive art hotel” SonoLux (225 rue Saint-Jacques, rooms from CA$348) that opened over the winter in a converted 1928 bank near the Old Port. The rooms, while comfortable and well appointed, aren’t the arty bit. Public spaces in the hotel feature digital installations (anyone can stop by to see them); the debut exhibition, “Seeds of R/evolution,” was curated by Cheryl Sim of the PHI Center, whose galleries are just a few blocks away. The lobby restaurant nurtures lofty aspirations but had a bloodless feel on a recent visit. Head instead to the hotel’s underground listening bar, Subterra, where you can join a largely local crowd for excellent cocktails, thoughtfully chosen vinyl and occasional live jazz.
This summer, the Mi’gmaq community of Gespeg is launching a traditional accommodations experience in Forillon National Park, at the Gaspé Peninsula’s eastern tip. Comprising five wigwams near Cap-Bon-Ami — a traditional site of Mi’gmaq sun ceremonies — Um’tgi Wapg is expected to ramp up operations over the course of the season. Keep an eye on the website for updates.
In the westerly Québec region of Outaouais, the O’Brien House — a federal heritage building constructed in 1930 with storybook stone architecture — reopens this month as 11-room boutique hotel Maison O’Brien (650 Lac-Meech Road, Chelsea, rooms from CA$208). It’s hard to beat the lakeside location within Gatineau Park, with its 120 miles of hiking trails, cycling and boating. It’s close to Ottawa and even closer to the cute cafés and massive Nordic spa of Old Chelsea.
The original print version of this article was headlined “New Up North | Fresh things to do in Québec this season range from convivial spas to cultural hubs”
This article is part of a travel series on Québec. The province’s destination marketing organization, Alliance de l’industrie touristique du Québec, under the Bonjour Québec brand, is a financial underwriter of the project but has no influence over story selection or content. Find the complete series plus travel tips at sevendaysvt.com/quebec.
This article appears in Summer Preview • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
