Magog and Lake Memphremagog

Lake Memphremagog runs south from Magog for nearly fifty kilometers, crossing the border into Vermont before it’s done, and there’s something I find quietly moving about a lake that simply ignores a national boundary the way this one does. Standing on Magog’s waterfront promenade, watching sailboats tack across water that becomes American water somewhere past the horizon, I thought about how arbitrary the border felt from here — the lake doesn’t know it’s supposed to belong to two countries, and neither, really, do the fish.

Magog itself is a proper lakeside resort town, built up along a wide pedestrian waterfront where Lia and I spent a very good hour doing nothing but eating ice cream and watching families launch paddleboards. Rue Principale climbs away from the water lined with the kind of shops and terraces that make a town easy to wander without purpose — exactly the mode we were in. The town has the resort polish of somewhere like Annecy, minus the crowds, minus the prices, plus a distinctly Quebecois ease about the whole thing.

The real reason we’d made the detour, though, was Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, the Benedictine abbey on the lake’s western shore about twenty minutes from Magog. Monks have lived there since 1912, and they support the abbey partly through cheesemaking — a blue cheese called Bleu Bénédictin and a soft-ripened Ermite that I’d been chasing across Quebec cheese counters for a year before finally buying it at the source. The abbey church holds Gregorian chant services open to visitors, and standing in that plain, luminous stone nave listening to monks sing while looking out at the lake through clear glass windows was one of the more unexpectedly affecting hours of the whole trip. Lia, who isn’t religious in any conventional sense, went quiet for a long time afterward.

We bought a wedge of the Ermite, a jar of the abbey’s cider, and drove back to Magog to eat both on a bench facing the water, which is about as good a way to spend a Townships afternoon as I can recommend.

When to go: July and August for the full waterfront scene and lake activities — swimming, sailing, paddleboarding. Late September through October for foliage on the hills ringing the lake, with Mont Orford as a dramatic backdrop. The abbey is worth visiting any season; check ahead for chant service times.