This book invites you to curl up beside the fire and journey to a time when Montrealers skied down Peel Street and the Laurentians were “the wild west” of Quebec.

For two expatriate Torontonians, Neil and Catharine McKenty, this journey begins at the Laurentians Lodge Club in Shawbridge, now Prévost.  There we meet skiing legends like “Jackrabbit” Johannsen, Harry Pangman and Barbara Kemp.  With them we discover the perils of “Foster’s Folly”, the world’s first ski tow, we climb Mont Tremblant in the Thirties and we ride the ski trains with their smells of wax, orange peels and cigar smoke.

And we also meet those earlier legends, the large-than-life Curé Labelle, and the tragic Viscount D’Ivry who lived in a magnificent chateau on the shores of Lac-Manitou. This is also the story of how the Laurentians helped Montrealers weather two World Wars and the Depression. It’s a great story and the authors have told it well.

Neil McKenty is an award-winning author and a former broadcaster with CJAD radio and CFCF-television where “the lines were always blazing”.  Besides cross-country skiing, he enjoys golf, walking the streets of Montreal and reading Disk Francis.  His wife, Catharine, was a research editor at Pace magazine in Los Angeles; a government speech-writer at Queen’s Park, Toronto; a researcher at the Reader’s Digest, Montreal.  She enjoys friends, eating out on St-Denis Street and racing Neil on skis.  This is their first bool together.

Price-Pattersin Ltd.

Canadian Publishers, Montreal, Canada

ISBN 1-896881-21-1