09/02/2026
Any Louise Penny fans out there? (If not, you should be!) She’s the acclaimed author of the highly popular Inspector Gamache mystery series of books, which takes place in the tiny fictitious village of Three Pines — in the Canadian Province of Quebec, just north of the Vermont border.
This past weekend, we visited Three Pines, which is actually the real town of Lac-Brome (Knowlton), Quebec. We flew in and out of Burlington, Vermont, so we had a couple of days of all things maple, in between driving north into Canada to visit the little villages known as the Eastern Townships. Oh, those maple creemees in Vermont and the poutine in Canada! It was also nice for both of us to put our three years of High School French to a bit of use!
We started with a guided tour of Knowlton, where Louise lives. Over the next two days, we visited five different little towns and saw many of the specific places that have inspired locations in her books. We also visited the Abbaye de Saint-Benoit-du-Lac (a murder took place in an Abbey in one of the books) and heard the monks doing Gregorian Chants during their morning mass. And we bought Cidre, cheese, and chocolate-covered fresh blueberries, made at the Abbey by the monks.
Finally, we spent a lot of time in Brome Lake Books in Knowlton, and in their Three Pines Cafe, which was designed and decorated by Louise. It’s now our favorite bookshop cafe we’ve ever visited.
If you haven’t discovered author Louise Penny and her Inspector Gamache series…there’s no better time to begin!
