Zigotours Quebec Winter Nature Camp - Lac Morgan and Montreal

The stay is an activity and discovery programme rather than a taught course: there are no lessons and no language levels. Days at the Lac Morgan outdoor centre are built around snow activities - snowmobiling, igloo building, snowshoe walks, dog-sled rides and tubing descents - together with hockey or broom-ball tournaments. Two meetings are fixed points of the programme: a trapper presents Quebec wildlife and forest survival, including a meal and a fire built on the snow, and a First Nations host shares his way of life and traditional knowledge. The closing part of the stay moves to Montreal.

The price covers the return flight from Paris with a stopover to Montreal, full board, accommodation, all supervision, transfers on the spot, the activities listed in the programme, and repatriation and personal accident insurance. Departure is from Paris; connecting travel from other French regions can be arranged upon request.

At the Lac Morgan outdoor centre the group has an exclusive chalet with rooms of five, showers and washrooms shared and located outside the rooms, a collective kitchen and a common room that doubles as an activity room. In Montreal the group sleeps in a city-centre hotel in rooms of four to fourteen beds, again with shared showers and washrooms. Rooms are multi-bed throughout and the camp is mixed.

Full board is included. At the base meals come from a Quebecois caterer and are reheated on site, and participants take part in some collective chores of the chalet such as washing up. In Montreal meals are taken in snack outlets. One meal during the stay is cooked outdoors on the snow during the meeting with the trapper.

Snowmobiling, igloo building, tubing descents on inflatable rings and mats, dog-sled and snowshoe outings, and hockey or broom-ball tournaments. The cultural side comes from the meeting with a First Nations host and with a trapper, who introduces forest survival and the wildlife of Quebec. In Montreal the group visits Mont-Royal, Old Montreal and the underground city, with free time. Evenings are campfires, Quebecois songs, games and a party.

The Lac Morgan outdoor centre provides the chalet used by the group, with a collective kitchen, a common room that doubles as an activity room, and shared showers and washrooms outside the bedrooms. The snow trails and activity areas used by the programme are at the centre itself; the surrounding forest and the frozen lake are the working space of the camp. In Montreal the group is housed in a city-centre hotel.

A short and intense winter stay for teenagers who want the Canadian winter rather than a city break. The group is small - Zigotours keeps one adult for every eight young people - and lives together in a single chalet deep in the forest, which makes the stay feel closer to an expedition than to a holiday club. The contrast is deliberate: snow, silence and wildlife at the base, then the scale and noise of Montreal at the end.