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© FriesenPress
The Real Places of Sneaky Hollow
You've been driving for what feels like the better part of a lifetime. Windows down, radio drifting in and out, the kind of afternoon where the road just keeps going and the GPS gave up somewhere back around Granby.
Then the valley opens up.
Broad, breathing, unhurried. Rolling hills that don't so much rise as lean into the sky. Lakes so still they look like someone forgot to turn off the mirror. Villages tucked into hollows like they've been there since before anyone thought to name them. And they have.
This is the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Les Cantons-de-l'Est. One of the most quietly extraordinary places on the planet — and most of the world has never heard of it.
The folks who live here like it that way.
Sneaky Hollow sits just off the beaten track — which is to say, just off the road you thought you knew, past the gravel road you were sure was familiar, somewhere between almost there and how did I end up here.
Many of the real places in The Sneaky Hollow Chronicles are drawn from this landscape — the mountains, the lakes, the abbeys, the back roads, the villages that time politely declined to update.
As Harold would say: "Easy to find. Just past the leaning church, left at the Sasquatch sculpture, right at the Tesla in the tree."
Earl would like you to know that Harold has never successfully found anything on the first try.
Welcome anyway. You're closer than you think.
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Lake Lovering
“Jamie Thompson. Ex-mechanic since yesterday. Pleased to meet you. I was headed for Lake Lovering,” Jamie said, looking around. “Got turned around in the whiteout. Ended up here. Sneaky Hollow, is it?”
Abbaye St. Benoit-du-lac and Owls Head
"Locals still called the top of the ridge Pope’s Hill, named for a long-vanished chapel and, depending on who you asked, either a tip of the hat to the Benedictine monks of St-Benoît-du-Lac over in Austin"
Georgeville
"Meanwhile, Harold, not to be outdone, dragged his trusty fireworks crate up to the summit of Pope’s Hill. "I’ve got a view clear to Georgeville, Mansonville, and beyond!” he shouted. “Cue the fireworks!”
"If 2025 couldn’t get off to a more raucous start, Armon Hopplepopper and his Accordion Polka All-Stars skidded into town. Originally snowed in at McGowan house, in Georgeville,"
Mt. Orford
"The Monteregian Hills rise like old molars out of a tired jaw, forgotten islands of a vanished sea. But just past Granby, the land starts to breathe again. Mont Sutton looms to the south, and to the east, Orford stands guard with its summit light blinking like a heartbeat in the night, steady and reassuring."
Mount Orford to the west, Owl’s Head to the south, and tucked right in between them, Sneaky Hollow, too small to appear on most maps, but somehow wide enough to contain the entire spectrum of human comedy now pouring into the café like a ravenous horde at a county fair buffet.
Magog
“This was their place,” he said softly. “Camperdown House stood down on the shores of the Memphremagog once, before the fires, before the paved roads. Paddle steamers would come up from Newport and Magog. Private railway cars would roll into the station in Magog.
The Massawippi Mining folks wanted to absorb Sneaky Hollow into some mega Township merger. Even threatened to merge us with Magog, God forbid.
Explore Sneaky Hollow
★★★★★
Lake Lovering
A serene, spring-fed lake nestled in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, edged by summer camps and summer homes. Mature hardwoods crowd down to the water's edge, creating the the kind of silence that makes city people forget their hurry. Generations of cottagers have returned summer after summer to its glassy morning water, where loons call across the mist and sunsets turn the whole surface to copper.
★★★★★
St-Benoît-du-Lac
A Benedictine abbey rising improbably from a forested shoreline of Lake Memphrémagog, its distinctive towers designed by Dom Bellot in a style somewhere between medieval fortress and fairy tale. Gregorian chant drifts through stone corridors, monks sell their world-famous cheeses and apple ice cider at the door, and even confirmed sceptics tend to leave speaking more quietly.
★★★★★
Georgeville
A pocket-sized loyalist village perched on the eastern shore of Lake Memphrémagog, where the white-steepled church, the heritage inn, and the general store seem to have struck a gentleman's agreement with the nineteenth century never to change. Wisteria climbs old stone walls, sailboats bob in the cove below, and the view across the lake to the Sutton range and the green mountains on the Vermont side stops hikers dead in their tracks.
★★★★★
Mont Orford
One of Quebec's most beloved four-season playgrounds, a rounded basalt summit rising 793 metres above the Townships with ski runs cutting through its hardwood forests in winter and blazing scarlet and gold come October. The surrounding provincial park shelters a golf course, hiking trails, a renowned arts centre, and lake-to-summit views that appear, repeatedly and without apology, on the covers of travel magazines.
★★★★★
Magog
A lively small city where Lake Memphrémagog meets the Magog River, with a revitalized waterfront promenade, year-round festivals, and a café-and-boutique main street that punches well above its population of twenty thousand. It serves as the natural gateway to Orford and the Townships trail network, balancing the energy of an old mill town with the unhurried ease of a lakeside community.