Experience the best of Tadoussac

Tadoussac sits where the dark water of the Saguenay Fjord pours into the broad St Lawrence estuary, on a bay ringed by hills and spruce. French traders set up a post here in 1600, and the small wooden chapel built in the mid-1700s is often described as one of the oldest wooden churches in North America. Sand dunes rise behind the village, and a short ferry crosses the mouth of the fjord.

The waters off the village form the Saguenay–St Lawrence Marine Park, where belugas, minke whales and fin whales feed, and boats and shoreline lookouts such as Cap-de-Bon-Désir, along the coast to the north-east, make watching them easy. The fjord itself, a glacier-cut gorge with steep forested walls, can be explored by cruise ship or sea kayak.

Meals lean on Quebec staples such as pea soup and tourtière, a spiced meat pie, with blueberries from the Lac-Saint-Jean country and shrimp from the North Shore. The whales arrive in numbers from late spring, and the fjord walls blaze with colour in autumn.