Trigonelle, a biography 

I am elderly and charming.  I was born in 1920, built by Claude Forget, son of Alcide, founder of one of the oldest lumber mills in the Mont Tremblant region. The original Forget sawmill with its lovely aroma of freshly sawn wood was situated on the Ruisseau Français just across the street from me. The mill was relocated to St-Faustin-Lac-Carré about 10 km south of us several years ago. An intriguing inertia wheel is located at the bridge where many a fisherman can be seen in the summer hoping to catch brook trout.

Lumber and tourism have always been the mainstays of the Laurentians. Goods were shipped by rail on the Canadian Pacific Railway line known as the P'tit Train du Nord. Skiers headed "up north" by train from Montreal in the winter or enjoyed wilderness adventures in the summer. In 1995, I saw the rail bed converted to a 200 km bike path running from St-Jerome in the south to Mont Laurier in the north. My B&B accesses the P'tit Train du Nord directly from our driveway. In the winter cross-country skiers and snowshoers enjoy the terrain from St-Jerome to Val David and St-Faustin-Lac-Carré to Labelle. I am situated at km 80 from St-Jerome.

In my youth, Claude, his wife Bernadette and their 10 children certainly kept me going. A warm atmosphere permeates my beautiful walls of varnished hardwood which my owner, Suzanne, says makes it difficult to decorate me while keeping my authenticity. But I think she has succeeded quite well with the lovely Quebecois antiques she has been collecting for more than 40 years. I became a Bed and Breakfast in the summer of 1996, two years after Suzanne moved from Montreal to reside in me.

Everyone wants to know where my name originated. My owner, Suzanne Bernardin, her daughter Andrée Clément and their Labrador dog, Yeti, searched for an appropriate name for me. They wanted a name that would indicate that three collaborators lived here but there was already a B&B called The Three Maples, and Trio would have been too short. So it was Mr. Larousse, the dictionary, who came up with Trigonelle, which is the French name for Fenugreek, (Trigonellum fœnum graecum) a trefoil with a little yellow flower similar to a wild flower growing in the garden.

Speaking of my garden, Suzanne loves gardening and with what time allows, she has succeeded in planting many beautiful flowers, some vegetables, herbs and fruit which she transforms into jams, chutneys, aromatic vinegars and desserts for our guests and members of her family.

Her daughter Andrée is a cabinetmaker and she converted my garage into a workshop where she creates made-to-measure furniture. Suzanne started using a corner of the workshop to try her hand at making twig furniture with the willows that grow in the forest in the back yard. She made a lovely loveseat along with cement flagstones for the pergola, which she built to celebrate her 60th birthday.

When she has time for herself (not often enough) she is an enthusiastic cyclist (she has cycled in Europe, southern Quebec and the Eastern United States), enjoys cross-country skiing, handicrafts, reading, tai chi and watching home renovation shows on TV. She would like to play more golf since her son Shawn, a Class A professional, director of the Golf Learning Academy in Richmond Hill, Ontario, made her a set of clubs, which seem to play more often that she does. Her challenge once she decides to retire will be to get into the swing of things on the golf links – but I don’t know when that will happen and I don’t think she does either!