Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture

Cliffside and Close to the Slopes, This Quebec Mansion is a Winter Wonder

Chase McPeak
By

Perched on a forested and rocky mountainside in the Canadian Province of Quebec, this 2013 construction (known in French as “Résidence des Grands Jardins”) from Bourgeois Lechasseur architects is a bona fide winter wonder. Affording expansive views of the St. Lawrence River and siting in close proximity to the formidable ski runs of Le Massif de Charlevoix (Charlevoix Mountain) resort, the Quebec Mansion acts as the perfect canvas for its art-aficionado owners’ collection of paintings and photography.

The house’s steep-sloped location offered the perfect opportunity for Bourgois Lechasseur to design the home with two very different facades. The side of the building facing the road only exposes the upper-most level of the three-level residence, making the house appear to be much more modest than it really is. Cascading down the hill on the opposite side, the two lower levels can only be seen from the back of the home, where the overhanging top level and its expansive wall of glass caps off the pristine white exterior of the floors below. During winter, the warm wood of the buildings trimming reflects the colors of the surrounding forest while the white walls firmly anchor the building in its snowy, Canadian environment.

In the interior, an industrial flair featuring raw concrete floors, brutalist fireplaces, and clean lines and sharp angles in every direction is fit for a bestselling Nordic novelist. Inspired by contemporary Scandinavian villas, the residence’s open floor plan leaves room for the breaktaking views to pour in from all directions. The red-cedar wood ceilings provide just enough weight to the rooms to prevent you from feeling like the house could alight at any moment, which, when we think about it, we wouldn’t say no to.

Recommended Videos

But best of all? It’s not just a winter wonder, it can hold its own in summer too with a large, rectangular pool and outdoor eating area with those same spectacular views. Something tells me the people who own this house have a lot of midsummer barbecues.

And if this isn’t quite your winter style, check out this Swiss xhalet.

Topics
Chase McPeak
Chase McPeak
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Chase McPeak is the former Lifestyle Editor. Chase regularly appeared on Beards, Booze, and Bacon: The Manual Podcast where…
How long should you let new cigars rest in a humidor?
Cigar humidor

Looking at those beautiful, oily cigars you've just unboxed or unwrapped, the calling to light up is real. I get it. I always want to smoke my cigars right away, too. But you shouldn't. Mail day is always exciting after you've ordered a slew of new cigars. When they arrive, the real fun begins. You'll probably need to organize your humidor to make the new sticks fit or arrange them for optimal humidification. As you're handling them, it's difficult to resist the temptation to crack open the cellophane or boxes and smoke one right away. While you can do that in most cases, I would recommend against it. Depending on where those cigars came from, where you live, and how they traveled, they might need a little time to rest in a humidor. They'll need to replenish some humidity and moisture or dry out a little.
How long should you let your new cigars rest?

When you put cigars in a humidor, especially one that's filled, they'll soak up and release humidity over time until they reach the average RH (relative humidity) that you have set inside your humidor. If you have a device like a that does this automatically, it will produce moisture and humidity to keep the levels optimal. You can also achieve the same thing with in smaller humidors, which release and soak up the humidity to match the levels on the label. Boveda packs come in a range of RH levels, from the low to mid-60s to the mid-70s.

Read more
The 11 best Kevin Costner movies, ranked
He has a full resume of films, but if you're a Costner fan, then you must see these movies
Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves

An all-American, blue-collar working man turned Hollywood essential, Kevin Costner has lived a life full of experience and dreams that some can only imagine. Starting out as a small kid -- 5'2" at high school graduation -- who moved around a lot, Costner was fond of things like poetry, writing, and singing in his Baptist choir. Outside of the arts, he was also very interested in sports of all kinds, which is reflected in his film career to this day. Also a man of the outdoors, Costner built his own canoe at 18 and paddled it through sections where Lewis and Clark ventured. Fun facts aside, Costner had a full and interesting life before the world got to know him as the charming and eloquent movie man we know him to be today.
From his past life, accomplishments, and hobbies, Costner was fully prepared to write, direct, and act for the screen as he fulfilled yet another lifelong dream. A man who was once called "The King of the Sports Movie," Costner has been able to act in films of a subject matter near and dear to his heart that became the films he is best known for. And that doesn’t include his many other successful movies having to do with politics, crime, and romance that also make for some of his best roles. Luckily, we’re here to talk about all of those films at once as we celebrate the man who has accomplished more in one lifetime than some could in many. Here are the best Kevin Costner movies of all time.

11. Open Range (2003)

Read more
The best Quentin Tarantino movies, ranked – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and more
If you haven't seen these films at least one time, you need to ... and then watch them again and again
Scene from Pulp Fiction, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson

Of all the contemporary film auteurs, perhaps no one’s work has permeated pop culture as thoroughly as Quentin Tarantino's. This director’s hyper-stylized, retro fantasy worlds have come to define cinematic coolness. His clever mashups of genres, exquisite sense of aesthetics, impeccable editing, uproarious suspensefulness, and impossibly quippy dialogue have been endlessly imitated.
Given the current political landscape, Tarantino’s work has undergone a serious critical re-evaluation from Black and feminist critics and scholars who point toward both his allegedly abusive behaviors and the offensive politics and rhetoric of his films. It’s true that in this new light, for many, there may be nothing redeemable about his entire oeuvre. 
However, to discard all Quentin Tarantino movies would discount the impossible talent of his frequent collaborators and stars, such as Sally Menke (who edited all of Tarantino’s movies until her death in 2010), Uma Thurman (who not only played the protagonist of Tarantino’s most iconic movies but was also credited as a co-writer on Kill Bill), Samuel L. Jackson (a frequent Tarantino star), and many more.
With that in mind, here’s our (subjective!) ranking of the greatest directed Quentin Tarantino movies of all time.

9. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Read more