Canada's insider blog

Think camping is all about digging your mildewy tent and leaky air mattresses out of the back of the shed? Québec, with its hundreds of rated campgrounds, offers a roll call of innovative ready-to-camp options that supply almost everything you need. Most are open April to October, though some winter dogsledding trips feature a night in a tipi.

The Québec Aboriginal Tourism Corporation’s wilderness camping trips with First Nations also overnight in tipis. And in the Eastern Townships, your rustic riverside tipi is complete with an ice box, solar shower and water pump in the summer kitchen. 

SEPAQ, the creative overseers of Québec’s 22 provincial parks, offers a range of accommodations including canvas Huttopia and Hékipia prospector tents set on wooden platforms. Sleeping up to five, they have heating, two bedrooms with beds, a camp stove, fridge, living room and covered deck. Or you can simply walk into one of their tent-trailers set up and be ready to go for six people.

More exotic is yurt camping. Charming and rustic round canvas tents, they have a hardwood floor, windows and skylights. Just bring your sleeping bag. Or bed down Inuit style in an igloo that sleeps up to four. What’s in the books for the future? SEPAQ plans hut-to-hut trekking along the Saguenay Fjord with donkeys carrying the loads!