Club de Golf de Grand-Mère

Few courses in Quebec carry the political weight of Club de Golf de Grand-Mère. The club became briefly notorious in the late 1990s when it sat at the center of the so-called "Shawinigate" affair — a controversy involving then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, a disputed stake in the property, and allegations of improper government loans to a neighboring hotel. The political storm overshadowed what is, at its heart, a proud small-city club with deep roots in the Maurice region.

Grand-Mère sits in the industrial heartland of the Mauricie, where the St-Maurice River carved the landscape that powered Quebec's pulp-and-paper economy for generations. The surrounding terrain is classic Canadian Shield — granite outcroppings, mixed boreal forest of birch and fir, and the kind of rugged, uneven ground that gives older Quebec parkland courses their particular character. Seasons here are dramatic: a short, intense summer followed by a swift autumn that turns the tree-lined fairways vivid before the course closes for a long winter.

For visiting golfers, Grand-Mère offers something genuinely unusual: a community course made briefly famous by national politics, now returned to its quiet regional life, a short drive from Shawinigan's revitalized waterfront and the wilds of Mauricie National Park.