Chantal Dufour, Témiscouata ambassador

Rédaction

Nathalie Le Coz, shares with us his encounters with Lower Laurentians who have forged their own paths.

Lejeune. 62 km au sud de Trois-Pistoles, « de l’autre bord » du lac Témiscouata. À un jet de pierre de la frontière avec le Nouveau-Brunswick et pas bien loin du Maine. On prend un petit chemin à partir du village qui sillonne dans une campagne juchée sur un plateau.

At the top of the hill is an infinite landscape, made up of the long folds of the Notre-Dame Mountains, where the Appalachians die. Striking. Then comes the end of the road, to the right of which are fragrant gardens. A place where, in the movies, you’d finally drop your suitcase in search of a new life.

This is what Chantal Dufour did some thirty years ago. Settling here with her very young family, she became interested in herbalism to treat her “baby”, who was prone to all sorts of ailments.

Correspondence courses, soil amendment, readings and potion-making.

She succeeded!

On se soigne à travers les gens qu’on soigne

Apparently, the herbalist is somewhere between a healer, a perfumer and an aesthete. She relies on the energy of plants and their active principles, which she extracts by maceration to create her pharmacopoeia.

She knows that humans have always used plants to treat themselves, before decoding their chemical structure and imitating their molecules.

She tells us that hyssop was a great star in the Middle Ages for curing congestion, and that its light skunk scent makes it a star with today’s children.

She reminds us with aplomb that plants are powerful and that if this science wasn’t effective, we wouldn’t be talking about it today. Let’s face it: there are plenty of young people offering themselves as trainees at ViV-Herbes. They do so out of an interest in this ancestral way of treating oneself, before turning to pills when possible. In this respect, Chantal has developed products to combat pain, restore the nervous system, aid digestion, reduce coughing, strengthen the respiratory tract and the immune system, and much more.

A well-stocked boutique

In the boutique, Chantal presents her favorite products: Rosa body oil, which helps reduce anxiety; Flocon fleuri, a blend of organic maple flakes and edible flowers, delicious as an infusion; Sal Mensa, a salt flavored with ten plants for cooking; a bath salt colored with herbs, created for people intolerant to synthetic perfumes and dyes. And so on, from oils to ointments, from vinegars to powders.

Everything smells so good. In the drying room, you’ll be charmed by the mosaic of colors, a concentrated echo of the magnificence of the gardens. During the summer months, the herbalist cultivates, harvests, dries, processes, consults and teaches. And she welcomes us. The few moments of respite she allows herself, she knows how to use to escape. Here are a few of her favorites. Follow her!