Pascal & The Pecan Tart

Meet Pascal.  Mayor of a village of one. Proprietor of a secret tea house even Google can’t find. Recluse with an open-door policy. Home for the performing arts for instruments he can’t play. And French pastry chef creating culinary magic in the woods of western Canada. 

    Pascal's elusive and reclusive ora checked every box on my list of interesting people in unusual places doing amazing things with food. I had to find him.

​Going on nothing more than a tip from a friend of a friend, of a friend, I tried to track him down. It was no easy task. People don’t slip away from the Pinot Noir and Coq Au Vin culinary Mecca of Burgundy France into the remote regions of Canada because they want to be found. Though I find if I explain I’m willing to ride a dirt bike for several days through blizzards, sub-zero temperatures, and across the rocky mountains at the tail end of winter just to try the pecan tart, they tend to leave a light on for me. 

    To get there, part of the verbal map he gave me read like this; “...turn left up the icy road for 6km, if you have side training wheels for your bike, you might need them, the road is pretty icy …once here, follow the path to my house. If you are lost, scream, and someone might come to help or have a candle and an emergency blanket for the cold cold night…”

    Luckily I arrived in the late afternoon and the road was more slush than ice and I ran into Pascal on the way in. He’d forgotten something for the dessert course of our dinner together back at his secret pastry lab at the bottom of the mountain.

    At the top, a snowy path through the trees leads back to reveal what I thought was going to be a shack in the woods. Instead was a hand-built Hobbits castle complete with a double glass door entrance depicting the name of his establishment on them. Go right you’ll find the outhouse. Go left you find a path to a treehouse with living quarters, a cedar sauna, and a massage room. Just up from there is a spot picked out for a future performing arts stage. 

    A village whose entire year-round population was formerly made up by Pascal, and he’s since added an eatery, multiple living quarters, sauna, massage room, and is in the works for a center for performing arts! I’ve seen entire municipal planning departments with 1000X budgets and less hope for the future. 

    Over a glass of wine near the log fire and right across from the piano he keeps just in case sometime stops in that can play. Pascal explains that he’d migrated to Canada from Burgundy France in 1995 hoping to find some of that great Canadian space he’d heard so much about. He’d landed in Vancouver and wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with wide open spaces.

Two years later, he’d moved to Ferguson. Two years after that he’d bought some land here. Now, almost 30 years later, he has the hobbits' castle I see before me, and the village population has exploded to four year-round residents. Two of those residents, a couple from Saskatchewan who had been looking for a place to live off-grid are joining us for dinner.

While the three of us chat over battery-powered led lights, Pascal disappears to whip up a three-course meal starting with baked prawns served in a decorative clam shell. Followed by a salmon entre and the stars of the show, a chocolate cheesecake, and my reason for coming, the pecan tart. Pascal serves us all three rounds in a subtle Le Chat Noir apron adorning a headlamp. 

The whole event is a culinary delight and after a night in the spare room falling asleep to the scent of cedar wood. I awoke to meet Pascal putting together a simple breakfast of black tea made from some melted snow that was strained to remove the pine needles and a chocolate brioche he’d made that was warming over the wood stove. 

In the summer months, he’s open on Sundays from 12-5 selling tea and his infamous pastries at the house. (That tea is made from a freshwater spring in the hills). You can come in, enjoy a treat, play the piano and see the chickens. As well, Pascal makes specialty chocolates and ice cream in nearby Trout Lake. To entice the fisherman to bring him food for his chickens, he has a spin-to-win wheel outside. If you bring your fish heads to him and buy ice cream, you can spin to win an additional free ice cream!

There is even the option to rent the treehouse or stay in the B&B room where I stayed. The catch, well, you're going to need to find him. Pascal enjoys guests, likes having people for tea, and loves making ice cream to sell. Though he’s afraid that if hoards of people start showing up just to take a selfie with the French Chef in the woods, the whole place might lose some of its charm. So just like me, you’ll need to find Pascaal and the trail to the Pecan Tarts.