The Best Nordic Spas & Baths in Canada

The Nordic circuit

Canada's contribution to bathing is the Nordic spa, and most of the well-known ones are in Quebec. The idea is a circuit done outdoors in every season: ten or fifteen minutes in a sauna, steam room or hot pool, a short cold plunge, then rest by a fire or in a heated room, and round again. In winter guests walk between the stations through snow in a bathrobe.

Silence

Silence is part of the product. At Scandinave in Mont-Tremblant and Whistler, phones stay in the locker and staff ask guests who talk to stop. La Source in Rawdon does the same on a forested hillside, with a natural cold spring and a trail of hammocks. Strøm, which has several sites, divides its grounds into quiet zones and whisper zones.

Rivers and lakes

Where there is natural water, it becomes the cold plunge. At Mont-Tremblant it is the Diable River. Balnea in Bromont has a dock on Lake Gale. Strøm in Old Quebec faces the St. Lawrence, where ice drifts past the infinity pool in winter.

Nordik in Chelsea

Nordik Spa-Nature in Chelsea, across the river from Ottawa, is the largest of the group and less strict: it separates silent areas from social ones and runs a schedule of Aufguss rituals in the German manner, with a salt-water floating pool called Källa.