Granby

Granby owes almost everything to a music-loving, fountain-collecting mayor, Horace Boivin, who from 1939 to 1964 turned a rubber-and-tobacco town into the "princess of the Eastern Townships". His stroke of genius: founding a zoological garden in 1953 that became the Granby Zoo, today one of Canada's largest with 1,500 animals, the Amazoo water park and giraffes you can feed by hand. Lake Boivin, in the heart of town, draws birdwatchers onto its marsh boardwalks, while the Estriade — Quebec's first rail-trail bike path — runs to Waterloo between the Shefford and Brome hills. Every summer since 1969, the International Song Festival has launched French-language talent, from Lynda Lemay to Pierre Lapointe. Granby has no mountain and no great resort lake: it has something better, a density of family attractions that makes it the best-value day trip south of Montreal.