Montreal is Canada's most cosmopolitan city — Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Greek and several other communities all congregate to form not so much a city as a collection of linked villages. Hardly a week passes without a street festival — fireworks, music, jazz, arts, theatre, film, food and wine — and of course the French influence is enormous, so you are guaranteed a wonderful time. And each autumn the Botanical Gardens (second largest in the world after Kew) hosts the impressive Chinese lantern festival. It's a great city in which to spend a few days but for golfers the best courses are undoubtedly a couple of hours north, in the foothills of the Laurentians.

The Laurentians is what they call "cottage country" where half of Montreal owns a country cottage — or so it seems on Sunday evenings driving back into the city. Golf courses in this area come thick and fast but, weekends apart, you should have little trouble getting tee-times if you just turn up — there are literally scores of them as you move up towards Mont Tremblant — including the fabulous Royal Laurentien, a beautiful course designed and built by Gabriel Ménard. Having given up his job as a shopkeeper he bought a few hectares of land near a lake in 1986, decided he wanted a golf course so set about building one. Borrowing a bulldozer he and his daughters physically moved several hundred tons of earth to shape fairways, lay greens and dredge lakes and streams. One daughter, Isabelle, built the 18th on her own using the bulldozer — you can either thank her or curse her for a wonderful finishing hole, a magnificent par-5 that is just reachable in two for the really long hitter, but the final carry is over a pond and a stream, so you better have the right club — and be able to hit it! For a course designed by a "nobody" in golf architecture terms, it is truly magnificent.

Mont Tremblant is about two hours north of Montreal, a major ski resort in winter but in summer it caters for the golfer. Tremblant is a tourist village with dozens of restaurants, bars and plenty of hotel rooms to suit all budgets. Hiking, cycling, kayaking and swimming in the nearby lakes are highly popular in summer and in the winter cross-country and downhill skiing are the prime activities. Golfers of all standards will love the courses and if you want somewhere to stay the unpretentious Gray Rocks Hotel, which recently celebrated its centenary, is ideal. Sitting on a huge lake and surrounded by the most lavish gardens you will find this is a fabulous but very friendly hotel where you can get some very impressive rates. Five-course dinner (I have never managed to finish all five courses!) is included in the very reasonable rate.

And talking of five courses, Tremblant goes one better and has six — the main four being La Belle (the Beauty), La Bête (the Beast), Le Géant (the Giant) and Le Diable (the Devil): the other two being Le Maitre (the Master), a very good course owned by the highly professional Clublink organisation, and Le Manitou, a shorter course but enjoyable nonetheless. La Belle is perhaps the easiest, a gentle course running through parkland with a few climbs but easily walkable. A couple of the par-3s are awesome for the carry from the tee but you should be able to post a pretty good score here. La Bête is very different, running through massive rock formations and climbing high — you are likely to see deer and the occasional bear on the course. It's an awe-inspiring course that favours the careful golfer as well as the long hitter.

Le Diable is fairly flat with several water features but runs through massive woodlands so each hole is discrete. The autumn colours of the trees, should you visit at that time of year, are just amazing — not even the best painters could reproduce Nature's spectacular landscapes. Le Géant runs through an area that is having some expensive housing built — Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones have bought a house near here and Tremblant is now one of the hottest property developments for UK buyers. The course is one that needs a golf cart. And around are many villages well worth visiting, each with a handful of choice restaurants — certainly the francophone influence here assures you of a good meal.