The facts
What LEAF is
LEAF is Canada’s certification body for environmentally accountable foodservice. It audits an establishment across its whole operation — sourcing, energy, water, waste, materials, innovation — and assigns a level from 1 to 3.
Level 3 is the highest, and it is rare. In 2019, only a handful of restaurants in the country had reached it.
For a house like ours, LEAF matters for one reason: a third party does the checking. The certification is public and can be looked up. It does not rest on what a restaurant says about itself.
2019 · Level 3
Maison Boire reached Level 3 in the summer of 2019.
Radio-Canada covered it in August, with a report on the Téléjournal Estrie. CBC followed at the end of the month. Its headline made the point neatly: dropping plastic straws was only the beginning.
At that point the house was two years old.
2020 · first in Canada
In March 2020, at the Restaurants Canada Show in Toronto, LEAF ranked Maison Boire first in the country.
We use that wording and no other. The verified fact is first place in the 2020 LEAF ranking — not "among the greenest", which says less than the truth, nor "Canada’s most eco-friendly restaurant" with no reference, which would say more.
What the audit looks at, and what we answered
Sourcing
Seventeen producers mapped with their distance from Granby. Sixteen are within 120 km; the median distance is 38 km. The only one beyond that radius is St. Lawrence sea salt at 468 km — a product that would otherwise come from France or the Himalayas. Everything else — herbs, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, honey — grows on the roof and in the yard.
→ See the 17 producers
Energy
All cooking is done over maple wood, at the chef’s counter, in front of guests. Heat from the grill is reclaimed to warm the rooftop garden and stretch the harvest at both ends of the summer.
Waste
Compost goes back to the beds. Wood ash regulates the pH of the gardens and goes into the house laundry soap. Paper and cardboard are remade on site. The kitchen works nose to tail and root to leaf.
Water
Rainwater is collected. Some of the fish we serve comes from a recirculating farm, Ferme Opercule, whose system uses 100 to 200 times less water than a traditional open-flow operation.
Materials
Tableware is thrown and glazed in the house pottery studio. Light fixtures and several service pieces are blown by Boutiverre from bottles salvaged from businesses across the region. Menus are bound in vegetable-tanned leather stitched in Sutton. Linen replaces paper, and it is washed with soap made from the fire’s own ashes.
What we have not solved yet
Full self-sufficiency is a stated goal, not a state we have reached. Brian Proulx said as much to CBC back in 2019: to aim for self-sufficiency and zero waste within a decade.
We are not there. Coffee does not grow here. Some seasons are shorter than the menu. And as he put it to HRImag after the Canadian ranking: change is slow to put in place.
We publish distances rather than round percentages, because distances can be checked.
Press coverage
- Ditching plastic straws was just the beginning for Quebec’s greenest restaurant — CBC News, August 31, 2019, by Spencer Van Dyk
- Un des restaurants les plus écolos du Canada est à Granby — Radio-Canada, August 21, 2019 (French)
- Television report, Téléjournal Estrie — Radio-Canada, (French)
- La Maison Boire, l’un des restos les plus verts au Canada — La Voix de l’Est, (French)
- Maison Boire de Granby nommé restaurant le plus vert au Canada — La Voix de l’Est, March 9, 2020 (French)
- Un resto de Granby nommé le plus écologique au Canada — Silo 57, March 15, 2020 (French)
- Maison Boire, le plus vert au Canada: "Les changements sont lents à instaurer" — HRImag, (French)
Come and see
The gardens are behind, the greenhouse at the back, the studio upstairs. By appointment, at the start of service, we show people around.