One Way shut down for a week and took the whole team to a chalet in Papineauville. Here's what happened, and why more agencies should do it too.
Once a year, One Way closes its Montreal office, packs seven bedrooms' worth of luggage, and disappears into the Outaouais for a week. No client calls, no editing suites, no open floor plan, just the whole team, a chalet, and a full week to figure out where the agency is actually headed. This year's edition just wrapped, and it might be the most important thing we did all quarter.
For five days, from Monday to Friday, every member of One Way's internal team gathered at a chalet in Papineauville, in the Outaouais region of Quebec, sleeping more than sixteen guests across seven bedrooms. Officially, it was our Q1 retreat: a structured week of retrospective, strategy, and planning for the year ahead. Unofficially, it was the best argument we've seen in a while for why agencies should stop treating "team culture" as a line item and start treating it as infrastructure.
The place: a chalet built for exactly this
The team settled into Le Rocher des Brises, a large riverfront chalet in Papineauville, a small municipality in the Outaouais roughly an hour and a half from both Montreal and Ottawa, chosen specifically because it could hold the whole agency under one roof. Seven bedrooms, room for sixteen-plus guests, a dock, a hot tub, and enough shared living space that nobody had to retreat to their room to get a moment of quiet, though most people didn't want one. If you're an agency or a company scouting the Outaouais for your own version of this week, this is exactly the kind of property to look for: big enough for the whole team, remote enough to actually disconnect, and close enough that nobody loses a full day to travel.
Who made the trip
Every member of One Way's internal team was there, including two brand-new additions officially joining the adventure this year: Alexis Djoboulian, who just wrapped a three-month internship at the agency and now steps in as Marketing Coordinator, and Emma Rozenblum, brand new to One Way and attending her very first week on the job, exactly the kind of immersion you want before understanding an agency's vision and mission from the inside. A few outside guests and consultants also joined parts of the week, adding perspective from beyond the agency's own walls.
What a week like this actually looks like
The backbone of the week was a genuine, honest retrospective: the whole team sitting down together to go through the year that just ended, the good decisions, the ones that missed, the opportunities still on the table, and the threats worth watching, followed by mapping out a shared vision for the year ahead. It's the kind of conversation that's nearly impossible to have properly over Slack or in a 45-minute meeting squeezed between client calls. Give it a full week in a shared space, and it becomes something closer to real strategic alignment than a status update.
But a retreat that's only meetings is just an off-site with better views, and that's not what this was. The Q1 week was deliberately built around big-picture team sessions and the kind of shared, unstructured moments that never happen on a normal Tuesday at the office: watching Occupation Double together as a group, gathering around an evening campfire complete with fireworks, kayaking on the water, playing chess down by the dock, running a team version of the cooking-competition format Un souper presque parfait, unwinding in the hot tub, playing guitar under the stars, and simply laughing about things that had nothing to do with work.
Stevens Dorcelus, One Way's President, shared his own look back at the week on Instagram, a good sense of the energy on the ground beyond the photos above.
Five values, lived out loud
A big part of the week was revisiting the five words that define how One Way actually behaves day to day, not as a poster on a wall, but as a working standard: Créativité (proposing the different idea, even when shipping the obvious one would be faster), Performance (delivering what was promised, without it becoming cold or mechanical), Excellence (the extra detail that makes a client feel like the mandate was exceeded, not just completed), Rêve (staying ambitious while running a business that also has to stay profitable), and Famille (telling each other the truth, honestly, not just kindly). Five words, one shorthand the whole team now shares.
Why this matters more than it looks like it does
It would be easy to write this off as a nice perk, a few days off in a pretty chalet. But the return on a week like this shows up in ways that are hard to fake: people who understand not just their own role but what the department next to them is actually dealing with, a team that's more motivated because they understand the real numbers behind the business, not just their slice of it, and a shared sense of where the agency's opportunities and threats actually sit, instead of everyone guessing from their own corner of the office.
The data backs up the instinct. According to Forbes' reporting on the corporate retreat industry, now valued at roughly $73.7 billion USD globally, the shift to hybrid and remote work hasn't killed the need for teams to gather in person, it's made those gatherings more valuable, not less. Companies are learning what One Way already believed going in: alignment, trust, and retention aren't built over video calls. They're built around a table, or in this case, a dock.
A turning point, officially
This new year officially marks a turning point for One Way, in new brand partnerships, in talent, in video production, and in the agency itself. None of that gets built in a Monday standup. It gets built in weeks like this one, where the whole team sits with the same information, the same honest feedback, and the same room, long enough to actually agree on where they're headed next.
Frequently asked questions
What is a corporate team retreat and why do companies organize them?+
A corporate team retreat is a period, usually several days, where a company brings its team together away from the office to combine strategic work (planning, retrospectives) with shared, informal experiences. The goal is alignment and trust that's hard to build through daily digital communication alone.
Why do marketing and creative agencies specifically benefit from team retreats?+
Agencies run on collaboration between very different roles, creative, production, business development, marketing, often working in silos day to day. A retreat gives everyone visibility into what other departments actually deal with, which tends to translate directly into smoother collaboration once everyone's back at the office.
Where did One Way's 2026 Q1 team retreat take place?+
One Way's internal team spent a full week at a chalet in Papineauville, in Quebec's Outaouais region, sleeping more than sixteen guests across seven bedrooms.
How does team bonding actually improve an agency's performance?+
Beyond morale, shared experiences build the trust that makes people speak up honestly in strategic conversations, understand the reasoning behind decisions made by other departments, and stay aligned on a common vision, all things that show up later in how smoothly a team executes.
What is the best time of year for a company retreat in Quebec's Outaouais region?+
Early autumn, like this retreat's September timing, offers mild days for outdoor activities (kayaking, campfires) and cooler evenings that make a hot tub or a fire pit genuinely appealing, without yet needing winter gear.
The bigger picture
Strip away the campfire and the kayaks, and the real story here is simple: the agencies that will win the next few years aren't just the ones with the sharpest pitch decks, they're the ones whose teams actually understand each other, trust each other, and pull toward the same vision. One Way spent a week in Papineauville making sure of exactly that. If your own team hasn't had that kind of week in a while, this is your sign.
For more on how One Way builds its team and its talent roster, or to see the kind of work this alignment produces, read more about the growth we've helped drive for the creators we work with. New chapter, same table.
