Snow sculptures return for 56th annual Festival du Voyageur

CBC

14-02-2025

The gates at Fort Gibraltar in St. Boniface open for the 56th annual Festival du Voyageur on Friday.
The festival embraces the winter, and celebrates the arts including music, dance and snow sculpting, with an emphasis on Francophone and Indigenous artists.
"On Feb. 17 we will be celebrating Louis Riel Day featuring an impressive lineup of Indigenous artists, and we'll have many activities going on in the park that day including the Louis Riel Day market," said Breanne Lavallée-Heckert, executive director of Festival du Voyageur.
The 10-day event is packed with activities, performances and contests. There's a pea soup competition where local restaurants battle to be crowned favourite pea soup in Manitoba.
There's also a fiddling contest, a jigging contest, sleigh rides on both weekends, an ice sculpting workshop, a wood carving demo, and on the festival's final day, the first 200 people to arrive at Whittier Park will be treated to a free pancake breakfast.
"This year we're also relaunching our school program in a revamped model after taking in feedback from teachers," Lavallée-Heckert said.
"We made some adjustments to our programming and we're so excited to be able to offer new programs this year."
Festival also introduced Fort Gibraltar live, a new virtual tour that offers programming to students regardless of where they're from in the province.
There are also several snow sculptures throughout the city that have been carved by artists.
David MacNair has been creating snow sculptures for 38 years, while his sculpting partner Gary Tessier has over 40 years of experience.
They're part of a team that's created eight of this year's sculptures, including one called Le Band, which is based on one of Tessier's drawings. It's located on the corner of Provencher Boulevard and Rue St. Joseph, and it took them over 45 hours to create.
The sculpture features a bass player, a trumpeter, a guitarist and a bongo player, as well as two singers on either end of the carved-up snow block, Tessier said.
"Festival is all about celebration, history and music, and this is sort of a funky way of celebrating that," he said.
The recent cold spell has also made it somewhat challenging to finalize the intricate details of some sculptures.
"You don't stand around a lot and sometimes you've gotta do a little jig. Keep your feet warm. You're really layered up well," MacNair said.
"The wind is a bit of a killer so sometimes you'll just go and work on the opposite side of the block out of the wind."
After last year's mild temperatures melted away plans to have traditional snow sculptures, Lavallée-Heckert is excited to have them back.
"It's really a community festival and we really are part of this environment, this ecosystem in Winnipeg. So getting to be able to share the joi through the snow sculptures all throughout the city is part of the job, and part of making sure that we get that spirit out to the community," she said.
Festival-goers can download the festival app to help them plan their visit. The fun starts Friday at 6 p.m.
WATCH | Long-time snow carvers helped create 8 sculptures for this year's Festival du Voyageur:
Snow-carving veterans show off their art at winter festival
2 hours ago
Duration 4:08
Big snow sculptures around Winnipeg are a reminder that Festival du Voyageur is here. David MacNair and Gary Tessier are part of a team that has created eight of this year's sculptures.