For the Love of Winter: Carnival Time in Québec City

It was a brisk, cold day on the St. Lawrence River, with the current fighting the tide.  The Great Lakes were trying to get out, while the distant Atlantic Ocean was trying to get in.  And at this historic narrowing point of the great waterway, more than forty five-person canoe-racing teams were struggling across a mile-wide channel that had the consistency of lemon ice left in the freezer too long. 

I was in Québec City, standing at the edge of a seawall hemming the mouth of the Louise Basin, a protected inlet of the St. Lawrence that serves as a harbor adjacent to a shipping and industrial area just northeast of the city proper.  Today, though, the basin's workaday character was eclipsed by an atmosphere of sporting excitement, as Québec turned out to watch its bizarre muscle-powered regatta-in-an-icebox.  This was the canoe race of the Québec Winter Carnival, an event requiring teams to cross the half-frozen river in dorylike fiberglass boats that they propelled partly by rowing, and partly by scurrying, one leg in and one leg out, across moving packs of ice. 

But for all the manic intensity with which they plowed across the mighty St. Lawrence, the canoe race contestants were only part of the fascination of this most spectacular of Winter Carnival events. To fully appreciate the occasion, it was necessary to lift your gaze from the teams paddling out towards the ice from their starting point on the basin and take the measure of the crowds that lined the harbor walls.  Hundreds of Québeckers had turned out to watch the race, despite temperatures barely climbing out of the single digits, and a smart wind that snapped the fleur-di-lis flags above the basin's mouth.  The cheering locals - many of whom had also made it to the race tryouts a few days earlier, when teams shoved their canoes along snow-packed rue St-Joseph in time trials that determined starting places - were as absorbed in the event as any Louisville crowd at the Kentucky Derby.  But for sheer involvement, they probably had the Derby fans beat cold (literally, in this case).  After all, many of the watchers knew more than a few of the racers, who manned (and womanned) boats emblazoned with the names of sponsors ranging from the legendary hotel Chateau Frontenac to local banks, realtors, and pizza parlors.

There are carnivals and festivals all over the world, too many of them built around ... well, built around contrived excuses to have carnivals and festivals.  All too often, these events are cobbled together more as a tourist draw than as an outlet for native exuberance.  But the Quebec Winter Carnival is different.  It's a celebration of nothing less than winter itself, conjured up not by a chamber of commerce but out of the joie-de-vivre of a population famous for its damn-the-thermometer attitude towards its most daunting and assertive season.  One of the first things you notice about Winter Carnival is that most of the folks cheering on their favorite canoe teams, or skating at the big rink set up in Place d'Youville, or trying to keep up with their kids on the snowy playfields of the Plains of Abraham, are Québeckers delighted with their city's status as - for this two weeks, at least -- the official home of Winter.