Winter Carnival in Quebec City

As a student 60 years ago, I attended the annual carnival in Havana. And 10 years later, working as a reporter in Canada, I covered the traditional winter carnival in Quebec City.

The capital of the province of Quebec is unlike any other city in Canada as it preserves the originality of the French architecture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The city is beautiful at any time of the year, especially in winter, when snowdrifts add warmth and coziness to the stone houses with cast-iron staircases leading to the mezzanine, and numerous snack pavilions greet the tired, frozen traveler with steaming pea soup and pancakes served with maple syrup.

We arrived in Quebec City on a frosty, chilly day, and the local variety of grog, called caribou and served in plastic vessels resembling small canes, was selling like hot cakes.

The carnival procession was not much different from what I had seen in Havana before: the same string of self-propelled platforms with fairy-tale characters and dancing beauties in revealing outfits.

Still, there was a significant difference: at minus 20 degrees Celsius, the Quebec beauties were performing inside glassed-in, heated cabins, raised 10 feet above the ground.

It looked surreal: many spectators were steaming, some of them — even those holding caribou — were dancing to keep warm, while half-naked girls were floating above our heads, spreading smiles and blowing kisses…

Each cart had its own orchestra. The musicians, risking frostbite on their lips, desperately blew into trumpets and flutes, trying to drown out the noise of the crowd and choppers flying overhead, filled with police and camera crews taking pictures and films.

If we are going to have fun, let’s have fun – this is the motto of Quebecois. Thus, during the carnival days the caribou flowed like a river, the musicians wandered around city squares and giant closed halls night and day, and the public did not spare their feet, eager to dance anything, from rock’n’roll to samba that was popular in Quebec at that time.

Those who did not want to dance or were tired of dancing, went to the Place Carnival to stare at Mickey Mouses and Vikings molded from snow, or to race along ice chutes in toboggans. And those who preferred less noisy entertainments wandered around the local Montmartre — a short, some fifty yards long, Rue Tresor, where local artists exhibited their works.

Nearby, at Place d’Armes, cabbies wrapped in raccoon coats beckoned to passengers. Bonhomme, a cheerful, fat, good-natured man in a bright red hat and a snow-white suit, belted with a traditional Quebec sash, reigned over all that. He could be seen everywhere, in a necklace of electric lights and on commemorative badges.

The carnival program included dog sled racing and culminated with kayak races across the St. Lawrence River. This competition was open only to daredevils. Judge for yourself: in the middle of winter, when the St. Lawrence is covered with ice and hummocks, this powerful waterway had to be crossed in fragile kayaks or canoes, by portage or, if there was a thawed patch along the way, by oars.

An extreme test, taking into account that at this point the river is more than half a mile wide and full of rapids that can carry away 10 miles downstream, while the St. Lawrence had to be crossed in both directions.