And although it’s hard to believe that the party could get any bigger, this year the city adds the festivities surrounding its 400th anniversary. Everything in Quebec is bigger and brighter in 2008, and Winter Carnival is no exception, with an entirely new parade.
More like a moving stage show, this year’s parade will be held twice, on Feb. 9 and 16. All new floats and characters, new original music and a whole new look will get the celebrations off to a rousing start. Along the route, multimedia projections will flash across buildings as thousands of people stand stomping their fur-rimmed boots and applauding with mittened hands to watch an hour’s succession of floats, performers and bands create an entirely new interactive experience.
But Quebec’s Carnival is more than just a pretty parade. The entire city rings with good fun from Feb. 1-17. Much of it centers on the Plains of Abraham, a vast park that crowns the bluffs high above the St. Lawrence River. You approach this snow-swept landscape through a boulevard lined by world-class snow sculptures for the International Snow Sculpture Competition.
Ahead is a giant snow-covered playground with tubing hills, snow slides, sleigh races, snowboarding, an ice tower to climb, outdoor games, igloos, outdoor movies and live entertainment. Steam rises from a spa in the midst of this, where carnival-goers relax and warm up — in bathing suits — immersed in a big hot tub.
A highlight for spectators is the Snow Bath, where competing teams clad in bathing suits roll in the snow — and actually appear to enjoy it.
Beside the river, crowds cheer canoe race teams as they alternately paddle through the water and carry the huge canoes over the tilting and moving ice flows across the St. Lawrence. A snow slide stands beside the Chateau Frontenac (www.fairmont.com/frontenac) and a giant ice palace with towers to climb is constructed at Place Loto-Québec.
Outside the city at Duchesnay, is a building entirely of ice — a hotel, where guests enjoy evening drinks at an ice bar before retiring to down-filled sleeping bags on beds carved of ice. Each room is a designer original with a different theme, and walls, floor and ceiling, as well as furniture, made of ice (877-505-0423; www.icehotel-canada.com). On the way to Duchesnay, a full-service resort with dogsledding and other winter sports (418-875-‘2, www.sepaq.com/ct/duc/en), stop at Le Chemin du Roi, a traditional sugar shack, for a sweet wedge of maple sugar pie.
It’s easy to see why the carnival’s mascot, the plump red-belted snowman named Bonhomme, is always smiling.