S’no problem

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HÉ Ho, mon ami!

Cue the fiddles and get the spoons clacking. Tie your ceinture fléchée (voyageur sash) around your waist, leave some spare room for sugar pie and jig on over to the Festival du Voyageur.

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Though the weather has been so balmy that the signature red tuque may be just a fashion accessory, the 43rd annual celebration of French-Canadian culture and the fur-trade era kicks off Friday.

Ginette Lavack Walters, executive director of the 10-day party, says organizers have come to terms with this winter’s dearth of snow. They’re far from frosted about it.

"We’ve made our peace with it and moved on," she says.

"As long as Mother Nature wants to play nice and give us some wonderful temperatures, the park will be crawling with people."

Without enough natural white stuff for its snow requirements, the festival has had to obtain man-made snow from Adrenaline Adventures in Headingley and truck it to Voyageur Park (a.k.a. Whittier Park), at a cost of $10,000 to $20,000.

Because of cost and time constraints with using manufactured snow, the community snow-sculpture competition has been cancelled and the size of the blocks for the international snow-sculpting symposium has been reduced.

But everything else made of snow — toboggan slides, snow mountain, snow maze — will be the same as usual. "I don’t think people will notice much difference," Lavack Walters says.

One new element is that Friday’s 7:30 p.m. opening at the park, after the torchlight walk from The Forks, will be a celebration, rather than a ceremony. Organizers have nixed the formal speeches in favour of a culture-uniting "outdoor spectacle filled with music, dance and fire" honouring Métis, First Nation, francophone and Scottish peoples.

Another new event is a Louis Riel look-alike contest. If you think you’re a ringer for the Métis hero, head to the park to be judged at 2 p.m. on Louis Riel Day, Feb. 20.

Last year’s festival drew about 100,000 visitors, down from more than 107,000 the previous year. Lavack Walters thinks the main reason for the drop was bitterly cold weather.

In case temperatures do plunge this year, she wants to remind the public that Voyageur Park has large, toasty tents with picnic-table seating for hundreds of people. The buildings of Fort Gibraltar are also heated. "There’s no shortage of warm spaces," she says.

To reduce lineups at the tents during peak times, the festival has converted the former Poste Pambian to a regular livemusic tent. It was introduced in 2010 as a venue for package experiences (usually dinner and a variety show), but it was underused.

This year, package experiences are being offered for the first time at the Maison du Bourgeois inside Fort Gibraltar.

They are not listed in the printed festival guide, but details are on the festival website under Tourism.

As usual, Voyageur Park features artisans, historical reenactments, an aboriginal encampment, sleigh rides and voyageur games. On the weekends and Louis Riel Day, anyone can take a 45-minute guided snowshoe tour along the Red River, with equipment provided.

There are tours of Fort Gibraltar, the park’s replica North West Company fur-trading post, and there’s nearly always live music in the heated tents. About 80 music and dance acts, from traditional (French-Canadian act Ça Claque) and folky (bluegrass duo Fire & Smoke) to modern (rock band Enjoy Your Pumas) and funky (DJs Hunnicutt and Co-op), will entertain inside the park and at off-site "trading posts."

Food and drink are a big part of the experience, especially French-Canadian classics such as tourtière (meat pie), pea soup, sugar pie and maple syrup drizzled on snow (maple taffy). Last year’s festival used 120 gallons of syrup and 13,000 taffy sticks.

The must-try warming drink for adults is Caribou, a fortified wine served in a glass made of thick ice. The festival goes through 450 litres of the stuff, poured into 2,700 ice glasses.

The Rendez-Vous Des Chefs, a competition to see which Winnipeg restaurant makes the best pea soup, is Feb. 26 at the Maison du Bourgeois. The public can taste-test and vote for their favourite. The defending champ is Le Garage Café .

Special events outside the park include the beardgrowing contest (Feb. 24), jigging contest (Feb. 25) and fiddling contest (Feb. 26), all at the Centre culturel franco-manitobain.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca