Festival du Voyageur roars back with event of 'historic proportions' after pandemic downsizing

Festival du Voyageur organizers are ready to throw open the Fort Gibraltar doors to the first full-scale event in three years due to the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It is finally time to dust off those capotes, relearn how to tie your ceinture fléchée and practise those héhos," festival executive director Darrel Nadeau said at a launch event on Thursday, referring to long wrap-style wool coats, sashes and the francophone cheer.

"For the first time in three years, we have tents with sound systems, fridges full of great beer and thousands of festival-goers ready and eager to come and celebrate our signature francophone joie de vivre."

The annual 10-day festival, which runs this year from Feb. 17-26, is held in Winnipeg's French quarter, St. Boniface.

It is Western Canada's largest winter festival, celebrating a fur-trading past and the French culture through entertainment, arts and crafts, music, exhibits and displays.

It has been held every year since the first one in 1970, though the past two years were a little awkward. 

The pandemic forced the festival to go strictly virtual in 2021, with music performances broadcast over YouTube and Facebook rather than in tents filled with food and drink, the smell of wood chips and straw-filled dance floors.

A hybrid format was held in 2002, with virtual elements and limited outdoor-only offerings for visitors.

"We kept hope it would come back, that we would come back, and we are on the cusp of that," said Eric Plamondon, president of the festival's board of directors, calling this comeback festival one of "historic proportions."

To welcome back the crowds in 2023, there are larger heated tents, more flashy light projections, more and bigger snow sculptures, specially crafted beer and sound systems that are "sharper, louder and capable of picking up all the nuances of our musical offerings," Plamondon said.

Indigenous art installations by 15 local and national artists will be on display through physical and digital installations and projections, while Winter Stories will offer takes told in Indigenous languages.

The Boîte à chansons — mobile concert trailer — will be set up in the new Terrasse à chansons, where festival-goers can dance or sit near bonfires and imbibe in some caribou, chilled in an ice glass. 

More than 200 musicians, both national stars and emerging local artists, are part of this year's event. Performances will take place at the festival site as well as related sites and feature big names like Joey Landreth, Tom Jackson, Susan Aglukark and Terra Lightfoot.

Fiddling and jigging contests, a pea soup competition, an ice-carving workshop, a Métis beading circle, a children's playground, horse-drawn sleigh rides and staples like sugar pie and maple taffy are all part of the activities, while selfie enthusiasts can cozy up to animal sculptures in the new snow forest.