Warm winter melts plans for Festival du Voyageur's signature snow sculptures
'We are really rolling with the punches.… It's not something we can control, obviously'
Western Canada's largest winter festival is trying to make do without a key ingredient — snow.
The mild season brought a meagre snowpack that is now being melted away by spring-like temperatures.
That means many of the Festival du Voyageur's signature snow sculptures, typically set up at the site and around the city, won't happen. At least not in the traditional way.
Executive director Breanne Lavallee-Heckert says they've been forced to pivot, and artists will be using other mediums like hay or branches instead.
"We are really rolling with the punches.… It's not something we can control, obviously, so just taking that with as much humility as we can and just doing what we can do — trying to be as innovative and creative as we can," she said.
"There's going to be some new, new ways of experiencing art in the park this year."
The annual winter festival, celebrating francophone and Indigenous histories, runs Feb. 16-25 this year at Whittier Park in the St. Boniface neighbourhood.
Organizers have been using a snow-making machine fuelled by a nearby fire hydrant to create the wintry ambiance inside the park, the first time that has ever been necessary.
They hoped to make snow for the sculptures as well, but the machine needs to run about eight hours for just one. That's a lot of water and just not responsible, Lavallee-Heckert said.
Typically, there are upwards of 60 sculptures at the site, along Provencher Boulevard and spread around other high-profile spots in the city. The festival also invited 16 sculptors to fly in and show off their work in an international symposium.
There will be some snow sculptures in the park but nowhere else in the city, Lavallee-Heckert said.
There are also tentative plans for ice sculpting, but if the current temperature trend holds, that might not be possible, either, she said.
"We're sort of waiting to see what the weather will be like. It's two weeks away, but also it's Winnipeg, so in two weeks, we could have a huge snowfall and our issue might be that there's too much snow."
There are some advantages to milder weather, such as the possibility of more people coming out.
"If we have a –5 C, –10 C day, it's so much nicer to come to Festival du Voyageur and not have to have everybody in the big snowsuits," Lavallee-Heckert said.
"That is something that we're excited about, because I know that the cold can be a barrier for a lot of folks."
But there is a bigger concern underscoring the weather, she said.
"We have to be talking about impacts of climate change and taking those seriously. I know it's an El Niño year, but the intensified effects of that definitely come from the reality of climate change around us."
Gary Tessier, a snow sculptor for close to 40 years, made one piece earlier this week, and by Wednesday, "it had already suffered quite a bit, and I don't expect to have much left by the end of the week," he said.
"I've been doing this for an awfully long time, and we've seen some years where it's been difficult, but for this extended period, and the lack of snow already in place, I've never seen this before. This is a bit of a mind-expanding experience, to witness this."
Tessier, who established the international symposium for Festival du Voyageur several years ago, is part of the crew that carves the large snow blocks around the city each year for the event.
His team was scheduled to create pieces in front of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, at the Manitoba Legislative Building and at the entrance gates to the festival site.
"We are still on, possibly, for that one piece at the park, but that's really depending on if there's any snowfall between now and a couple of days prior to festival [starting]," he said.
The festival has faced El Niño years in the past and has always managed to figure out some way to find snow.
They once gathered it from other piles around the city, while in 2018, organizers partnered with someone in St. Adolphe who had a snow cannon. They purchased the machine-made snow and hauled in about 200 truckloads.
"It wasn't very good snow, but it still managed to do something. But it's not even cold enough to do that this year," said Tessier, who, despite his entrenched connection to the snow and the festival, isn't completely crushed.
"I'm going to really miss the sculptures this year, I'll be honest. But I'm also enjoying the weather a little bit, that's a bit of a break."
If the warming pattern continues into future years, it could be time to consider shifting the sculpture competition entirely to different materials, or shifting the festival to an earlier date, he said.
"Festival was established to break up winter. Well, winter is doing that for us right now."
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With files from Meaghan Ketcheson