The Montreal Winter Carnival of 1883 was the first major festive event in Canadian history.
Photos McCord Museum, BAnQ Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie and City of Montreal Archives
With the intensification of British immigration at the turn of the 19th century, new sporting habits appeared in the St. Lawrence Valley.
These newcomers from the British Isles created, among other things, sports clubs in Montreal.
These associations offer sports supervision and privileges reserved for their members. These clubs will be at the heart of the success of the Montreal Winter Carnival.
At that time, in the city, in winter, people already practiced all kinds of sports such as ice skating, tobogganing on the slopes of Mount Royal and even curling, but the most popular was undeniably snowshoeing.
RACKET
During the five editions of the Montreal Winter Carnival, snowshoers take part in the popular nocturnal parade.
The recreational practice of snowshoeing on the mountain is certainly energized by the Montreal Snowshoe Club, a pioneer sports organization in the structure of sport in the metropolis.
Note that in the mid-19th century, only lacrosse clubs were more popular than snowshoer clubs.
If each club used to organize its own sporting events until the 1880s, things will change in 1882.
That year, a member of the famous Montreal Snowshoe Club, Robert D. McGibbon, launched the idea of a sports week in the middle of winter, a large Nordic gathering where all sports clubs would be invited to participate. The English-speaking business community still welcomes this idea quite well.
Not only will the Winter Carnival allow athletes to meet, but it will have a positive economic impact during the cold season, a time of year that is generally very quiet in terms of tourism. We think that the great winter celebration should be able to position Montréal favorably as a tourist destination in both the United States and Canada.
It is true that the rail network, which had just extended its tentacles between Montreal and the rest of America, favored the birth of this tourism. It was in this context that the following year, in 1883, the first winter carnival in North America was launched by the city’s English-speaking community.
THE ADVERTISEMENT
This poster bears witness to the publicity hype surrounding the Montreal Winter Carnival in 1889.
To attract as many visitors as possible, the organizers create beautiful brochures and large posters, buy advertising in American newspapers and, above all, concoct a truly original program of activities that draws inspiration, among other things, from the most spectacular Nordic traditions.
For example, as early as the 1883 edition, a castle was built with thousands of blocks of ice, the first erected since that of Empress Anne of Russia in Saint Petersburg in 1754.
THE CITY COMES TO LIFE
If at the beginning the festivities took place mainly near the English-speaking clubs in Mount Royal Park or Dominion Square (now Place du Canada), from 1885, with the participation of the French-speaking community, the activities extended at Champ-de-Mars, at Place d’Armes and on Île Sainte-Hélène.
Ice hockey match, snowshoe hike, torchlight parade, sleigh race, skating masquerade and grand ball at the chic Windsor Hotel are just a few examples of the carnival program on offer.
Even activities normally practiced during the warm season, such as demonstrations of bicycles (velocipedes) on skis and lacrosse matches on the ice, are transformed to the delight of spectators.
However, the most emblematic activity is without a shadow of a doubt the spectacular attack on the famous ice palace, a choreography staged by snowshoer clubs, under a shower of fireworks.
The apotheosis of the Montreal Winter Carnival is undoubtedly the attack on the Ice Palace.
Imagine this dazzling spectacle and add to this scenery thousands of people bundled up to protect themselves from the biting cold, but all smiles, near the ice palace and other carnival gathering places, often lit with electric bulbs, a new at the end of the 19th century.
Throughout the winter festival, huge outdoor skating rinks are set up on the shore of the St. Lawrence River, on the grounds of McGill University or in public squares where, at any time of the day, one could watch competitions and participate in activities.
MONTREAL, CITY OF ICE
The carnival is always held when the cold is most bitter in the city, either at the end of January or the beginning of February, a good time to build ice castles.
Of all the ice palaces erected, the 1885 winter edition fortress is by far the most spectacular.
Its architect, Alexander Cowper Hutchison, used more than 12,000 large blocks of ice cut from the St. Lawrence River to give shape to the castle.
These cubes allow craftsmen to give life to the various boreal editions by creating, for example, a giant lion (1885), as well as a large labyrinth (1887) at the Place d’Armes or a large La Condora tower at the Champ-de- March (1885).
Moreover, at the inauguration of this tower, the newspapers of the time speak of more than 50,000 people who would have come to attend the show.
Wonder, crystalline light, upbeat music, varied activities… you could say that one week a year you have a great time in a boreal setting. During the big party, fir trees and conifers are everywhere, they adorn the ice rinks and slides, they surround the ice road on the St. Lawrence River, a sort of frozen bridge created linking Place Jacques-Cartier to Île Sainte -Helen.
The luminous ice structures, the fragrant conifers in the four corners of the city, the red-cheeked snowshoers with their beautiful woolen hats and the snow crystals that dress Montreal in its beautiful white coat give a unique personality to the Winter Carnival of Montreal.
Without really realizing it, he contributed, in his own way, to weaving a northern identity to the city, to the province and also to the young country that was Canada, a country that is still looking for a identity at the end of the 19th century.
EPIDEMIC
Unfortunately, the popular Montreal Winter Carnival will have a very short life.
After five editions between 1883 and 1889, marked by a few hardships, such as the cancellation of the 1886 edition because of a smallpox epidemic, and weighed down by debts, the carnival will cease its activities after the 1889 edition. .
If the competition between the different clubs and the discord between the French and the English speakers spice up the celebration, the growing tensions between certain merchants, who very often have their arm twisted to subscribe to the financing, will also precipitate the end of the winter festivities.
QUÉBEC, THE REAL PARTY
We tried a few times to revive this Nordic festival, but it was not until the second half of the 20th century that we saw a real great winter festival around an ice palace revive permanently. .
It is in Quebec that a huge ice fortress inhabited this time by a friendly man, a queen and duchesses invites people to celebrate in the middle of winter.