Lanaudière’s biggest winter festival, Saint-Côme en glace, will be back on February 3.
For three weekends, residents and visitors will be able to admire around a hundred ice sculptures spread all along Main Street in the small municipality. They will also be able to attend shows featuring artists and groups like Sara Dufour, Michel Pagliaro and Galant tu perds ton temps.
They will also be able to participate in ice sculpture workshops and outdoor activities such as an introduction to oversized tire cycling (fatbike), an ice skating disco evening and cross-country skiing and torchlight snowshoeing.
The origins of the festival date back to 1967. The municipality’s leisure committee decided to organize a “classic” winter carnival, with a parade, duchesses and a queen. He suggested that residents make ice sculptures in front of their homes. The carnival went through a few years of eclipse before coming back to life in 1992 in the form of an ice sculpture festival. The works are now so massive that heavy machinery is required to transport and install huge blocks of ice along Principale Street. No less than 250 volunteer sculptors are expected.
Bonjour Nature Lanaudière offers packages from Montreal by bus to participate in the festivities.