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Festival du Voyageur: 10-day celebration of French-Canadian Community in Winnipeg

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The much-anticipated 2012 Festival du Voyageur kicks off in Winnipeg on Friday, February 17 at 5pm with a variety of events. The King’s Head Pub, Garage Café and Voyageur Park are all featuring fun and exciting shows to kick-start the 10-day celebration! This means French-Canadian food, traditional voyageur costumes, francophone artists, winter festivities items and souvenirs and more.

But what is the Festival du Voyageur?

Put simply, this festival, which has been taking place since 1969, is a celebration of the fur trades in the Red River region. It is a lovely opportunity for the Winnipeg community to recognize the French roots of our city and to get out and enjoy the snow and ice in the middle of winter in Winnipeg. This year Festival du Voyageur is sure to bring out even more families than usual with our unseasonably (but most welcome!) warm weather.

Ultimately the Festival du Voyageur is a great way to reconnect with the Winnipeg community and to spend the day with family and friends. Sometimes the busy hustle and bustle of everyday life can disconnect us from our neighbours and the community at large, so this is a wonderful opportunity to spend time in a positive environment with others, celebrating heritage and coming together to enjoy life in Winnipeg.

Special events at the festival du voyageur bring people together to enjoy the fun and games

Over the course of the ten-day celebration, you can enjoy a variety of special events at Festival du Voyageur. These include a Torch Light Walk (a delightful stroll from the Forks to Voyageur Park, lined with hundreds of torch lights), live broadcast shows, music and dancing, a fiddling contest, a pea soup contest (and sampling!), a Louis Riel look-alike contest and much more! There’s something for everyone, no matter your age.

Snow sculptures are one of the most breathtaking aspects of Festival du Voyageur and are indicative of a Winnipeg winter. It is an incredibly creative, innovative and really fun form of art. Voyageur Park holds a sculpture that’s nearly 20 feet high and close to 50 feet in length; there are plenty of smaller (but no less impressive) sculptures in the park as well to admire and ooh and aah over with your family. And the snow sculptures aren’t just taking place in Voyageur Park, either – everyone across the city is getting involved in the wintery spirit! Sculptures can be seen everywhere from Norwood Bridge to Provencher Boulevard to Osborne Village to the Manitoba Legislative Building and more.

To learn more, check their website at  Festival du Voyageur. Or come down to Voyageur Park to see the sights for yourself! Tickets are $13 and Voyageur Park is situated at 866 St. Joseph Street in Saint-Boniface. There’s always some kind of interesting and interactive event going on in Winnipeg – and it’s always good to have another reason to get outside for some fresh air with the whole family.  Come check out Festival du Voyageur.

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Technorati Tags: Festival du Voyageur, Louis Riel, winnipeg

Sagan Morrow is a freelance writer and editor with a B.A. in Rhetoric, Writing and Communications from the University of Winnipeg. Specializing in health and wellness, she writes the blog Living Healthy in the Real World and is the health columnist for the newspaper The Uniter.  Learn more about her by checking out her website at www.livingintherealworld.net or e-mail her at sagan.morrow@gmail.com.

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