What Québec Wants™

The real winter games

That’s how Québec City’s winter carnival is being marketed these days. The event is on until February 13th and is only outranked in size by carnivals in Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans. It’s estimated to generate more than $30-million each year for the local economy. And while the carnival and its mascot Bonhomme now have a strong following, it wasn’t always this way. For a look at the history of what started as a way to attract tourists during cold months, read this article by Rhéal Seguin published in the Globe & Mail in 2004.

Here’s an excerpt:

Few believed that the carnival could become a major annual winter festival. It took Louis Paré, a Quebec City tourism officer, four years to persuade local businessmen to organize the first carnival in 1955. The city had organized winter festivals on a regular basis since 1894, but the event had died out after the Second World War.

Paré understood the need to create a mascot to market the event. A local businessman, inspired by a scarecrow-type figure used in European festivals, suggested creating a jovial snowman, dressed in traditional Quebec garments that the coureurs de bois wore centuries earlier. After all, besides being one of the oldest cities in North America, the region also had one of the highest levels of snow precipitation in the world. So Bonhomme was born, someone who would disappear to the North Pole at the end of the festival and return to rule over the city in the middle of each winter.

Lest we forget.

Surveys suggest we are forgetting, particularly in Quebec.

A recent Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of the Dominion Institute reveals that Canadians - in particular young Canadians - lack of basic knowledge about The Great War and are forgetting this important chapter in our country’s history.

The study reveals that less than half (46%) of Canadians knew that Remembrance Day marks the end of the First World War. Only 42%of Canadians aged 18-34 could correctly identify what this date commemorates.

Ipsos Reid doesn’t provide regional data for this survey but another survey conducted for the Dominion Institute in 2007 does.

As part of a quiz on Canadian history, 1,004 adults Canadians were asked this question:
Remembrance Day in Canada falls on November 11. November 11 was the last day of which war?
Nationally, 37% correctly answered World War 1. A four point increase from the results 10 years earlier.
This number drops to 25% in Quebec – the lowest score.

“This year marks the 90th anniversary of the End of the First World War. It is troubling to see that with every passing year our memory as a country is fading to the point that most Canadians do not even know what we are remembering,” said Marc Chalifoux, Executive Director of the Dominion Institute.

Front Lines

One way to refresh your memory is to watch “Front Lines” – a newly released film by the NFB which I had the chance to see it last night at the War Museum in Ottawa.

A First World War chronicle evoked by archival images and moving letters written home by five soldiers and a nurse. Ninety years after the Armistice, this new film breathes life into anonymous archival images so that we experience the conflict from the inside. Voices describe the everyday experience of war, a mingling of pride, hope, dedication, fatigue, fright and pain. Professional actors read the poignant words written by five soldiers and a nurse, aged 23 to 31.

The NFB is streaming it for free today on its site