A Bear-y Special Visit: Festival du Voyageur

Winnipeg is blessed to have the largest Francophone population outside of Quebec in Canada. And with these Francophone came French and Quebec traditions and food. One of the hallmarks of French culture in Winnipeg is the annual Festival du Voyageur, where, seemingly, the entirety of St. Boniface is morphed into a winter wonderland. Celebrating French culture, food and music, we knew this was a must-go, despite the bone chilling frigid conditions.

The principle site for Festival du Voyageur is the Voyageur Park, a large enclosed space featuring fun activities and festivities outside and, thankfully, inside nicely warmed tents. The first striking thing you will notice is the snow sculpting competition featuring international sculpters creating their fanciful works of art in the frigid cold using nary but rudimentary ingredients.

A Quebec tradition in La Cabane a sucre (Sugar Shack), these stemmed from traditional cabins in Eastern Canada where sap is collected from maple syrup trees to make maple syrup.

Truthfully, we were there just for the Maple Taffy. A traditional snack involving taking warm fresh maple syrup, loading it gingerly onto ice, letting it harden on a popsicle stick, and rolling the entire concoction to make a popsicle taffy. Delicious! Sweet and slightly warm, the taffy is the perfect way to brave the cold.

Poutine is another classic French food that one cannot miss. Even with the taffy warming our tummies, we had to frequent La P'Tite Bottine for a taste of traditional poutine.

Poutine consists of a base of French fries with cheese curds and finished with a beef based gravy. The key lies in the cheese curds, which must have a "squeaky" consistency when bitten. These were dynamite. Crisp fries and a smooth gravy round out the definite squeak-ing cheese curds.

While not traditionally French, we had to try to the Bannock Shack for their rendition of traditional Native American cuisine. Bannock, the staple of Native American meals, refers to any type of flat bread that is baked or fried crisp. As the main source of calories and bread, it would form the basis of any meal.

Aptly named Bannock Taco, this was a large taco salad esque dish with bannock at the bottom topped with lean ground beef, vegetables, salsa, sour cream and cheddar cheese. It was a bit difficult to taste the bannock as the rest of the ingredients were so reminiscent of taco salad flavours.

Our friend had to try the Moose Balls. Essentially a Bannock fritter it is topped with syrup and brown sugar. Delicious! The balls were fried nice and crisp on the outside but smooth and light on the inside.


And the rest will be pictures showcase the venue and some of the activities available.