Quebec City Winter Carnival

Thanks in part to a kind Christmas gift, A and I headed to Quebec City for a long weekend to check out Carnival, the largest festival of its kind, and now in its 57th year. It involves all manner of wintery activities and entertainment: here is a taster..

The festival site

The popular snow slides

The festival is on the banks of the St Lawrence: partly frozen at this time of year

Of course, Quebec City is a charming place to visit even without the festival, and so we went for a wander through the old town:

Place Royale, and the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires church

Rue du Petit-Champlain

There are many fine snow sculptures

and ice sculptures

A night parade with many crazy floats

and the star of the show: Bonhomme!

Winter sports were well represented - both participation (only one skating fall for the whole weekend), and spectator:

Pond hockey

Dog sledding

Ski joring

That's right - the skier is being dragged along by the horse and rider: they must follow a course, and pick up rings as they go. One of the crazier sports I've seen!

So, a very entertaining, enjoyable weekend. And I didn't even mention all the good food we ate!

Kingston in the Snow

The thing about taking photos in the winter is that hands get cold very quickly. So given a nice winter's day that wasn't too cold, I took my camera with me:

Shore of Lake Ontario

Looking across the bay at the Royal Military College and Fort Henry

The Wolfe Island ferry still makes it through the ice

The Spirit of Sir John A

Skaters in the market square

A Cold Walk by the Lake

A sunny winter's day was the perfect time for a walk down to the shore of Lake Ontario:

Looking across the mouth of Portsmouth Harbour to Kingston Penitentiary

Recent warm weather and rough water has prevented any ice on the lake ... yet

Shards of ice on the shoreline

Lake Ontario Park

Christmas Holidays Part 2

For Christmas and a few days after, I stayed in Vancouver with A's family (including new nephew). Here we enjoyed the scenic west coast, and spent some with the family.

On one day we went into Vancouver city, where we found some more sights: float planes in the harbour, the Gas Town clock, busy streets and quiet back alleys.

For some fish and chips and ocean air, we spent an afternoon at Steveston, an old fishing and canning town on the mouth of the Fraser river.

Christmas Holidays Part 1

For a few days before Christmas, A and I were in Victoria with some of my family. On one evening we had dinner at Butchart Gardens, and spent some time admiring the display of lights (they had a "Twelve Days of Christmas" theme):

Some of the other sights of Victoria were Craigdarroch Castle (home of 19th century coal baron Robert Dunsmuir), some knit graffiti, and views from Mt Tolmie.

Then off on the ferry to Pender Island, to stay at my Aunt's cabin for a day of games, food, drink, and catching up with family:

The last leg of this phase of the holiday was to take the ferry back to Vancouver to spend Christmas with A's family (coming up soon in Part 2!).