Good Saturday morning,

I figured everyone was getting sick to death of the snow and ice pictures so I would do a switch up and show you some of the interesting things that have been going on here in Tadoussac.  There seems to be never a dull moment and everyone is searching to find ways to amuse themselves and keep the creative juices flowing despite the cold.

Last weekend a small group of people hosted the 5th annual “24h de Création” event at the L’Eau Berge Jeunesse. Beginning Friday evening, artists from all sorts of mediums and backgrounds came together to share ideas and works in progress. The main goal was to provide a forum for sharing and learning but the secondary goal was to raise some small amounts of funds for two local groups. The first group was the L’Assemblée des Cuisines, which is the group that I am involved in,  that is working to build the Ferme Hovington projects for sustainable food industry.  The 2nd group is a dedicated group of Tadoussiens who are involved in the building and maintaining of a school in Haiti. This year the group returns to the school in mid-April to build and provide the books for the library. They will  be working on the water system which has some problems at present. They also provide the salary support so that there can be full time teachers.

The artists were far ranging and there were weavers, painters, people making jewellery, body painting, and lots and lots of music. There is a local jazz ensemble that played Saturday afternoon, a women’s group who are learning and performing “Gumboot ”  dancing and a group of people who demonstrated “line dancing” which is very popular here.

There were no shortage of outside activities either and 10 snow packed blocks had been created by volunteers working in blisteringly cold conditions over the two weeks before the event. Local businesses sponsored the blocks and then local individuals and families carved amazing snow sculptures. Luckily the day of the event, when people were carving,  was sunny and relatively warm.  The hockey rink was going all weekend and there was a great ice bar and fire pit set up for the Friday night.

The whole event was topped off by a dinner and concert by a young woman named Odile Dupont from Baie Comeau. I would call it interpretive jazz/pop but that does not really capture her sublime voice and props to illuminate the songs. She even had an original tune about shopping at Costco that was too cute.

As I am not  creative at painting etc I helped with the food as we provided meals/snacks throughout the event. Lots of fun working with the whole group.

To top off a great week, Alan and Christianne arrived Thursday night from Québec and we spent Thursday afternoon and Friday walking on the trails, skiing and last night attended a “Chant’appart” which is a small venue (L”Auberge Merveilleuse), simple supper and musical event.  There was a small warm up group called L’Almas and then a brilliant young group from the Saguenay region called Sweetgrass.  A five member band whose talents were such that 3 out of 5 sang, and most played more than 1 instrument. I sadly did not think to take my camera to this event but it was excellent. Only in such a venue could someone stop the conversation during the dinner and say “everyone look at the moon” and we turned off the lights and watched the brilliant full moon rise over Pointe Rouge – cannot be beat!!

Happy Saturday to all of you wherever you are!