The snow this week reminded me of a trip 29 years ago this month that my friend Crissy and I took to the Quebec Winter Festival.  It was an IBM trip, the bus picked us up in Kingston at 5:30 am on a Thursday and we were to return late Sunday night after attending the 30th anniversary of the BonHomme winter holiday.  We arrived in Quebec early afternoon and quickly changed our money, a trick we had learned the hard way in Ireland.  The snow was amazing - up over the first floor windows, piled high in the streets with just narrow little pathways to walk on.  We noticed that the Quebec residents were very thin, a fact Crissy thought was directly related to the narrow paths.  We had been warned upon our arrival of the festival drink called "Caribou" that was especially deadly and especially well liked by the locals.  We quickly bought souvenir plastic red canes with a removal BonHomme head (a snowman wearing a tasseled hat).  The head could be removed so that vendors who were selling the drink, could pour it directly into your cane.  People on the streets everywhere were lifting headless BonHomme canes to their mouth.  We decided to take a tour on a horse driven carriage with a woman driver, who unfortunately did not speak English.  We were amazed to see snow higher than the goal posts in the local school yard, snow everywhere piled high.  I tried to question her: "Quelle mon la beige est away?"  she looked puzzled and then smiled and said, "Oh, Mai" - think of that - snow until May.

We saw an ice castle, a real castle with two floors that you could walk into, and a parade at night, complete with fireworks shot right over the heads of the onlookers.  Ambulances were riding up and down the streets to pick up the people who had failed to heed the caribou warnings and were down in the snow.  Crissy and I walked the street, and hearing music, entered a building where they took our coats, and $10 dollars or the equivalent, and we entered a large gym,  furnished with picnic tables and bands, four of them, in each corner.  Molson's beer was being sold everywhere, and we sat down at a table.  After a few drinks we had the great idea of taking a swim.  The brochure at our hotel had advertised a swimming pool and we had come prepared with our suits.  We put on our suits, grabbed a couple of towels, and got on the elevator.  One of the buttons was labeled pool, so we hit it.  People got on the elevator at the next stop and looked at us in surprise.  The pool button took us to the bottom floor, and we followed the signs for "pool".  Turning a corner, we came to an empty hall, with a door at the end.  There was a window, covered with snow, but we could just make out an outline of the outside pool, completely filled in with snow.  "No wonder they looked at us like we were nuts", we thought laughing and tried to reach our room without anyone seeing two grown women in February wearing bathing suits.  Probably perfectly normal during the festival.

Crissy and I traveled well together, Boston, Venezuela, two trips to Ireland, but that trip to Quebec, the snowiest place in the winter, is right up there near the top of the list.