Les trois Québécois: le froid, Le Bonhomme, et la Grand-mère du Monde

The three Québécois: the cold, Le Bonhomme, and the Grandmother of the World

A trio of encounters in the Great White North. Chanced upon in February 2023.

Carnaval de Québec: Le froid (the cold)

So . . . I had an adventure.  I was recently in Québec, where I decided to celebrate all things sacred to February by taking in the opening days of the Winter Carnival. This is dawn over the city.  The violet light is from Bonhomme’s ice palace, which houses several musical instruments carved from ice. (And no, I did not attempt to play any, although his guests were welcome to try).

The Carnival’s opening was postponed a day, and then another half day, due to extreme cold. When Québec shuts anything down from extreme cold, you know you’re in the middle of something special.  It was -18°F (-28C°) that Saturday morning with a windchill of -43°F(-42C°). 

So I decided, despite Saturdays being sacred to the spirit of Carnival, that I didn’t need or want to experience that level of cold.  Until I saw folks doing just that.  As if this was all another day.  I then decided to do the same.  For the experience.

The second image is of me layered to the max, and ready to venture into this record-breaking Québec winter. I had a fine time stomping around Old Town, visiting shops, and getting pleasantly lost once or twice.  Embracing the Canadian cold so unreservedly that now, weeks later, my bones are still so soaked with it that I swear by the spirit of Carnival it’s always been there.

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Carnaval de Québec: Le Bonhomme

Just returned from Québec, where I kept running into this guy – the Winter King, the Spirit of the Carnaval de Québec Himself, the most playful and hospitable M. le Bonhomme.  So I asked him, in the spirit of play, to be a good fellow (a true bon homme) and pretend to hold my book.  He graciously obliged.

Of course this implies no endorsement on the part of Bonhomme or the Carnaval. I made my request to one of his many images; the living costumed spirit was busy dancing and hugging and tripping his way among his many guests.  Possibly at the bar near his ice palace.

But play is play, and the spirit of Carnival is eternal. Wherever you find it, its origins in the Saturnalia, the Dionysia, and the murky neolithic, are always lurking. In the corners.  Along the dirty floor that helps you isolate yourself by holding your stare as you stand in a crowd waiting to get to the bar. In the fuzzy not-quite-silence of the Saint Lawrence River ice contorting into other-worldly shapes that mark the border of the celebration.

So why not pose an image of the Northern Spirit of Carnival holding a book that displays a bacchante (maenad) mask?  After all, aren’t they distant relatives?

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de Québec: la Grand-mère du Monde (the Grandmother of the World)

Not Carnival – not really. But maybe something like it.

While in Québec, I wanted to track down a statue of Saint Anne that I learned was located at the Sanctuaire Sainte-Anne-De-Beaupré. I had read someplace that this statue depicted Anne as a kindly older woman, a grandmother-of-the world Great Mother type, wearing a crown of maple leaves to represent the spirit of Canada. And for some reason I really needed to see that. To see what the long-dead artist, Joseph-Émile Brunet, did with that. 

I’ve always felt a power in archetypes—whatever context they appear in—so I went in search of this Great Maple-Leafed Canadian Grand Mother. Maybe to make a wish? Maybe to offer a prayer if the statue was beautiful and had energy running through it. Or maybe just to steal some of that energy, because I so seldom go north, into the direction of magic.

So I trudged through bitter claws of cold. Through the shrine itself—which was open for visitors. Although there were several beautiful images of Anne scattered around, this particular one was not just missing—but invisible. No one I queried in French or English had heard of Anne with the maple leaf crown, although one shrine worker was enthusiastically charmed by the idea.

Days later, leaving the city, I stopped again. This time I found her, outside, guarding an empty fountain basin. So braving the gray of a snowstorm, I left the car and stood near the statue, the better to contemplate the balance between creativity and emptiness.

Saint Anne did not look particularly kind, motherly, or even grandmotherly. The maple leaves resembled a crown of thorns. The child Mary looked distant in Anne’s embrace, already missing whatever world she came from and utterly agnostic before a world she hasn’t yet encountered. God hasn’t spoken to her yet.  Maybe he won’t.

And something about searching for the world’s grandmother in the most piercing cold I’ve ever experienced, and finding her guarding an empty basin, suddenly made me cry. For what I can’t tell you, or even tell myself.

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You are reading a post from Matter Notes, Karen Michalson’s blog on creativity as spirituality and the war on the humanities. Her most recent novel, The Maenad’s God, is available on Amazon.

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