The Montreal Winter Carnival ( French: Carnaval d'hiver de Montréal ) is a festive festival held in the 1880s in Montreal , Canada . [1] [2]
In the period from 1883 to 1889, five such carnivals were organized. They were not carried out in 1886 due to the smallpox epidemic and in 1888 due to the cessation of funding from railway companies. [2]
Content
- 1 History
- 1.1 Ice Palace
- 2 Sources
- 3 notes
- 4 References
History
In 1882, at the annual banquet of the Montreal Snowshoe Club members, attorney MR McGibbon proposed the idea of holding a winter festival in Montreal. The following year, 1883, he opened the first winter carnival in Montreal . The Honorable Matthew Hamilton Gault became his commissioner. Distinctive features of the Montreal Winter Carnival were:
- It became the first winter carnival in America and one of the first in the world.
- For the first time, an official festive event was organized to promote tourism (a special press room was allocated to foreign journalists).
- For the first time in North America, an ice palace was built on the city square as part of the carnival (this happened more than a hundred years after the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna built an ice town for fun in Russia).
- In 1883, the hockey tournament was first presented here at the carnival.
Carnival events were the most varied - sledding, snowshoeing ; curling and hockey tournaments were organized. The apotheosis of the holidays was the storming of the ice palace. Gala concerts and masquerades were held , everything was accompanied by fireworks , the final festivities were held on Dorchester Square. Important guests from Canada and the USA were invited to the carnival.
The last winter carnival in Montreal was held in 1889. Due to the increased costs of its holding and competition from similar carnivals held in St. Paul [3] ( Minnesota ) and Saratoga ( New York ), the Montreal authorities decided not to hold them anymore.
Interestingly, the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Stanley, first met hockey at the 1889 Montreal Winter Carnival. Impressed by the competition, he decided to create a trophy, which later became the famous Stanley Cup . [4] [5]
Ice Palace
The design of the ice (ice) palace for the winter carnival in Montreal was entrusted to the Montreal architect Alexander Hutchison in 1883. The first ice palace was built on the town square. Its outer walls reached 27 meters in length and 6 meters in height. The main tower in the center of the palace was 27 meters high. There were several towers 15 meters high. The palace had a roof constructed of coniferous paws covered with ice.
The palace of 1885 was the greatest building among all created at this carnival, built from almost 12,000 blocks of ice carved from the surface of the St. Lawrence River , it was equipped with decorative electric lighting. The palace was 48.7 meters long, 19.5 meters wide, and the central tower was 24 meters high.
After Montreal, Alexander Hutchison and his brother George continued to build palaces in other cities in the United States.
Sources
- Sylvie Dufresne . Le Carnaval d'hiver de Montréal (1883-1889), mémoire de maîtrise: Université du Québec à Montréal, 1980, 214 p.
Notes
- ↑ Mieux connu à l'époque sous son appellation anglaise Montreal Winter Carnival (fr.)
- ↑ 1 2 Winter Carnival in Montreal
- ↑ Le Saint-Paul Winter Carnaval - toujours en activité - a été fondé en 1886, inspiré par le Carnaval d'hiver de Montréal Voir le site web du Saint-Paul Winter Carnaval
- ↑ Hockey Hall of Fame: Stanley Cup Journals 01 . Date of treatment May 13, 2008.
- ↑ 22 Things You Might Not Know About the Stanley Cup (English) (29 May 2017).