"A tremendous success” St. Pierre Museum makes the most of Festival du Voyaguer

Festival du Voyageur came to a close on Sunday and it was another great year for the St. Pierre Museum. 

Organizer Sol Desharnais says the St. Pierre Museum runs a kitchen at Festival du Voyageur serving classic French-Canadian dishes and they also run the sugar shack, serving maple taffy on the snow.

He notes it is always a highlight in their annual schedule and it did not disappoint this year. 

"Wow, what a great 11 days of festival. We had a great crew of local volunteers and some hired staff that came out and made this a tremendous success.” He adds “Turnout was very similar to last year, which was a record year, slightly lower, but very, very good. We are thrilled!” 

Desharnais says the atmosphere in their kitchen is always incredible with lots of music and dancing. He adds their volunteers always leave with a smile on their face and so do their patrons.  

“Every year people come back for tourtiere or pea soup and of course, the classic, the maple taffy on snow which is festival's second most important attraction after the snow sculptures. We even had Wab Kinew surprise us with a visit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surprised us with the visit as well, it was really great.” 

Wab Kinew visits the Sugar Shack with his family. Prime Minster Justin Trudeau poses with Sol Desharnais. Photos submitted by the St. Pierre Museum.

The weather was nearly perfect at the start of Festival du Voyageur with daytime highs in the minus 5 to 10 range, but late last week, we entered a warm stretch and Desharnais says the Fort Gibraltar grounds did get quite muddy. Fortunately, he notes the atmosphere was not ruined by this, and participants had a great time. 

Not only is Festival du Voyageur an amazing opportunity for the St. Pierre Museum to share French-Canadian food and culture with others, Desharnais says it is also their most important fundraiser of the year.  

“This also allows us to go to municipal and or provincial and or federal funding programs and grants and be able to demonstrate that we also do our own fundraising, for matching grants and stuff like that. So, it does show that we're not just wanting freebies, but we also invest ourselves and we do fundraising for our projects and to heat our buildings.” 

The numbers aren't all in, but Desharnais says they were definitely able to raise over $20,000 for the museum this year.