Edmontonians don’t shy away from winter – well, that’s the official stance, but I’ve met quite a few that do. Nevertheless, the Winter Light Festival is designed to scare away those winter blues. It is actually a series of community events held over successive weekends in the depth of winter.

Last weekend we attended the Deep Freeze Festival held over on 118th Avenue. This was a decidedly community arts oriented festival and was actually a fun time for all of us. A couple of blocks of the street were closed for some good old-fashioned road hockey, but the real action seemed to be in the park itself. Skating, ice carving, snow sculpting, firepits, free hot cocoa and live music performed by community members piped throughout the park made for a lovely afternoon. Oh, and did I mention that the Deep Freeze festival occurred on a weekend of near 0°C temperatures. They could barely keep the ice from melting.

The most fun was sculpting snow. Inspired by the snow throne, Maddy and Ella created a chair. Ben did his thing with blocks of snow, eventually smashing them because he wasn’t satisfied with product of his labours. Perfectionists can be trying kids sometimes.

Toward the end of our festival time, we stopped into the two teepees that had been erected in the park. These were real teepees with fires raging in the middle (in stoves, which was not completely authentic according to our native host). In one, there was a drummer and drums for all to join in. The kids liked that, as did I. The second teepee promised some native dancing, but we were forced to bail out when some kind of inversion started to happen inside the teepee and the stove exhaust started circulating within the teepee. I felt like I was going to pass out from the fumes. So we skedaddled.

Next weekend: Ice on Whyte festival.