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MARC-ANDRE ROY Enlarge Image

Bodh’aktan will shake up the Sugar Shack at this year’s Festival du Voyageur.

The Caribou is fully stocked, the smell of maple syrup will soon fill the air in St. Boniface and people will make their way across the Esplanade Riel en masse, ready to unleash their inner voyageurs.
   
Ginette Lavack Walters, Festival du Voyageur’s executive director, says she wants everyone to feel the spirit and joie de vivre of the voyageur.
   
"There’s this intrepid spirit about the voyageur. I think a lot of people have that adventuresome kind of nature and spirit, and want to tap into it.
   
"That is what Festival is about: it’s about being adventuresome. It’s about being like, ‘Yeah, I may not know the language, I may not know the culture, but I’m going to throw myself in the mix and see what I discover,’" she says.
   
There is plenty to discover. The festival opens Feb. 17 at 6 p.m. with a torch-lit walk from The Forks to Voyageur Park, where an outdoor spectacle of storytelling, music, fire and lights will await festival-goers. The opening celebration will also bring together four of the founding nations of our part of the world — the First Nations, French, Scottish and Métis — as part of its ceremony.
   
To celebrate Louis Riel Day on Feb. 20, organizers will honour the Métis folk hero with a look-alike contest. And not to worry, the annual beard-growing contest is still  in full effect.
   
Organizers have added an additional musical stage to this year’s event. The Pambian Tent will follow a more jam-style format. Two bands will be programmed each night at the same time, allowing them to play interchangeably or jam together.
   
Some of Manitoba’s strongest acts will share the stage there, including Crooked Brothers and Oh My Darling, along with Franco cowboys The Craig & Ash Band and the Cash/Haggard-nodding Andrew Neville & the Poor Choices, to name a few.
   
Among the over 200 musical acts set to perform on the various stages, Festival-goers will see the long-awaited return of Men in Kilts, a cold-quelling party-rocking set from DJ Co-op & DJ Hunnicutt, as well as performances from Montreal electro-rockers Orange Orange and up-and-coming wunderkinder Sarah MacDougall and Fire & Smoke.
   
There will also be the usual winter activities to take part in, such as sleigh rides and voyageur sports in Voyageur Park, and hands-on workshops and daily voyageur-style kitchen-party hoedowns in Fort Gibraltar.
   
Of course, this winter festival relies on snow for much of its activities. Due to this winter’s mild temperatures, accumulating the white stuff has been a challenge, and organizers have had to get resourceful in order to have enough snow on hand for the International Snow Sculpture Symposium and other activities.
   
"We’ve had to make some fake snow. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened in the past," Lavack Walters says.
   
Thirteen teams from around the world will be in Winnipeg to take part in the symposium and despite the challenges of working under difficult conditions, Lavack Walters says they’re excited.
   
"There will be sculptures — beautiful sculptures," she says.

FESTIVAL DU VOYAGEUR
Feb. 17 - 26, various venues

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Festival BEST BETS
 

Bodh’aktan • Feb. 17 - 20, Sugar Shack •
Bodh’aktan is a seven-piece band of French-Canadian wildmen who fuse Irish, Quebec and Maritime sounds into pirate-themed Celtic punk. Expect the band to deliver on some traditional kilt-clad fiddling, but with a bunch of head-banging guitar thrown in, too. These dudes come with a canoe’s worth of joie de vivre, so be ready to let your inner voyageur run loose.

Crooked Brothers & Oh My Darling • Feb. 19, Pambian Tent, 7 p.m. •
The Crooked Brothers (above) have got funk, country and blues — and a glut of fanfare. One of the most electrifying Manitoba bands at the moment, the Brothers will be playing a combined set with another Prairie gem: award-winning country troupe Oh My Darling. With enough banjo, mandolin, dobro and fiddle to get you out of your seat and on your feet, this will be a hoedown well worth getting out of hibernation for.

Little Miss Higgins • Feb. 17 & 18, Sugar Shack •
Little Miss Higgins (aka Jolene Higgins) won a much-deserved Western Canadian Music Award in 2011 for best blues album. Channeling influences such as Memphis Minnie and Billie Holiday, the ‘pocket-sized powerhouse’ from Saskatchewan brings a fresh spin to old-time blues. Smokin’ riffage and badass swagger abound when this little lady gets cooking.

Orange Orange • Feb. 23 & 34, Riviére-Rouge Tent •
Montreal duo Orange Orange crafts irresistibly campy electro-pop. Featuring Sabrina Sabotage on vintage Casio and drums, and Dom Hamel (of award-winning French hip hop crew Gatineau) on beatbox and guitar, this couple blends smooth vocals with plenty of citrus-inspired theatrics and playfully discordant disco.

Sarah MacDougall • Feb. 18 & 19, Riviére-Rouge Tent •
Emerging folk singer/songwriter Sarah MacDougall has received glowing reviews for her latest LP, The Greatest Ones Alive. Born in Sweden, she recently relocated to Whitehorse from Vancouver and has been touring extensively as of late. Lucky for us, the eternal nomad with the warm, dusty voice is stopping in Winnipeg before heading off to the Folk Alliance in Tennessee. See her before she balloons.