Open in full screen mode The 70th Quebec Carnival takes place from January 25 to February 11 2024. Speech synthesis, based on artificial intelligence, makes it possible to generate spoken text from written text. A few days from now he sending off its 70th edition, the organizing committee of the Quebec Carnival needed snow. To meet this need, the organization had to produce 10,000 cubic meters of artificial flakes… 20 times more than last year. For safety reasons, says Marie-Ève Jacob, general director of the Quebec Carnival, we produce a little snow every year. In 2023, between 300 and 500 cubic meters of artificial snow were required, it is said, mainly for the snow bath and the ice sculptures, key activities of the Quebec Carnival. The information transmitted by the organization of the Quebec Carnival being initially quantified in tonnes, it is in this unit of measurement that a previous version of this article presented the data relating to the quantities of artificial snow produced in 2023 and 2024.< /p> Marie-Ève Jacob, general director of the Carnaval de Québec. What justifies us needing at least 20 times more snow this year? Cité de sliding is a new activity during which it will be possible to slide on three hills in Quebec City: the Ross coast, in Sillery, the rue de la Promenade-des-Sœurs, on the Cap-Rouge side, and the coast of Pente-douce, which links the Saint-Sacrement, Montcalm and Saint-Sauveur districts. Loading ELSEWHERE ON INFO: Ottawa establishes a “temporary two-year cap” on foreign students Spanning four days, from January 25 to 28, this activity is reserved for holders of the official effigy. The rest of the Quebec Carnival festivities will take place until February 11. For much of the week, 24 hours a day, the cannons spewed pure, malleable snow. You cannot work with street snow, which has sand or stones inside, insists Ms. Jacob. We use natural snow as much as possible, but often in additional layers, so the last layer, when we talk about sliding, must be produced, blown snow.
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Questioned about the environmental impacts of the production of artificial snow, whose cannons in this case require the use of generators powered by fossil fuels, Luc Renaud, associate professor in the department of urban and tourism studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), underlines, with a smirk, the irony of such a need.
We produce snow because there is less of it, because from year to year, there will be less of it because of global warming… but we produce snow by producing greenhouse gases, in producing CO2, he lets it slide.
He believes that on a philosophical level, we have to ask ourselves questions.
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The 70th Quebec Carnival will take place from January 25 to February 11, 2024.
For its part, the organizing committee of the Quebec Carnival says it is aware of the ecological footprint linked to its use of generators, and not only for the production of artificial snow, concedes general director Marie-Ève Jacob, who specifies that the animation of its sites only using the Hydro-Québec network is not always possible.
For the moment, we compensate for this impact through the purchase of carbon credits, also called carbon offset credits.
If they do it with a credible organization, says Luc Renaud, adding that the world of carbon offsetting is still the Wild West today, it is already a step in the right direction.
And for the next few years, Marie-Ève Jacob maintains that she is doing business with a firm whose mandate is to find less polluting alternative solutions than generators.
We can improve […] energy efficiency, but if we need to produce more, in the end, in absolute terms, we spend more energy, says Luc Renaud. But […] it's the Quebec Carnival: people expect to have snow, they need snow for their activities.
With information from Magalie Masson
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