So far, this winter has been especially cold in Quebec City. There have been several weeks where the temperature stayed below -20 C. The STQ ferries, property of the Government of Quebec, must navigate the ice covered St. Lawrence Seaway between Lévis and Quebec City.
Government of Quebec ferry in the icy St. Lawrence Seaway between Lévis and Quebec. Winter 2018.
The ferries Alphonse-Desjardins and Lomer-Gouin, carrying cars and passengers between the two cities, must sometimes completely cancel the service. On three occasions so far, a ferry stayed stuck while trying to cross the ice covered seaway. The passengers had to wait patiently up to four hours for a crossing that normally takes ten minutes.
The picture below was taken from Old Quebec. In the foreground stands the “Le Vendôme” restaurant, which has been for sale for years now. In the distance, a ferry makes its way through ice towards Quebec City.
Ferry approaching Quebec during the winter in 2018
Ocean’s tugboats are also working on the seaway, regardless of the temperature. The picture below shows one of those tugboats enroute to the Jean-Gaulin refinery to help an oil tanker.
Ocean’s tugboat on the St. Lawrence Seaway near Quebec City. Winter 2018, by -20 C.
The pictures in this article were taken on January 7th 2018 with a Canon 5DSR equipped with a Canon EF 85 mm f/1.2L II USM. The temperature was -18 C.
The next day, a man who had fallen in the icy waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway was luckily spotted by one of the passengers who was standing on the Lomer-Gouin ferry heading to Quebec City. The man suffering from severe hypothermia was saved by the Government of Quebec STQ staff (Société des traversiers). Here is the link to TVA news (in French): Une personne tombe dans le fleuve Saint-Laurent à Québec.
The cold temperature and winds did not stop the Château Frontenac canoeists from training on the icy seaway in preparation for the Quebec Carnival competition. This year, the race will be held on February 4th. The Association des coureurs en canots à glace du Québec (Ice canoeists Association of Quebec) recently faced a tragedy went they lost one of their members in a training session during very harsh weather conditions.
Château Frontenac ice canoe team at work by -18 C on the St. Lawrence Seaway between Lévis and Quebec.
In 2017, Quebec City has opted for a decentralization of the Carnival activities which where always organized on the Plains of Abraham. Part of Grande-Allée was blocked to traffic and other activities where also held in the parc de l’Amérique-Française, the parc de la Francophonie and at Place d’Youville, in the hearth of the touristic sector.
Quebec Carnival 2017 symbols
This new formula seems to be a success, according to the number of people met during my photography sessions on the different sites. Children, as usual, were not really bothered by the cold temperature et found a way to have fun. The picture below was taken while the wind chill factor was -20C.
Child playing at the parc de l’Amérique-Française during the 2017 Quebec Carnival
The parc de l’Amérique-Française was receiving the international snow sculpture contest. Many countries were present: Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Peru and the United States. Italy won the first prize with an excellence award from the Quebec Carnival, added to an award from the public and the benevolent staff. The Italian sculptors were Pietro Germano, Samuel Bonapace and Gino Casagranda. The picture below represents one Italian sculptor at work.
An Italian sculptor at work during the 2017 Quebec Carnival.
The second prize, with a Government of Quebec award, was offered to the team from France, who was composed of Pascal Veuillet, André Marastoni and Éric Margery. The pictures below show the work in progress and a French sculptor taking a few minutes to talk with a citizen. He does not seem too annoyed by the cold weather…
French sculptor at the 2017 Quebec Carnival
A French sculptor at the 2017 Quebec Carnival
The team from Canada won the third prize, with an award from Quebec City. In the team were Jessy Armand, Michel Proulx and Mathieu Béchard. The pictures below represent two of the Canadian sculptors at work.
A Quebec sculptor at work on the Canada snow sculpture during the 2017 Quebec Carnival
French Canadian sculptor at the 2017 Quebec Carnival
Some sculptures had a really original look. Instead of capturing the whole creation, I decided to frame a section of one of the sculpture in order to emphasize the artwork.
Section of a snow sculpture at the 2017 Quebec Carnival.
All the pictures have been taken using a Canon 5DSR full-frame camera equipped with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 II USM lens, with or without tripod, depending on the amount of light available. The picture above was shot using a 1.2 aperture to maximize the blurred effect in the background. It was then reworked using two different image editing softwares.
For a better idea of all the activites organized by the Quebec Carnival, head towards the following official and bilingual site: Quebec Carnival official site
For other photos on the province of Quebec and also Quebec City, click on the following links from my blog:
A Bombardier CL-415 water bomber, property of the Government of Quebec, is being prepared for its flight towards Fort McMurray, May 2016
Quebec’s CL-415s helping out in Fort McMurray
On May 5th, 2016, according to what had been announced by the Government of Quebec, four CL-415s took off from the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport (CYQB) heading to Fort McMurray, Alberta, to help in the fight against widespread forest fires in that province. It is the worst natural disaster that Canada has known in its history.
Preparing flight crews and aircrafts for such a long cross-country trip naturally demands much coordination from the SOPFEU (Society for the protection of forests against fires). Once they will have landed at the Fort McMurray airport, the pilots of those CL-415s will be under the direct command of the Albertan authorities in charge of fighting the wildfires, since the latter are best positioned to know exactly what the local needs are.
I figure that the flight service specialists (FSS) of the Nav Canada flight information center (FIC) in Edmonton must have quite busy days with the increased aerial activity associated with the numerous fires…
Crew members are walking towards the Government of Quebec CL-415; they will soon be airborne and heading to Fort McMurray in Alberta, to fight the forest fires (2016)
The picture above shows crew members heading towards their assigned aircraft. Once they start working in the Fort McMurray region, they will not only have to directly fight the forest fires but also head to sectors that have not yet been touched by fire and water the area thoroughly to prevent new wildfires.
A Government of Quebec CL-415 number 245 is taxiing at the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport to take-off towards Fort McMurray, in Alberta, to help fight the out of control forest fires in that province during May 2016.
Taking pictures of propeller-driven aircrafts
A Bombardier CL-415 water bomber takes off from the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport heading to Fort McMurray, in Alberta, to help fight the forest fires (2016)
It is a bit touchy to photograph propeller-driven aircrafts while making sure that there is a sensation of movement. In a natural reflex to want to avoid blurred pictures, the photographer uses a shutter speed that corresponds to the focal used for the shot. In the case of the picture above, the focal was 400mm. But if a shutter speed of 1/400 had been used, the propellers would have been totally immobilized and the aircraft would have looked like its climbing while not using its engines.
It was necessary to reduce the speed to 1/160, thus increasing the risk of obtaining a blurred picture. In order to get both image sharpness and moving propellers visual effect, the photographer has to follow exactly the movement of the aircraft with the camera so that it looks totally immobile in the viewfinder. This asks for a bit of practice but allows for more realistic photos.
The CL-415 in a black and white photo
Black and white photo of a Bombardier CL-415 (C-GQBG) flying over Quebec City in 2015
The government of Canada helping out Alberta’s citizens
The government of Canada, under Justin Trudeau, has promised to match the amounts of money offered by all Canadians to the Red Cross society toward helping the Fort McMurray population.
Obviously, its contribution will not stop there (in fact, far from it), but the message is for the whole Canadian population to contribute generously to support the efforts of the Red Cross. It is already estimated that the material damages will reach at least nine billion dollars and that numerous years will be required to rebuild everything. The Liberal Party of Canada had built its political campaign around the need to invest for the renewal of infrastructures. With the Fort McMurray fires, there will be plenty of new unplanned expenses ahead.
More than 1,400 firemen are fighting the wildfires. So few, there has been very few lives lost, although “very few” is always too much. The crisis is, according to everyone, well managed by the government of Alberta.
At the time of writing, there was still no rain forecasted for days to come and the drought was also extending to the southern half of Saskatchewan and part of Manitoba. The winds were expected to increase, which would mean that even more resources would be needed in the near future to bring those wildfires under control.
It seems to me that the government of many Canadian provinces would benefit in acquiring new water bombers like the CL-415 to give them an increased margin of manoeuver that would allow them to react more quickly, if we take into account the tendency for the ever growing number and size of forest fires. In the picture below, the government of Quebec CL-415 number 247 is just airborne from Quebec to Fort McMurray.
A Bombardier CL-415 C-GQBK airborne from the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport heading to Fort McMurray, Alberta, in May 2016
The CL-215s will not head to Fort McMurray
While several CL-415s are leaving for Alberta, few water bombers, like the two Canadair CL-215s shown below, stay at the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport in case of forest fires in the province and also to be used for the seasonal rehearsal needed for every pilot before they are dispatched across the province of Quebec.
Two Canadair CL-215 water bombers parked at the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport in May 2016.
Global warming
Some people can say that global warming is not responsible for the increasing number of extended wildfires. They might be right, but I prefer to adopt a wider view than only what is going on in Alberta. Heat transfer between the north and south are now more extreme in order to equalize the temperatures around the globe. All means to reduce the difference in temperatures between the equator and the poles are at work and this causes increasing problems to particular regions.
The Kamloops region in British-Columbia, when numerous forest fires were raging 2014.
A powerful El Nino phenomenon, repetitive Omega blocks, the air circulation in different cells (Hadley, Ferrell, polar, Walker) all participate in the heat exchange. At a more reduced scale, we also regularly hear of cold and warm fronts in the meteorological forecasts.
It is certainly not local warm fronts that are responsible for the fact that a thinner layer of permafrost is unable to ensure the stability of Arctic runways anymore. Nor are fronts responsible for the fact that houses on stilts do not have a stable foundation anymore. Many heat records have been established these past years in northern Canada. There will certainly be large amounts of money to spend to rebuild the Nordic infrastructures.
Brush fires as soon as April in Alberta
This year, as soon as April, there were widespread brush fires in a region as north as Fort McMurray in Alberta because winter has not brought much snow to humidify the land during Spring. I thus wondered what would happen once in July. Albertans did not need to wait that long to get the answer.
Western Canada forest after a fire (2014)
The modelization of climatic changes indicates that, in the Fort McMurray region, the forest fire season is already fifteen days longer that it used to be. More heat might favor more droughts. But an increase in temperature also favors the development of thunderstorms and with them comes lighting that will start up new fires.
One thing is sure: insurance companies will not lose time with the different theories on global warming. The reinsurers (those who insure the insurance companies) have the obligation to limit their losses to stay afloat and premiums will quickly increase to answer to the thousands of claims following an increasing number of natural disasters.
Photos of the local air traffic in Quebec, just after the CL-415s departed to Fort McMurray
FedEx ATR 72-202F C-FTAR and Air Canada Express Bombardier DHC-8-Q-402NG (C-GIJZ) at the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport in May 2016
At the Quebec airport, between the take offs of the four Bombardier CL-415 towards Fort McMurray, I was able to take few pictures of the local air traffic. In the photo above, it is possible to see a FedEx ATR 72 (C-FTAR) taxiing toward the ramp after a landing runway 06. An Air Canada Express Bombardier DHC-8-402 (Q-400) (C-GIJZ) was also being towed for is imminent departure.
ATAC’s Hawker Hunter N339AX
Being in luck, I was able to capture a Hawker Hunter (N339AX) belonging to the American company ATAC, just airborne from Quebec. As for any military jet, it is difficult to ignore them on take-off: the reactor’s noise is there to remind you of their presence…
A Hawker Hunter belonging to the american company ATAC is airborne from the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport (CYQB), May 2016
A Hawker Hunter, from the american company ATAC, is airborne from the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport (CYQB) in May 2016
The pictures above have been taken with a Canon 5D MKII camera, equipped with a telephoto lens Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM with a polarizing filter and a Canon Extender EF 2X III which brought the focal length to 400 mm. Even then, more cropping was necessary to enlarge the aircraft since I was quite far away from the runway.
Wishing to ensure that the image was sharp (a blurred picture is more probable with a 400 mm focal length while the photographer attempts to follow a fast flying jet), I adjusted the shutter speed to 1/1600 and made sure that the automatic focus was set on AI servo.
I now realized that a slower speed could have worked a bit better since it would have allowed showing a blurred forest in the background while keeping the aircraft sharp. But it is not often that you have the opportunity to see a Hawker Hunter in flight these days and I played safe with the shutter speed. The ideal shot will be for another day…
CL-415s and CL-215s together in Quebec (2012 photo)
CL-415 and CL-215 water bombers belonging to the Gouvernment of Quebec. Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport (CYQB) 2012
A last picture, taken few years ago, during autumn 2012, shows numerous water bombers CL-415 and CL-215 parked at the Quebec Jean-Lesage international airport (CYQB). During the off- season, the water bombers are brought back to Quebec City from the different bases were they have been in operation during summertime.
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