Sculpting Winter Into a Gallery of Giants

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A series of occasional stories and pictures looking at life in foreign countries through the prism of time.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba Miguel Joyal is thinking Styrofoam.

It is almost the end of a long, brutally cold day, the latest in a frozen march of them for Joyal. Under many layers of clothing and behind a mustache walrused with icicles, Joyal is contemplating -- well, he is contemplating a bison's nose, a gigantic one, close up.

But he really is thinking of how much better it would be to be sculpting in Styrofoam than standing on a street corner in Winnipeg carving a statue in snow when the temperature is 10 degrees below zero.

"I did a Styrofoam polar bear, life-size. And people think it's snow," Joyal says, pausing to appraise his latest strokes. He's turned his attention to the bison's mane now.

"So I could do it all summer and all spring, and it doesn't matter, it won't melt," he muses. "Then the first little snowfall -- bang, it's up. People will say, 'Boy, does he work fast, this guy.' "

Of course, that would not be quite in the spirit of snow sculpting, which is a good industry for artists such as Joyal in Winnipeg during the annual winter Festival du Voyageur, which ends Sunday.

But one could be humbuggy about spirit when the wind chill reaches 30 below.

Joyal, 48, is doing seven snow statues this year for the festival, an annual celebration of the French Canadians who transported furs thousands of miles by canoe and backpack.

By the time the festival is finished, he will have worked pretty much five weeks straight, every day. In the cold. Global warming be damned, this has been a cold winter on the prairies. One of the coldest he remembers, and Joyal has been carving snow sculptures for the festival for 22 years.

He's a professional artist, with an accomplished repertoire. His bronze Louis Riel, the father of Manitoba, stands behind the legislative building. He's done wood chieftains and Madonnas, stone figurine rear ends and eagle heads, and glorious snow pieces ranging from gigantic bears to an almost life-size airplane greeting visitors at the airport.

His works are commissioned. "I don't do this for nothing. You think I'm crazy?"

How much is he paid? "Not enough," he says. "I wish I got paid like a lawyer."