Quebec City’s Hôtel de Glace (Ice Hotel)

I was assigned to go to cover a storm hitting Bathurst for The Weather Network on March 12th. I covered it for them and while I was up there, a solar storm was brewing which usually causes the northern lights. Sadly, another impact was also brewing. On March 13th I found out a friend had passed on.

On March 10th, Gail Palmer passed away. Gail was an amazing lady who always pushed me to go further. The conversations I had with Gail over the years were plenty. I’d pop in to see Gail and ask what she thought of something. She on the other hand would throw me suggestions. If you weren’t aware of our great interactions, sometimes an outsider would think she was throwing me off the bus.

I remember her talking about retirement and I’d always say, Gail you can’t retire you are gonna come work for me. She’d always tell me I wouldn’t last 5 minutes working with her. I’d always remind her I always appreciated her words of wisdom whether they were good or bad, she knew I wanted to hear the good with the bad.

I’ll miss our chats Gail.

At this point, I needed imagery for my Canadian Trains calendars and my Quebec City calendar. I felt the push to go. First, I drove from Bathurst, NB up to Gaspe, QC to capture some images of the Northern Lights. The first one, I took with my cell phone. They were that visible.

While visiting Gaspe, another dear friend from Quebec City sent me a message. She knew I was in Northern Quebec having watched my Instagram stories. “My apartment in Quebec City is free if you need a place to stay”.

I took her up on this and went onto Quebec City for the imagery I needed. Every time I go to Quebec City, I always feel the urge to go to Old Quebec and just capture imagery there. It is so addictive but I didn’t want my Quebec City calendar to be just Old Quebec. So this trip was to try and stay away from old Quebec. It didn’t work. I’d still pop into Starbucks at the Fairmount every morning….

While there, I received an assignment from The Globe & Mail to do a photo essay over the next few days on the ice hotel. I would be in a freezing ice hotel while my editor would be on vacation in Honolulu.

I was always under the impression the ice hotel was super close to Old Quebec. I was wrong, it’s about 35km outside of Old Quebec. So off I went.

During the day, you could visit the ice hotel and explore it. At night, it was being utilized by a film crew to film a Christmas video.

I spent an extended period of time at the hotel. A lot of staff were moving onto new jobs, therefore, it couldn’t be maintained and had to be destroyed soon.

The ice hotel is split into three buildings. One being a hall (church?), the second being the gallery and drinks area and the third being the hotel itself.

We’ll start with the church hall.

The second is the gallery hall and drinks area.