SCULPTORS CREATE AN ODE TO WINTER OUT OF ICE AND SNOW,

IS AN ESCAPE FROM WINTER’S DREARY SIDE

Michelangelo loved marble and Rodin bronze, but for Julien Doré, ice is gold. It is -14 C outside and Doré’s moustache and beard are frozen to his face. Clad head to foot in polar fleece and Gortex, one of Quebec’s best-known ice sculptors is chiselling, sawing and planing away at what began the day as a 300-pound block of ice but is now taking shape as a giant, half-eaten apple.

Doré is one of 15 ice sculptors from across Quebec and as far away as Sweden who have been busy at work since the end of December putting the finishing flourishes to the Snow Village at Parc Jean-Drapeau, which opened officially for its second season Friday.

Montreal’s Snow Village, like its predecessors in Norway and Finland, is an ode to winter created entirely of ice and snow. It features a 25-room ice hotel and an ice restaurant where visitors linger at ice tables on ice chairs or sip drinks at an ice bar.

It is a hauntingly beautiful place, glowing blue-green in the bright sunlight of a crisp winter day. At night, blue, mauve and green lights cast the igloolike structures, decorated this year in a New York City theme, in stark relief against the darkened silhouette of the Old Port. More than 100,000 visitors came last year to behold winter from this vantage point, one that doesn’t include stalled cars, unplowed streets or stairways to shovel.

Come the end of March, when winter is over, the Snow Village will melt away and disappear. But for now, it is a feat of Nordic engineering and Québécois artistic vision.

Follow us on a behind-thescenes photo tour of North America’s only full-fledged ice village with the Finnish brothers who developed the concept, the Montreal businessman who brought it to North America and the team of hardy ice and snow sculptors who are filling it with frozen sculptures, friezes and furniture.

Montreal’s Snow Village is expected to stay in operation until March 21, weather permitting. This year, it also features a satellite village with a bar and restaurant in Laval. For information about prices, opening hours and on-site activities www.snowvillage canada.com or 514-788-2181.

PHOTOS: JOHN KENNEY/ THE GAZETTE Some of the best-known ice and snow sculptors in the world come from Quebec, including Julien Doré, who is working on the Big Apple room (above). They are valued for their speed, precision and creative expression. Many honed their skills at Quebec...

The Kurtakko brothers, Rami and Tomi, have come from Finland to oversee construction of the Montreal Snow Village. Crews began building the dome-shaped pavilions in December, when the temperature dropped to a constant -2 C or colder, with the kind...

TAKE A TOUR ONLINE > Photographer John Kenney takes us behind the scenes as the Snow Village is sculpted into shape, at montrealgazette.com/life

PHOTOS: JOHN KENNEY/ THE GAZETTE This year’s Snow Village, still under construction this month, boasts a restaurant that seats 100, a bar that can hold up to 250 people, an ice chapel and a hotel with 25 rooms. It covers an area of 1.5 acres at Parc Jean-Drapeau. Guy Bélanger, one of...

Jessie Armand, of Lachute, works at full speed on a room with a 3D doomsday theme. In it, the Statue of Liberty is down and the world is coming to an end. Armand is a YouTube sensation who has taken home the gold prize at the ice-carving competition...

Ice sculptor Julien Doré works on the Big Apple room during the construction of the Snow Village at Parc Jean-Drapeau.

Tomi Kurtakko installs a giant triangle-shaped plastic mould that will be filled with compacted snow to form the walls for an igloo entrance. Each dome has 10-foot-thick ceilings and walls “as solid as concrete.” To start, a giant igloo-shaped balloon...

Veronique Savard and James Quigley have lunch at the Snow Village restaurant, with its beautifully lit ambience, and rounded ice banquettes thrown with cozy faux fur blankets. More than 100,000 visitors came to the Snow Village last year. This year,...

In the domed lobby of the Snow Village’s ice hotel, a New York panorama emerges from the hard, white, frozen walls. Doré and fellow sculptors Jean François Gauthier and Daniel Gaudreault have carved a frieze of Central Park, complete with trees and...

Rachel Boudreault is a Montreal art teach er who takes up snow sculpting every winter. In her turquoise toque, she’s up on a scaffold carving Frank Gehry-inspired wavy lines in the domed ceiling of one of the ice hotel’s rooms. She has already created...