Festival du Bois at Maillardville

We decided to go to a music festival that we had heard about. The music was supposed to have a Franco-Celtic influence. We headed out to Maillardville, which is near Coquitlam, parked the car near IKEA, and walked about a km. to the entrance. It was $12/adult and $8/student. We went into the main tent where there were a variety of stalls and music on the stage. There was food and drink available. We stopped for a while at one of the stalls where they were playing music and making maple syrup toffees on sticks. It was interesting watching the smooth out a flat bed of crushed ice and ladel out a stream of syrup onto the ice. As the syrup began to cool on the ice, they got a flat stick and waited until the syrup was sticky enough to adhere to the stick. They then wound it up on the stick and kept it on the ice to harden. They tasted pretty good. We wandered around to a few other tents, played bingo in the Scout's tent, where Paula won a dynamo type wind-up torch (flashlight). We also played along with some people dressed in period costume to find the sender of a letter. We were given clues to find the people who would give us the next clue. We had to look for a C19th bus driver, a policeman, a nun and a bride in a wedding dress. All a bit of fun.

We went and got some food and sat in the main tent to listen to some of the music. It had just started to snow. When we left after about an hour, there was about 2 - 3 cm. of snow on the ground and it was still coming down pretty heavily. We had to walk back to the car through the snow. We were cold and wet by the time we got there. It snowed all the way home and continued to snow during the night.