by Al Campbell
VANCOUVER, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Cool weather and intermittent rain did little to deter the enthusiasm for the Fire and Ice Festival in Qualicum Beach Saturday as about 6,000 people turned out for the annual event in the Canadian seaside town.
With the temperature hovering around nine degrees Celsius in the Vancouver Island community, located about 70 kilometers northwest of Vancouver, the 19th edition of Fire and Ice provided a rare bright spot for an area enduring one of its coldest spring seasons in more than 70 years.
Spicing up the festivities in the 9,000-population town was the presence of 25 teams of chili makers, representing the "Fire" portion of the festival. Each of the teams, representing banks, restaurants, a golf course and various other businesses, were required to make 75 liters of chili -- traditionally a mix of tomatoes, ground beef, beans and spices -- of their own recipe.
In the four-hour festival the public was the ultimate judge as for a one-time price of three Canadian dollars, about 20 renminbi, anyone could purchase a cup and sample what was being concocted from any of the street-side booths and vote for their favorite. Participants were judged in the professional and amateur categories, with the most coveted being the Peoples' Choice Award.
"You know, I've seen it now for 19 years. I come every year obviously and I thought people may get tired of this, but they don't," said Teunis Westbroek, a transplanted Dutchman who now serves as the mayor of Qualicum Beach, a town largely populated by retirees and young families.
"With rain like this, and this morning looked kind of doubtful, people (still) show up in droves. I love seeing the kids in this town. I love seeing the participation with the music. This is a great family event. When they grow up, no matter where they move to, they will talk about this and why Qualicum Beach is special."
After finishing two votes out of the prizes last year, Jonathan Michaels of Geeks on the Beach, a Qualicum-based computer website design firm, said his group of chili makers, all decked out in oversized black-framed glasses, was determined to win this year with its special ingredient he identified as "victory."
"We totally geeked out. We ordered 12 different varieties of chili spice blends, had it flown up from Texas. Tried every single one of them, found the exact two that we wanted to blend together and ordered six pounds of it," he said, adding months of research had went into the group' s current concoction.
"We researched everything from how long to pressure cook four different varieties of beans to 12 varieties of chili blends. We are actually three years into the making of this particular chili recipe."
Just as dedicated were the ice carvers on hand, both professional and amateur, who had four hours to create their unique designs that included killer whales, an airplane, swans, fish and the art of Canada's native aboriginal people.
Harold Sawatzky a professional ice carver living in the Vancouver area, made the trip to Qualicum Beach for the first time and was impressed with the competition. He said he got into the art form while trying it out for fun during a boat cruise. A fun hobby has now become a full-time job as his home studio is a 40-square-meter freezer that Sawatzky and one employee use to make their unique creations.
He said his work, which he sells to weddings, corporate functions and other events, range from 250 to thousands of Canadian dollars for each piece.(1 Canadian dollar equal to 1.03 U.S. dollars).
"It's always that little thing that adds a special elegant touch to corporate events and weddings. Everything is custom. I do practically nothing the same from one sculpture to the next, it's always different," Sawatzky said.
"(Today) I' m making an orca, but with a Haida theme to it. I figured, you know, give credit to the art form that' s indigenous to Vancouver Island and B.C. in general."
With flatulence often being a particular nasty byproduct associated with chili and its abundance of beans, Roger Griffiths, chairman of the Fire and Ice Festival, said undoubtedly there would be a lot of natural gas passing through the town that night.
"Actually I go home. I don' t taste it (the chili) because I' m so busy during the day. So I' m not quite sure what happens. Probably a lot of people not speaking to one another," the Englishman said.
