The Team. How the team started.

Theressa and Terry are on their annual pilgrimage to find big snow blocks that they can turn into works of art or something that isn’t a block anymore.

With a background in stone carving, it was suggested that she might be good at carving snow. Since that conversation in 1993, Theressa has carved giant blocks of snow across Canada in places as far as Charlottetown, PEI to Whitehorse, YK and many places in between. In addition to 2 national awards, including an Artists Choice at the 2008 Quebec Carnival, she has won a number of competitions at home in Saskatchewan. In 2012, Theressa, along with the rest of Frosty Tidbits, traveled to Harbin China and represented Canada at the Harbin International Snow Sculpture Festival. 2018 saw Theressa captain the team in Pontebba Italy and Kiruna Sweden. The team won the Artists Choice award in Kiruna. As of February 2022, Theressa has completed more than 70 sculptures.

Theressa has also completed several sand sculptures at the national level. She enjoys carving sand as there is less clothes to pack, not nearly the same tonnage of tools, and it is usually a whole lot warmer.

Theressa is an artist and an educator. In recent years she has taken on the world of computer digital art. She has begun to use the computer to produce works of digital art including photo composites, logo design, and 3-D illustrations.

Terry, who comes from a background of shoveling snow off of many different hockey rinks, does not have the same artistic pedigree as Theressa. His creative side began to emerge when he started designing websites in 1999.

In 2004, Terry was introduced to snow sculpture in Winnipeg when he followed Theressa to the Voyageur Festival. He started sculpting in 2006. Since that start he has worked on 30 sculptures.

He still shovels snow, only now instead of being rewarded by being able to play a game of ice hockey, he gets to find his inner sculptor while carving the big blocks.

Theressa and Terry make up the core team, but are sometimes joined by Carole Dagenais. Carole is our language expert … except in China!!! She claims to be part gopher because it seems that Theressa assigns her the “digging into or tunneling through” chores. I (Terry) think that Carole likes this part because she gets to be out of the awful weather we have carved in. She hasn’t confirmed this fact, but I volunteered one year and she said NO.

Carole got her start volunteering at the Festival du Voyageur in 1998. Since then, she has sculpted or assisted at every Voyageur festival since. Carole began working with Theressa and Terry at the 2009 Voyageur Festival. In addition to Winnipeg, Harbin, and Pontebba Italy, she has carved in Ely Minnesota, Breckenridge Colorado, Yellowknife, and Saint-Jean-Port-Joli Quebec.

A couple of years ago when we were planning to go to Harbin, we wanted something to identify us a Canadians so we went looking for animal hats. They were a huge hit with the photographers.

From left to right: Terry was the beaver – Theressa was the monkey – Kim was a moose – Carole was a caribou (elk, wapiti)

They have been photographed in front of the block, while walking through Harbin and even on the Great Wall of China.

The last 4 times we were in Winnipeg, we have been joined by Kara Tinkler. She has been a willing worker and has begun carving snow as a lead artist on her own blocks in Winnipeg.