by Peter Carter photos: Pierre St. Jacques Ice Town, Quebec Welcome to Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, Quebec, the Tomcod Capital of the World Roger Gagnon lowers the wire basket of fresh-cut potatoes into the vegetable oil, lets the chips sizzle for about seven minutes, then dumps them onto the counter. After a quick sprinkle of salt he piles the potatoes onto a paper dinner plate and, in a graceful motion worthy of Martha Stewart, covers them with curds, a handful of slender chicken chunks and some peas. Then, and only then, does he add the gravy. You’ve not had poutine until you’ve had it in the Quebec village of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade.      Gagnon slides the aromatic creation into a brown paper bag, sets it on the counter and quickly slips into his parka. It’s minus 34°C out on this February day, and although Gagnon’s delivering the poutine just a few hundred metres upriver, he wants to get the trip over with quickly. So it’s out the door, down a few stairs and into his pickup, which he drives to a nearby ice-fishing hut. There awaits the customer, who had called in the order by cellphone. ABOVE: River madness: Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade’s on-ice village this past February BELOW: Village fare: Restaurateur Roger Gagnon serves up a “small” order of tomcod and chips.      Gagnon’s diner is located on the Sainte-Anne River—not near the river or on the bank overlooking the river, but on the river itself. Or more precisely, on about four feet of ice. In fact, when you drive into Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade any time between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, it looks as if the entire community is on the ice. As you veer off Highway 40 at exit 235 and onto the sideroad that takes you across the bone-rattling two-lane Jeffrey Alexander Rosseau Bridge, you see ice-fishing huts everywhere. More than 400 of them are crowded onto a narrow, two-kilometre stretch of the river alongside an array of restaurants, porta-potties and outfitter offices.      Every winter when the Atlantic tomcod arrive to spawn, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade morphs into an ice-fishing circus running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During the daytime, vehicles and people race around the ice along pathways connecting the on-ice buildings. Smoke curls from cabin chimneys, kids dart from hut to hut and there’s a skating rink, an outdoor playground and even a petting zoo. When the sun goes down, the lights inside the huts and the temporary streetlights strung up for the season create an explosion of sparkles across the frozen river. All through the night, anglers visit each other’s cabins to fish, drink beer and swap stories. The local police detachment, which doubles in size for the season, makes its rounds to keep trouble at bay.      For area businesses such as motels, bed-and-breakfasts and diners, this is the busiest and most lucrative time of year. In a typical winter, more than 100,000 anglers will descend on Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade—the self-proclaimed Tomcod Capital of the World—and leave behind more than $1 million for the local economy. Then, the week after Valentine’s Day, everything changes. The owners hoist their cabins off the ice and tow them, with tractors and trucks, onto dry land. They remove the heated outdoor public bathrooms. The hydro lines come down. The restaurants disconnect their deep fryers, their phones and their propane and head back to land, where they remain, closed, until the following winter.      Much of the village of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, population 2,150 or so, is like that: closed for most of the year. From March until December you could drive right past the place without even noticing it. All that catches your eye from the road are the magnificent 108-foot-tall twin steeples of the town’s 148-year-old Catholic church. A few beef and pork farms dot the surrounding, flat countryside, as do the occasional pick-your-own berry patches and—until they were put out of operation by local police—a few smoke-your-owns. Otherwise, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade is a two-tavern, one-church village of contractors, commuters and folks living off their Caisse de dépôt retirement funds. If people have jobs, they likely commute to Quebec City, an hour north, or to Trois-Rivières, 30 minutes to the south.      Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade is the kind of place young people move away from. People like Roger Gagnon’s 14-year-old daughter, Jachythe, who is now considering her future career options, and few of those choices involve remaining in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. Still, her dad, who was born in the village but moved around Canada working at different jobs before returning, is hoping it becomes a place where young people will stay. “There’s not much to do here now, but maybe we can change that,” he says. And he’s hoping that ice fishing, as practised here like nowhere else in the world, will speed up that change. PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4