by Peter Carter photos: Pierre St. Jacques Ice Town, Quebec (part 3) As Bédard removes the fresh ice from the trough, he explains why he decided to set up shop in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. And why he, like Gagnon, hopes that the tomcod fishery is still in its infancy. Born in the Ontario-Quebec border town of Valleyfield, Quebec, Bédard had moved with his family to Oshawa, Ontario, and in April 1998 was on the verge of returning to his home province to attend teachers college. Sitting at his computer that April, he logged on to an Internet discussion forum and started chatting. Also logged on that day was Isabelle Gauthier, 18. Born and raised in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, Gauthier had moved to her own place in Trois-Rivières to finish secondary school. She was planning to earn a business degree and really thought that, like her brother who is an engineer, she would be forced to move away from Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade for good to advance her career. Family fun: André and Christine Théberge of Quebec City show their three young children how to jig for tomcod.       Coincidentally, Bédard had applied to attend a college in Trois-Rivières, and when he mentioned that he planned to rent an apartment on a nearby street, Gauthier took notice. “I could actually see his apartment from the window,” she says. “It was pretty weird.” Bédard visited Trois-Rivières, and then Gauthier—despite her parents’ protestations—visited Oshawa. The couple clicked. “The first or second year after we met, we thought it would be great to go ice fishing [at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade],” Gauthier says. “Eric really loved it and then wanted to go again and again.”      Last year was the couple’s first as professional outfitters on the Sainte-Anne River. With the help of Bédard’s father, André, they purchased an operator’s licence and 14 cabins from a retiring outfitter, and set up house in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. This year they’re going to be married in the grand old church—Quebec’s third oldest—which can be seen from anywhere in town, even from Bédard’s on-ice office. During the summer, the couple will repair their ice-fishing cabins; they eventually hope to take over her parents’ pick-your-own berry farm, just outside town. There’s not enough money in the ice-fishing business to make it their sole means of support.      Yet. “Last season,” Genevieve Savard is saying as she wheels her white Honda out of the Café de la Pérade parking lot and down toward the ice, “we had around 1,200 European tourists here. Some of them had never been on a frozen lake before and one of them asked me, ‘When are we going to get to the ice?’ and I said, ‘You’re standing on it.’”      Savard is one of two marketing and communications specialists working for the outfitters association, and her job is twofold. First, she wants to get the word out that Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade is an excellent tourist destination. With financial help from the Quebec government, Savard and her group have launched some ambitious campaigns designed to bring more anglers to town. And key to that aim is their second goal: to portray ice fishing à la Sainte-Anne as a fun-filled family activity. “Ice fishing traditionally means drinking, right? We have to change that,” Savard says. “The association is working very hard on this, believe me.”      In all the years that Quebecers have fished at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, nobody has ever fallen through the ice. A horse broke through many years ago, but the records show no fatalities, major losses or tragedy. Ask any outfitter or local resident, however, and you’ll hear about drinking and driving and all-night parties that left cabins in shambles. One woman, for example, tells about the time she and some teenaged friends had a huge liver bait fight. “We all had too much to drink and we started throwing the foie de porc around the cabin until we were all covered in blood…and it was up to the owner to clean up after us.”      That is precisely the image that Savard and most others want Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade to shed. “Alcohol is—how you say?—a necessary evil, but things are getting far better than they used to be,” observes local police officer Jean Lentigne. “This year, we were only called out to two fights on the ice. That’s the best ever.” Drunk-driving offences are also down, he says, suggesting that efforts to tone down the festivities are working. Says Lentigne: “We try to be dissuasive.”      Meanwhile, the outfitters are doing their best to attract families. “All those years it was a man’s thing,” says association president Guy-Paul Brouillette. “There were no women, no children. Men came to be alone, to drink and to fish. Now we want to change that.” PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4