QUEBEC CITY, Quebec: Ti-Glaçon is back.
The friendly ice creature, who climbs out of the frozen St. Lawrence each December and walks up into the Lower Town to greet Christmas visitors, was spotted Tuesday morning among the stone houses of Old Quebec, frosted over and wearing the same long stocking cap he has worn every year anyone can remember.
His routine rarely changes. He takes up a position in a small square, poses for photos, and lets children knock on his pom-pom, which is solid and rings faintly, like a glass. Visitors from warmer places often try to hug him. He allows it, though his face goes cloudy afterward and takes about an hour to clear.
He doesn’t speak. Instead he writes in frost. Shopkeepers find short messages etched on their windows overnight, mostly compliments on their window boxes, and once a correction to the spelling on a café chalkboard that the owner says was, unfortunately, right.
The city has had an arrangement with him since the 1980s. He arrives with the first hard freeze and leaves with the first thaw. Every March he submits a request to stay through April, and every year a municipal committee reviews it, notes that he would be a puddle, and declines. He has appealed eleven times.
This year he has submitted a design for a refrigerated pedestal. It is on the agenda for the committee’s March meeting, which he attends every year, standing quietly in the corner, getting a little smaller as it goes on.
FTN BULLETIN: This report is fiction.