For most of his life, Michel Lepire created beautiful but ephemeral objects. The fruit of his labour would eventually melt or be shovelled or swept away. All that remained would be memories of the joy, awe and aesthetic pleasure that he gave to thousands of people at carnivals, fairs or beach competitions around the continent.
Mr. Lepire, a prominent Quebec City ice sculptor whose works were touchstones of his hometown's winter carnival, but who also applied his creativity to crafting reception centrepieces or giant sandcastles, died of a heart attack on Monday. He was 70.
He was a one-time restaurant maître d'hôtel who turned his hobby into a full-time career, wielding his customized chainsaw to turn ice blocks into menageries of northern animals, historic buildings or human figures.
After starting his own company in 1994, Mr. Lepire trained many younger disciples, with his son and grandsons following in his ice-sculpting trade.
"He was able to pass his expertise to others and he was known abroad for that. … He's marked and influenced a generation," said Charles-Antoine Girard, a member of the crew currently building the ice palace for this winter's edition of the Carnaval de Québec.
"He had such a good-hearted disposition," said David Ducharme, a sculptor in Winlaw, B.C., recalling Mr. Lepire's willingness to share his knowledge.
Mr. Ducharme worked for Mr. Lepire preparing the Quebec City ice hotel in the winters of 2003 and 2004. They would decorate and furnish the chapel, the bar and the bedrooms with designs such as polar bears or trapper-themed imagery.
When the ice hotel first opened in 2001, Mr. Lepire decorated the rooms, carving traditional Quebec furnishings such as armoires with diamond-point panels, grandfather clocks and a caribou head on the wall with antlers sticking out.
Mr. Lepire showed Mr. Ducharme how he sketched out his ideas, how he joined ice blocks and roughed them out, how he made sure the piece would properly reflect nearby lights and how he made sure more fragile elements were out of visitors' reach.
They recognized that they worked with a medium that would not outlast the winter but, Mr. Ducharme noted, "It's not meant to last. You just hope you inspire some feelings in someone."
While Mr. Lepire also worked with snow, sand and tallow, he had an affinity for ice, appreciating how it reflected light and how even a slight thaw could change its appearance. "It's a material that moves; it's alive. The lighting transforms the ice so the sculpture is never still, never the same," he said in an interview with the newspaper Le Soleil.
He actually didn't carve ice until he was an adult.
He was born in Quebec City on June 17, 1947, the youngest of three sons of Lucienne Laplante and Maurice Lepire, a grocery owner who later became a municipal employee.
As a child, he liked drawing, oil painting and, during winter, would sculpt snow in front of his parents' house, his wife, Charlotte Boucher-Lepire, recalled.
An ice sculpture carved jointly by Quebec City artist Michel Lepire and his son Marc in 2011.
Family handout
While Mr. Lepire won amateur snow-sculpting contests as a teen, he eventually made a living in the restaurant business, starting as a dishwasher at 15 and eventually graduating to the front of the house, as a maître d' at the Clarendon Hotel in Old Quebec.
During the 1970s, his skill at sculpting snow had grown to the point that he was taking part in competitions in Europe and China, according to Ms. Boucher-Lepire.
She said it was while at an event in Shanghai in 1984 that Mr. Lepire began taking an interest in ice sculpting.
By then, he was maître d'hôtel and catering manager at the Manoir du Lac Delage, a resort hotel north of Quebec City, near the Stoneham ski station.
He applied his skills to carving ice or tallow centrepieces for buffet tables.
But he was beginning to make a name for himself as an ice sculptor and was regularly commissioned to create works at the annual carnival in Quebec City.
Eventually he became a full-time sculptor.
At his home, he had his "freezer" – a walk-in studio the size of a two-car garage where he could work on ice at any time of the year. He also made his own ice, to ensure that he had a crystal-like, bubble-free material.
He worked mainly with chainsaws, modifying their sprockets so that the chain would run faster, because he found that slower cuts tended to fracture the ice.
While it was not uncommon for him to don his winter coats in summer so he could prepare a wedding centrepiece, he also spent time at the beach from April to November, taking part in sand-sculpting competitions. He won a world championship in 2003 in British Columbia and was a regular at the Fort Myers Beach festival in Florida because he appreciated its soft, fine sand.
In recent years, he had left the spotlight to his son, Marc, who has been in charge of building the traditional ice palace for the Carnaval de Québec. But the elder Mr. Lepire still kept busy with ice sculpting. "He never retired," his wife said.
He died on Monday while on his way to a business appointment at the Centre Vidéotron arena.
Mr. Lepire leaves his wife, Ms. Boucher-Lepire; his two children, Marc and Renée-Claude; and three grandchildren, Mathieu, Gabriel and Noémie. Both his son and his two grandsons, who are 21 and 15, are carrying on Mr. Lepire's ice-sculpting work.
Even as Ms. Boucher-Lepire was dealing with insurers and arranging her late husband's funeral, Marc and his co-workers were back readying the ice palace for the carnival, which begins in two weeks.
"Of course we have a deadline, but this is turning into a tribute to Michel," said Mr. Girard, one of the employees building the palace. "We are doing this because we are thinking that it is what he would have wanted us to do. … He died doing what he loved and that's what is comforting us a bit."