An icebreaker cruise ship set sail on last Friday for a frosty journey that will bring passengers along the St. Lawrence River, a new route that tourism officials hope will usher in a new era of winter cruises in the province. Ponant, the French company that owns the vessel, says it is the first international passenger cruise ship to venture onto the St. Lawrence River during the winter.

With a capacity of up to 245 passengers and 215 crew members, the Commandant Charcot has previously sailed to Antarctica, but this winter it’s embarking on its first trip through the Quebec waterway.

“Now the dream is coming true,” said René Trépanier, executive director of Cruise the Saint Lawrence, an association that aims to grow the province’s cruise industry.

About 150 people, mainly from francophone countries in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, set sail on Friday from St-Pierre-Miquelon, the French territory off the coast of Newfoundland. The first stop was Cap-aux-Meules, in Quebec’s Iles-de-la-Madeleine archipelago, on Sunday.

Marketed as a chance to experience Canadian winter, the trip includes snowshoeing in Forillon National Park, on the Gaspé Peninsula; ice fishing and snowmobiling in La Baie, in the Saguenay region; as well as ice skating in Old Quebec City. Trépanier said tourists will also encounter traditional Mi’kmaq and Innu culture as part of the excursions.

Le Commandant Charcot will embark on four other cruises through March, with the last of the season taking a different route, making several stops in Greenland before docking in Iceland.

“We’re really creating a winter cruise season in the St. Lawrence,” Trépanier said, adding that the association is in talks to bring other cruise operators to the region, including Montreal.

A developed winter cruise industry, Trépanier added, would boost the economies at each of the places where the ships dock, especially benefiting businesses that provide activities from dogsledding to snowshoeing. Such activities, he said, have involved “a little army of different suppliers in each of the ports.”

Le Commandant Charcot is scheduled to dock on the Gaspé Peninsula on Tuesday, then sail north to Sept-Îles in the province’s Côte-Nord region before making its way southwest to La Baie in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region on Thursday. At the end of the month the ship will reach Quebec City, its final destination.

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