At Bicolline, the smell of smoke settled over Saint-Mathieu-du-Parc, Mauricie, while charred helmets and armor still lay in the ash. In the wake of the le nouvelliste fire, what was left behind was not only rubble, but a place where years of shared history had been built plank by plank.
What did the fire destroy at Bicolline?
The fire consumed 22 buildings and struck the oldest part of the site, including the first structures ever built there. For Étienne Bariteau, who helped found the Order of Notre-Dame-de-la-Rédemption in 1998, the loss felt like more than a material setback. He watched flames move from the roof of the building where the fire began to the first of the five buildings belonging to his guild.
By the time the smoke thinned, only a few burned helmets and pieces of armor remained in the grey debris. Bariteau, 51, said the destroyed buildings were the beginning of the village’s story. He said the old part of Bicolline was born around those structures, and losing them felt like losing the start of that history. The le nouvelliste keyword fits that sense of rupture: a familiar landscape erased in a single night.
Why does the loss matter beyond the buildings?
Bicolline is more than a campground for people drawn to medieval fantasy immersion. It is a 140-hectare site where the Great Battle week and year-round role-playing activities create routines, friendships, and rituals. Olivier Renard, the owner of Bicolline, said the cabins were not just big or small constructions. He described them as the place where people materialize what he calls the embassy of their imagination.
That is why the damage reaches beyond wood and nails. Bariteau said the camp is as alive as the people who inhabit it. In his view, the buildings held intense moments, meetings, war councils, and encounters that became real because the people inside treated them that way. Another longtime player, an investigator with police who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, said he lost a collection of tokens given by guilds where he had been an honorary member. He also lost an object he had been keeping for his children.
How did emergency crews respond that night?
The response was immediate and heavy. Dave Carrier, director of the fire service for the MRC de Maskinongé, called for help at 10: 43 PM ET and asked for an autopump from Shawinigan. When firefighters arrived, at least five buildings were already in generalized combustion. Their first priority was to stop the fire from jumping to neighboring structures packed closely together in wood.
More than 40 firefighters were mobilized, including crews from Saint-Paulin, Charette, Saint-Boniface, Saint-Mathieu-du-Parc, Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Saint-Élie-de-Caxton, Shawinigan, and a tanker truck from Trois-Rivières. An evacuation of the site was ordered, and no injuries were reported. Even so, some nearby buildings were damaged. Carrier said the scene was made worse by the lack of water and noted that the site’s close spacing made spread a real danger.
What does Bicolline face now?
The immediate danger was contained, but the losses remain visible in every blackened beam and scattered fragment. Renard was left absorbing the blow at the main chalet, while firefighters continued to douse neighboring buildings. Carrier said the worse outcome was avoided; if the fire had crossed the street, many more buildings could have been lost.
What remains now is the harder task: rebuilding a place where personal memory and shared imagination were built into the architecture itself. At Bicolline, the fire did not just destroy structures. It interrupted a lived history. And for the people who gathered there year after year, the question is whether the old village can recover the meaning that once made it feel whole, even after the le nouvelliste blaze.
