An anti-semitic ice sculpture in Quebec City...

Gee, what next???

The Quebec City Carnaval is apologizing for an ice sculpture of a traditional Ukrainian Christmas scene after a visitor complained that it included a stereotypical bearded Jew in a skullcap, holding a bag of money.

"We don't want to agree that we shouldn't [have included the sculpture], because the fact is we have done that. It was a good intention. It's a Carnaval. It's a party, you know?" said Annick Marchand, the Carnaval's director of marketing.

"But if we had known [about the portrayal of the Jew], probably the committee would have stopped this, would have refused this thing. The thing we have to remember is next year we will pay good attention to this kind of situation... We have to be careful next year. That's a good lesson for us," Ms. Marchand said.

Jake Burack, a professor of child psychology and special education at McGill University in Montreal, made the complaint after visiting Carnaval last weekend with his wife and children.

"The face itself was nice enough, but it was so classic, the hunched shoulder, the big crooked nose," he said. "The kids, they're 11 and 8, they saw how upset my wife was. We explained to the kids why we were upset, that these depictions of Jews were very detrimental.

"The more I looked at it, the more it just reminded me of the caricatures you see in Germany before the war, this stereotypical European portrayal of Jews," he said