instruments, plastic tubing, and central evaporator plants replaced the old skills and equipment.
Unfortunately, over the years, many sugar bush owners tried to circumvent the long and tedious steps involved in the
harvest and refinement of the sap, and they began to look for ways to avoid the tapping, collecting, evaporating, and filtering process. As sap is about 97 percent water, it takes about 40 gallons to produce 1 gallon of syrup, so the combination of a labour-intensive industry and the costs of shipping the syrup to markets across Canada made this a very expensive product. Cheap, adulterated imitations began to appear, often composed of cane sugar and glucose seasoned with strongly flavoured, low-grade maple sugar or extracts of coal tar.
To stop these products,The Pure Maple Syrup Co-operative and Agricultural Association was organized in 1913.The goal of the Association was to assist the members to improve and market their products — and to educate the public. Sugar bush owners soon realized that an important part of public education was to open their properties (both bush and sugar shack) to the public. In the beginning, people were simply allowed to wander around, see how much was involved in this long, slow process that is compacted into a very short time (mid-March to mid-April), and hopefully buy gallons of syrup before they left. It wasn’t long, however, before the industry began to realize how fascinating this glimpse of the process was to the general public, including teachers and school classes, visitors from other parts of the continent or abroad, where sugar maples do not grow, and special interest groups.They saw the potential to educate in a broader sense, and perhaps even turn a profit at the same time.
Many sugar bush owners thus developed a complete package visit — a ride into the bush on a sleigh pulled by horses or a tractor, a tour of the operation using both pioneer methods and the latest technology, tastes of sap and finished syrup, and then, in many cases, a chance to take part in an old-fashioned celebration. Included in the last might be a table spread with an array of food: ham basted with maple syrup, baked beans sweetened with maple syrup, maple tarts, and maple sugar pie, all containing those important ingredients, maple syrup or sugar.There might be the opportunity to drop the thick syrup into the fresh snow so that it hardens and becomes a delectable morsel. Sometimes, the afternoon or evening celebration ended in dancing.
Many artifacts, such as hand-carved moulds, spiles, sap buckets, and cast iron pots, survive as mute witnesses to this Canadian tradition, an institution as well as a food source. In addition, almost every Canadian cookery book in every Canadian kitchen contains recipes using the sweet sap of the maple.
Catharine Parr Traill suggested this treat in The Canadian Settler’s Guide in 1855:
Maple Sugar Sweeties
When sugaring off, take a little of the thickest syrup into a saucer, stir in a very little fine flour, and a small bit of butter, and flavour with essence of lemon, peppermint or ginger, as you like best; when cold cut into little bricks about an inch in length. This makes a cheap treat for the little ones.
Maple Tarts
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup raisins or currants (soaked in boiling water and well drained)
Mix ingredients well and fill pastry-lined tart tins about two-thirds full with the mixture. Bake at 350ºF for about 20 minutes.
Maple sugar pie is a favourite with French Canadians everywhere. Here is a very basic recipe for it:
Maple Sugar Pie
1 1/4 cups maple sugar
3/4 cup cream
2 well-beaten eggs
1 tablespoon butter
pastry for a 9-inch single crust pie
Cook all four ingredients in a double boiler until thick. Cool. Pour into the single, unbaked crust. Bake at 350ºF for about 10 minutes, lower the temperature to 325ºF and continue to bake for about 50 minutes. Cool and serve.
Signs of Spring
You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy.
“Saki,” pen name of Scottish writer Hector Hugh Munro
If we in modern Canada welcome spring with open arms, consider the emotions of our ancestors when those first signs appeared — whether in the sky, the streams, the forests, or the fields. Earlier generations of Canadians were longing not only for fresh food but also for plants that could be used as remedies to restore them to good health and to replenish their depleted medicine cupboards. Whether First Nations or newcomers, they had endured an endless winter of dried or frozen foods that had somehow survived in storage, but many of them were well aware of the deaths among their neighbours and friends in late winter and early spring from diseases now known to have been caused by vitamin deficiencies. How welcome were those first tiny, green shoots of rhubarb (pie plant to our ancestors), asparagus, fiddleheads, dandelions, and other edible plants that today we consider weeds, as well as the early herbs that braved the melting snow.
From region to region, that special something that is a harbinger of spring often varies widely. In Eastern Canada, one of the most important signs is the fiddlehead, as the tiny, curled frond of the Ostrich Fern is commonly called. Fiddleheads grow in many parts of eastern Canada as well as in Quebec and Ontario in early spring after the annual freshets have subsided, and they have now become a favourite with gourmets around the world.
When the first Europeans arrived in Canada, the Maliseet (Malecite) First Nations were living in the river valleys of southern New Brunswick and southern Quebec. These natives utilized every aspect of their environment to improve their way of life, including using local wild plants for food, medicines, and dyes. They not only harvested and ate the Ostrich Ferns that they called mahsos, but they also painted pictures of them on their birch bark canoes and wigwams, showing the high regard that they had for this plant as a medicine and as a food. The natives taught the newcomers how to hunt for this delicacy along the riverbanks after the floods had subsided in early spring.There were, and still are, among the natives of New Brunswick, many legends about them, and if you are very quiet while you search, you can actually hear the ferns growing as they push aside twigs, branches, and dried leaves to emerge from the damp earth.
For the United Empire Loyalists arriving in Eastern Canada over two centuries ago and desperately searching for food in an alien land, fiddleheads provided a means of survival. Peter Fisher, writing in Sketches of New Brunswick in 1825, captures that desperate search for food:
The men caught fish and hunted moose when they could. In the spring we made maple sugar. We ate fiddleheads, grapes and even the leaves of trees to allay the pangs of hunger. On one occasion some poisonous weeds were eaten along with the fiddleheads; one or two died, and Dr. Earle had all he could do to save my life.
Fiddleheads need only a little trim, a rinse in cold water, and a short sauté in butter to be ready for the table. The search for fiddleheads still goes on to satisfy a growing Canadian and international demand, and as the plant has not been successfully cultivated in other countries, it remains a North American celebrity.
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