Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Welcome to Fascinating Facts and Tantalizing Trivia

A Hartson Dowd Column

 March 25, 2007

Long before the Europeans came to North America, the aboriginal people collected the sap from the sugar maple trees.

An old folktale attributes the accidental discovery of maple syrup to a family squabble.  One day, a squaw asked her brave to fill a cooking utensil with water.  She placed the pot at the base of a maple tree and returned to her wigwam.  The brave, angry at being asked to perform such a menial chore, gouged the tree with his tomahawk and left.  The next morning his wife retrieved the pot, and found that it contained enough liquid --- which she mistook for water ---to cook some venison.  She cooked the meat with the syrup, which proved to be delicious, and from that time many of us have come to love maple syrup.

For years, trees were tapped individually and sap was collected in buckets.  Children in many areas were given time off school to help with the drilling of holes, collecting of sap, and the boiling down process known as “sugaring off.”  The process of sap collecting has been modified in many areas, with plastic hoses joining together to bring the sap to one large holding tank.

Native people in many areas still celebrate with thanksgiving for the spring harvest.  Manitoulin and Parry Islands on Lake Huron are still the sites of special ceremonies that include prayers of thanks, good food, craft displays and lots of fun.

In Quebec, the Festival de la Cabane a Sucre is still a most popular event.  Some years ago, my wife and I were visiting with friends in “la Belle Province.”  We travelled with them south from Quebec City to the small town of Beauceville.  There, we joined a number of other syrup lovers in collecting the sap buckets and stoking the fire in the cabane a sucre, or the sap house, to boil down the syrup.  At noon, we enjoyed a wonderful feast of ham, eggs, potatoes, pancakes and French bread, all covered in hot delicious syrup.  There is wonderful beauty in the snowy woods and the whole family can enjoy this very Canadian activity.

On Canada’s East Coast, sugaring off parties are called licheries.  When the syrup is just at the point of turning to toffee, children (and candy-loving adults) scoop up the mixture on a big stick and then scrape some off each person on a little palette.  The syrup is licked like candy, but the East Coast being the East Coast, they eat salt cod and roasted potatoes to take the edge off the sweetness!  

On March 25^th, Greek Canadians don the traditional clothing from the early 1800s and celebrate their Independence Day with folk dancing and feasting.

In fact the day is a double celebration in the Greek community, as it is also Annunciation Day, the old Christian holy day celebrating the archangel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus.

It’s appropriate, isn’t it, that the beginning of life for our Lord should have begun in the spring, the time of renewal?

Hartson Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net