The sugar season custom pays homage to the world’s French-Canadian historical past, because it stretches again a number of many years.
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Saturday marked the kickoff of sugar season in Vanier, with dozens of individuals scrambling via the snow in a sugar bush to faucet into tall maples, kick-starting the maple syrup manufacturing course of.
Over the following a number of weeks, roughly 500 timber will probably be tapped within the city forest and, with a little bit luck, maple syrup will probably be produced within the rebuilt Sugar Shack.
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It’s the primary “full” sugar season in 5 yr, stated Annick Normand, communications and advertising and marketing supervisor for Vanier Muséoparc, after a spate of disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and an arson hearth in the summertime of 2020.
Final yr, the brand-new sugar shack was open for maple syrup-themed meals, however a few of its tools for making syrup wasn’t but useful. This yr, although, maple syrup will probably be produced simply steps from the place the sap flows from the timber.
“It’s completed in a standard manner,” Normand stated. Buckets of uncooked sap are dumped into massive vats earlier than it’s pumped right into a boiler, boiled till it reaches the correct color and consistency after which bottled.
Vanier’s sugar shack is considered one of many few lively sugar shacks in an city setting in North America, she stated.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe was among the many first folks taking a faucet on the timber on Saturday morning.
“One of many nice issues about Ottawa is we clearly have a really city a part of the town, however, throughout the metropolis, now we have these superb locations,” Sutcliffe stated. “You don’t must journey very far to be in nature and do one thing like faucet a maple tree.”
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Brigitte Adm and her three-year-old son, William, have been additionally taking advantage of a cold morning within the forest, armed with pocket-warmers and battery-powered socks.
“It’s superior,” Adm stated. “I’ve lived in Vanier since 2015, and I’ve come to this occasion, however that is the primary time I’ve picked up a drill. I didn’t notice I is also tapping timber.”
Armed with instruments and complete directions, tree tappers barely break a sweat, she stated.
“All you need to do is present up, so long as you may take the chilly.”
The sugar season custom pays homage to the world’s French-Canadian historical past, because it stretches again a number of many years. Pères Blancs missionaries constructed the primary sugar shack in Vanier in 1939 and held the inaugural sugar season in 1940.
A second, bigger sugar shack was inbuilt 1960, however tree tapping was discontinued within the mid-Seventies, when the Pères Blancs departed and offered their land to the what was then the Metropolis of Vanier.
The custom began up once more about 15 years later, with the municipality resurrecting the sugar pageant earlier than handing over sugar shack administration to the Motion Vanier group group.
The sugar season runs till April 28, with massive teams booked Wednesday to Friday and walk-ins welcome on the weekend. There’s additionally a sugar pageant scheduled for March 18-24.
With information from Gord Holder
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