THE MAPLE SUGAR INDUSTRY IN CANADA 



ITS HISTORY AND PROGRESS. 



The making of maple sugar and syrup has become but a memory 

 in the recollection of residents in many of the older parts of Canada 

 where even the wood lots have given up their places to cultivated 

 fields. The industry is still, however, an important one over large 

 areas in Quebec and to a less extent in Ontario and the provinces 

 down by the sea. 



Sugar making from the maple, which is confined entirely to this 

 continent, had a very early beginning. Before the advent of the white 

 man the Indian had learned to extract and concentrate the sap of 

 the maple tree. On the approach of spring the trees were gashed, 

 with the tomahawk, in a slanting direction and beneath the opening 

 made was inserted a wooden chip or spout to direct the fluid drop by 

 drop into the receptacle resting on the ground. The sap was caught 

 in a birch bark dish and boiled in earthen kettles. The small 

 quantity of dark, thick syrup thus made was the only sugar available 

 to the Indians and is stated by early writers to have been highly 

 prized. 



The early settlers from the Old Land learned from the Indians 

 the art of sugar making and indeed followed for many years their 

 crude methods of manufacture. Even yet primitive equipment and 

 methods are stated to be used in back sections of the country that 

 turn out their annual crop of dark, inferior syrup and sugar. 



For perhaps a century the white man followed very closely the 

 primitive methods of the Indian save the substitution of iron or 

 copper kettles for vessels of clay or bark. In the early days before the 

 timber acquired much value the axe continued to be used for tapp- 

 ing the trees, the sap was caught in wooden troughs and conveyed in 

 buckets on the shoulders with a sap yoke to a central point to be boiled. No 

 sugar bush was fully equipped without snowshoes which were fre- 

 quently found necessary in gathering the sap. The boiling was done 

 in large iron kettles suspended from a pole in the open woods in a 

 sheltered location with no protection from the sun, rain or snow or 

 the ashes, falling leaves, moss and bits of bark that were driven 

 about by the wind. 



The maple products made by this crude method were strong in 

 flavor, dark in color and variable in quality. 



