Unlike the Quebec one I visited when I was teaching at St. Jean, this one had no restaurant attached. In Mont-Saint-Grégoire, Quebec, we ate ham, mashed potatoes, eggs - all slathered with a generous serving of fresh maple syrup! And for dessert, maple sugar pie! It was a meal I will never forget!
Some Ontario sugar shacks serve pancakes with maple syrup. But this one simply produced maple syrup.
And unlike the traditional tapping of trees with buckets that I saw on school field trips with my children, this one had a web of permanent blue tubing weaving from tree to tree to collect the sap.
The season had just ended and the taps previously plugged into the trees had been removed and tied up.
The hole where the tap had been connected to the tree is visible just below and to the right of the blue tubing.
Inside the rustic building, a modern evaporator boiled the sap down to syrup. Wood was still used to heat the sap.
Our adventure started on our way to the camp - as we tried to find a dry path along the muddy road.
And ended as we maneuvered our way back, maple syrup in hand!
As we passed new housing developments down the road, I couldn't help but feel sad. How long will this rural retreat remain untouched as houses spring up around it? How many years before this piece of traditional Ontario is devoured by our growing city?
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