Role of maple products in Canada's history honoured
Posted Oct 22, 2009 By Chris Must
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Chris Must, Perth EMC
This team of Belgian horses owned by Murray Stead of Hopetown was offering rides to visitors at Wheelers Pancake House & Sugar Camp Oct. 17.
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EMC News - What's more Canadian than maple syrup?
Chris Must, Perth EMC
Vernon and Mark Wheeler say their maple heritage museum houses the most extensive collection of maple artifacts in the world. A Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaque commemorating the production of maple products as an event of national historic significance was unveiled beside the museum Oct. 17.
According to Mark Wheeler, visitors from all over the world come to his family's pancake house and sugar camp, and "when they think of Canada they think of maple syrup and Mounties."
The role of maple syrup and other maple products in Canada's history and the development of the country's economy was formally recognized Saturday, Oct. 17 as the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada placed a plaque at Wheeler's Pancake House.
"I see this plaque as a great tribute to the sugar makers of the past, the future and today," said Vernon Wheeler, who has been making syrup on the property at McDonalds Corners since 1978.
MP Scott Reid, unveiling the plaque on behalf of Jim Prentice, environment minister and minister responsible for Parks Canada, said the importance of maple products is reflected in the maple leaf's role as a symbol of Canada.
Canada has been the world's leading exporter of maple products since the early 20th century. In the words inscribed on the heritage plaque: "Their production and trade have played an important role in the economy of the Maple Belt, notably by providing supplementary income that helped ensure the survival of many family farms."
Also on hand for the plaque unveiling was Lanark Highlands Township Mayor Bob Fletcher, who paid tribute to Wheelers as "a real family business."
Mark Wheeler told the EMC the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board can recognize places, people or events that have played an important role in Canadian history. The board chose maple products as a historic event, and placed two plaques in Quebec and one in Ontario: at Wheelers.
"Maple syrup is an important part of Canadian heritage from the time of the aboriginals to the present day and has grown to be a large export industry to other countries," said Mark. "It's almost an emblem of Canada."
Wheelers was selected for the Ontario plaque because the site is home to an extensive museum of maple artifacts, said Mark. "They chose our maple museum partly because it's open year-round," he said.
The 730-acre forest where Wheelers is located has been used for maple syrup production since at least 1868, Mark said. Trees have been cut down, and the number of rings prove the age, together with evidence of tapping. The log building which houses the pancake house was built in 1996. The facility has been open year round to visitors since 1998.
"There was nothing here when we started," said Mark's father, Vernon. "We just grew from here, the children all love it."
Vernon, said the maple museum traces the evolution of syrup production from the aboriginal people who inhabited the region before the arrival of the European settlers. The museum represents not just Lanark County, but the entire world. Among the artifacts on display are sap gathering pails dating from 1800 to 1950. Visitors can also see a large collection of tools used to tap trees, and a collection of syrup jugs dating back to 1500. The jug collection is the second largest in the world - there is a larger collection in Vermont.
Complicated technology has never been essential to produce syrup. "In 1800," said Vernon, "you could become a sugar maker if you had an axe and a cauldron."
With continual advances in technology, production methods have become more refined, but maple trees must still be tapped, and it still takes 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup.
The world's maple syrup production is centred primarily in Ontario, Quebec and the U.S. states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
According to information from Parks Canada, there are more than 150 species of maple trees in the world, but only a few of the 13 species native to North America produce sap that can be used to manufacture maple products. In Canada, the six species with sap sweet enough to produce maple sugar and syrup are found in eight of the 10 provinces. However, only Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have enough sugar maples for a real maple industry. These trees offer a sap that is high in sucrose and produce the best yield of syrup through tapping. These four provinces are part of the larger maple region known as the Maple Belt, which also includes some parts of the northeastern United States and Midwest.
The aboriginal people who originally inhabited the region were knowledgeable about maple sugar. They knew how to extract the sap in the spring, and the products they made from the sap were used for trade. The colonists who later came to settle in the region learned to boil down the maple sap into syrup and sugar and acquired a taste for it. This activity became a yearly ritual to mark the transition from winter to spring and it was a time of celebration for friends and families.
During the 19th century, the United States was the world's leading producer of maple products, a position it maintained for several decades. In the early 1920s, the Quebec government set up a cooperative which was a major factor in breaking the monopoly held by American George C. Cary on maple products. In 1932, Canada became the world's leading producer of maple sugar and syrup.
