Tapping trees for maple syrup goes back generations

Opinion

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This article was published 10/04/2015 (3831 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MCCREARY — Retired Mountie Bob Gass has tapped trees for maple syrup since he was a kid growing up in New Brunswick, as did his parents before him and his grandparents before them.

But aboriginal people were tapping first and taught colonists such as Gass’s British ancestors, who arrived in Canada in the 1820s. There are still families who tap maple trees at Ebb and Flow First Nation, on the western shore of Lake Manitoba, as well as other First Nations people around Manitoba, Gass said.

“The Hudson’s Bay (Co.) records show it traded with the natives for maple sugar,” he said. In fact, maple sugar — aboriginal people made maple sugar bricks, not syrup — was the second most common trade item between aboriginal people and nearby Fort Dauphin after furs, according to information he obtained from the fort museum.

Gass was out checking his trees this week in preparation for Saturday’s third annual Maple Syrup Festival in McCreary, on Highway 5 on the eastern edge of Riding Mountain National Park.

“Hear that dripping? That’s the sound of money. That’s why I’m smiling,” he said, navigating through his forest of maples.

Gass owns a 12-acre forest at the foot of the park, the most prominent feature of the Manitoba Escarpment that diagonals across Manitoba. “People always ask, ‘Why do your maples grow so big?’ “

It’s because they grow in an alluvial forest, an area where melt and rainwater wash soils down from the Riding Mountain slope onto the plain below. Manitoba maples love it. Maples love moisture and can be generally found around lakes Manitoba and Winnipegosis, as well as shorelines of creeks and rivers, Gass said.

Gass is probably the largest single producer of maple syrup in Manitoba today, tapping more than 1,000 trees per year. The Trappist monastery at Holland taps a similar number of trees. He knows people at Richer who tap, as well as at the Deerboine Hutterite Colony near Brandon.

And, of course, people around St. Pierre-Jolys always tap for the town’s Sugaring Off Festival, which is also this weekend, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

‘Hear that dripping? That’s the sound of money.

That’s why I’m smiling’

— Bob Gass, who has tapped trees for maple syrup since he was a kid

The McCreary Festival runs from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, starting with a breakfast where everything from pancakes to potatoes has maple syrup. There will be horse-drawn wagon rides into the tapping forest and other entertainment for kids. The Asham Stompers, whose leader, Stan Asham, grew up just down the road in Kinosota, perform in the evening.

Gass started tapping back in 1988 while still an RCMP officer. He built a sugar shack for processing the syrup — evaporating most of the water content — in his backyard. Eventually, other people in the area picked up the hobby. There have been from 15 to 20 people tapping maple syrup here. About a half-dozen are tapping this year for the festival. That includes Claude Desrosiers, who will have his maple-butter spread for sale, and Bernie Wiens.

Gass, 62, enjoys spending quiet time in his forest but concedes bears have a sweet tooth, too, and he’s had hundreds of encounters. Riding Mountain has the highest concentration of black bears in the country.

“My sister was with me one time, and we could hear pails clanking over on the far side,” he recalled. They ambled over and discovered three cubs, “about the size of teddy bears,” banging around his pails and licking the insides.

Then they saw the mother. She was on her hind legs holding onto a tree, as though doing a slow dance. Gass didn’t know whether to back away or cut in. “She was just looking at us.”

Gass is experienced with bears and knows better than to run. “First their teeth pop, then they start snarling and rocking side to side,” when they view someone as a threat. But this mother did none of that, and Gass and his sister just backed away slowly.

Bears are still hibernating at this time of year — they wait until things green up — so Gass only encounters them at the end of his season when it’s time to clean up.

Other frequent visitors include squirrels.

“A tree always has wounds, and lots of times you’ll see small icicles in the branches. That’s sap leaking away,” Gass said.

Sap-sucking squirrels have it for dessert.

The maple syrup is dark, sweet but with a bite, and a little wild — the way wild game differs from store-bought meat. His brand, Manitoba Maple Syrup, is sold at a variety of independent outlets including FortWhyte Alive, La Grotta Mediterranean Market and Crampton’s Market. It’s 100 per cent maple syrup, as opposed to some brands that add sugar.

The chemistry of the sugar in maple syrup is different, making it more digestible. “I have diabetics buying my maple sugar,” he said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca