1. From ancestral practices to industrialization

We have to go back to time immemorial to evoke the Amerindian tribes who populated Eastern Canada, long before the arrival of French settlers and Samuel de Champlain, founder of Quebec City in 1608. An early version of the origin of maple sap tells of squirrels licking the sap from broken branches in early spring, as it slowly drips down the trunk and is transformed into syrup by the warmth of the sun. Other legends tell of a woman from the Micmac tribe who, preferring to drink the hot maple sap, left it on the fire, turning it into syrup. Natives used their tomahawks to make a V-shaped notch into which they inserted a strip of bark to collect the maple water in a birchbark container. This harvesting system was later replaced by a metal piece, or goudrelle, which collected the maple water by gravity in a truncated-cone-shaped metal boiler (made of iron, then aluminum).

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