Quebec City’s one sweet treat
History isn’t the only thing to savour in La Belle Province — visit a sugar shack
In celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation, Christalee Froese is travelling across this vast land. Now she’s off to Quebec City to collect (and eat) maple syrup.
Warm pools of golden sweetness form spontaneously as steaming maple syrup is poured from tin pitchers onto cold snow.
We dive into the glorious goo with our wooden sticks, twisting the aromatic maple taffy in swirls until it is solid enough to be raised to our salivating mouths. The first lick is the best — sweet, warm, sticky and absolutely intoxicating.
Maybe it’s the closeness of the surrounding maple forest that has put us in this wonderstruck mood of maple syrup bliss; or perhaps it’s the sight of the many tiny silver pails hung delicately on the sap-supplying trees of this quaint rural Quebec farm. Whatever the spring spirit that finds us so joyous at this cabane à sucre on Île d’Orléans just 10 minutes from Quebec City, we are entranced by this authentically Quebecois experience.
From the moment we arrive at the ninth-generation maple syrup farm owned by the En-Tailleur family, we are transported to the mid-1600s when the first of these pioneers began boiling down tree sap to make syrup. The sugar shack, or cabane à sucre, is a product of First Nations and European ingenuity as early French explorers observed indigenous peoples making syrup from maple tree sap.
Today, the cabane à sucre is a place to celebrate both spring and Canada’s settlement culture.
By the time we are seated within the rustic log walls of the main hall, the refrain of the French-Canadian children’s song Alouette is being sung by the 100 or so visitors gathered here to eat, dance, sing and devour maple syrup on a stick.
“Still to this day, in my house and throughout my extended family on my mother’s side, maple sugar is used daily instead of refined sugar in baking and is in a sugar bowl for coffee,” says tourism specialist Nancy Dacres, highlighting the importance of maple syrup in Quebecois culture.
We feast on a bountiful traditional lunch of salty pork rinds, homemade pickles, meat pie and maple syrup-infused sausages and baked beans. Then our six-yearold daughter spies the wooden spoons placed next to the accordion-playing duo entertaining us.
As we pour rich maple syrup on our dessert crèpes and eat maple syrup pie, our daughter gets the hang of the rhythmic beat behind the French folk songs. We’re thankful we’ve travelled the 3,000 kilometres from the Prairies to experience this well-preserved Canadian tradition.
But the joy that is a familyfriendly trip to La Belle Province is only beginning as we immerse ourselves in the European culture of Old Quebec City — North America’s oldest walled city, founded in 1608. The narrow cobblestone streets take us from shops to restaurants to historical sights as we enjoy savoury crepes and Quebec cheeses, practise our French and admire 17th- and 18th-century buildings in all of their copper-roofed and stone-sculptured glory.
Surprise glimpses of the mighty St. Lawrence River take our breath away, as do the towering church spires, art-lined lanes and buildings of this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Even our hotel, the Manoir Victoria, is steeped in history, having been built in the 1830s and nestled conveniently inside the walls of the old city.