I check the call display and panic sets in. It is 4:30 in the afternoon and I see my parents’ number. My parents are frugal; their long distance savings plan does not begin until 6 p.m. Of course they did not leave a message. I brace myself for the worst and, with shaking hands, dial their number at the farm. My dad answers, “Hello?”
“Hi Dad,” I say quickly. “What’s wrong?”
Dad responds with some urgency in his voice. “Nothing is wrong, but I’ve tapped some trees and would like to do a few more. But now that I’m the only one left to do it, I need a bit of help.”
* * *
A few hours later I’m on the road with my husband Jack, making the three-hour drive to the family farm in Sauble Beach, Ontario.
On the way, I think about my time at the sugar bush when I was growing up. During my childhood, in the early part of the season when there was still snow on the ground, Dad would hitch Nell, our Clydesdale, up to the sleigh and off we would go to tap trees. Later we’d return to gather the sap and then boil it down to make maple syrup. Finally Nell got too old, and Dad replaced her with a tractor.
As I grew up, I was able to trek to the sugar bush myself wearing snowshoes. And when I became a parent myself, I brought my children to the farm every year during March break to help their grandfather and enjoy the fresh maple syrup.
We arrive and we’re out first thing the next morning. The sun is shining brilliantly on the small bits of snow that are remnants of a long hard winter. I walk to the sugar bush rather than riding in the tractor with Dad. I want to breathe in the fresh early spring air. I notice the walls around the fire pit are crumbling and old, but the sap pans are still sitting there waiting to boil down the maple sap. I see the wood neatly piled and ready for the fire, and then I see sap buckets hanging from the maple trees. Dad is already there.
I’m excited because, for the first time in my forty-something years, I get to use some of the tools. The rule was that only adults use hand tools, so I feel as if I have finally grown up. Dad’s view on life is that you don’t fix what isn’t broken, so the tools are probably from the early 1900s.That’s okay; they still work. It’s all part of the tradition.
I take the brace and bit, a hand tool used to drill into wood, and drill my first hole into a maple tree. I insert the “spile,” which acts like a tap, and hang a sap bucket on the hook. What I hear is music to my ears, the “ping, ping, ping” of maple sap dripping into the metal bucket. I watch Dad as he hangs a yoke around his neck with a pail hanging from each side. He carefully walks around to the trees that have already been tapped and gathers the sap to pour into the pans.
“It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t have a drink of fresh sap,” says Dad. It is too sweet, but I relish the taste and the tradition. Jack too, savours the taste. It makes me happy to see Dad having his first sip of the season. He has a look of utter contentment on his face.
Soon we have enough sap to start “sugaring off.” It is a bit later in the season so there really isn’t enough snow to make maple syrup toffee on the snow. Nevertheless we’re going to have fresh maple syrup at some point this weekend. We stoke up the fire and, with his accurate eye, Dad determines there are forty gallons of sap in the pan, enough for a gallon of syrup. It takes hours, but eventually I can smell the fragrant maple aroma as the sap slowly boils down into syrup.
Finally the syrup is ready to be poured into a huge kettle, and taken to the house so Mom can finish it off. They have graduated from the old woodstove to an electric one, but the process is still the same. Mom stands there skimming off any foam, and eventually she strains it through cheesecloth. Finally, she pours the delicious fresh maple syrup into heated sterilized jars.
We are almost ready to eat and I am so excited! Am I hungry? Not really, but I am so happy to see my dad enjoying what he loves to do. I love to see his expression when he has his first taste of the finished product. My aunt Theresa, Dad’s sister, calls from the next farm and says, “Bring the syrup, I’m making the pancakes.” She doesn’t have a fancy griddle, just the top of her old wood stove, which is greased and ready when we get there. The pancakes are not from a mix; she has made them from scratch. This special, traditional meal is delectable and filled with love. Dad comments, as he does every year, that “this will probably be the last year that I make maple syrup.”
“Oh you say that every year,” replies Aunt Theresa. “You’ll be making maple syrup until you die.”
* * *
It has been a long day at work and I’m trying to get the key into the lock. I hear the phone ringing, and my arms are full with a briefcase and a toddler. I get into the house, put Matthew down, and race for the phone, getting there just before the ringing stops. It is my cousin Earl, Aunt Theresa’s son.
“I have bad news, Nancy,” Earl says gently. “Your dad passed away this afternoon.” Two weeks to the day from Dad’s initial phone call, he is gone. I think he knew the end was near, but the memories of the joy he had in that one last sugaring off will stay with me forever.
~Nancy Loucks-McSloy
London, Ontario
Into the Wild
I have vaulted over an immense land which is both forbidding and beautiful and it took my breath away. There are no people more fortunate than we Canadians. We have received far more than our share.
~Marc Garneau
Storyteller Lost and Found
Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.
~Sue Monk Kidd
My parents met in a mushroom factory in Dublin in the early 1950s. They married, took a boat ride to Canada, which they called their honeymoon, and settled in Toronto. Five kids later we had our own pew at St. Patrick’s Parish and were living in “Cabbage Town” in Toronto’s “Inner City.” We never met a relative while we were growing up as they were all still in Ireland and wondering if we were out of our minds living in igloos in Canada. Our friends told us my parents spoke funny and they could not understand a word they were saying. I would tell them my parents were Irish, they would ask what that meant and I would have to say I did not know. But, I thought it had something to do with having to go to church all of the time, and eating lots of potatoes, while my friends were out playing, eating pizza, or sleeping in.
When I finished high school I took a job with the Hudson’s Bay Company. They shipped me to the Arctic to trade furs with the Inuit people who lived there. It was very cold and dark for six months of the year and I felt very alone, just as my parents must have felt coming to a new land. Most of the Inuit could speak basic English, which was good because their language sounded like Gaelic to me. There were very few non-native people there, and I longed to spend time with the Inuit and learn their ways. I found them to be a very likeable lot, not just because they never ate potatoes, but because they were always smiling and knew how to laugh at themselves. Many generations lived together under the same roof. They also knew exactly who they were. That’s what I wanted to know myself: who I was and why I felt like a cultural orphan.
One spring day a group of old men knocked on my door and invited me on a hunting trip. They said we would be gone for three days hunting caribou, which I did not believe, because we had no tent or other equipment. We travelled the entire first day and half the night as, it being spring, it never got truly dark. When we finally stopped it was only because a blizzard had blown in and we had to build an igloo before we froze to death. For two days we sat in the igloo waiting out the spring storm. Two days!
To entertain us the old men took turns telling stories in both languages. The adventures went on for hours — danger, narrow escapes, great feats of survival and daring. And ancestors gone but never forgotten. Suddenly all became quiet. Everyone turned to me. It was my turn to tell a story.
I told them of my parent’s journey leaving poverty behind in Ireland to find a new life in Canada. I told them of huge cities they could not imagine. I told them of never knowing a relative or
knowing who “My People” were. I talked for hours. They looked at me and at one another in disbelief. One old man said it was wrong to let my people be forgotten, because our ancestors live on only if they are remembered in our stories. A long discussion ensued in the Inuit language after which the men broke into gales of laughter. (I was hoping they were not laughing at me). I was also thinking it would be nice to have a hot plate of mashed potatoes right about now.
I asked the old men to let me in on the joke. They told me their grandparents had told them about when white men came in great ships and killed the whales to take the oil. The whalers had taught them how to jig and introduced them to stories of the green island from which they had come. It was said that the Irish whalers were great dancers and even greater storytellers. The Inuit called them “Sag-Li-Oonaat” or “great liars.” The people held the Irish in high regard. The men agreed that it was wonderful to have a young “Sag-Li-Oonaat” amongst them once again, and would I take them hunting on the green island if I ever went there.
After the trip I spent the next twenty years in Canada’s north and now regale my own children and friends with stories of my adventures and the wonderful people I have met. The Inuit helped me find peace with who I was, where I came from and why. I am a descendant of the “Sag-Li-Oonaat,” the people from the green island. As long as I can tell stories, all those who I have ever met will live.
And that is who I am.
~John J. Seagrave
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
A Taste of the Wild
They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod; It was not good for the eyes of man — ’Twas a sight for the eyes of God.
~Robert W. Service, “The Ballad of the Northern Lights”
The rattling yellow bus bumped to a halt as it careened into the gathering area in front of Camp Wright’s mess hall. Doubtless the driver thought the four of us were out of our minds, taking fifty grade-six students into the wilderness at the end of January. Certainly that thought had crossed my mind more than once.
This was part of tradition at Ormsby Elementary School, though: three days in the wilderness in October, another three days in January, and three days hiking in the Rockies at the end of the year. If nothing else, these kids would leave elementary school with a taste of the wild.
The students grabbed their sleeping bags and backpacks and tumbled off the bus. It was their second trip here, and they knew the drill. Once they claimed the rest of their belongings from the luggage compartment, the boys headed west and the girls east. Little had changed since our last visit, except in January the world around us was white and black, with shades of grey.
With my teaching buddy, Anne, I headed toward the teachers’ cabin, tromping through the snow. The knob turned easily enough, but it took a solid hip check against the door to break the ice that had sealed it shut. I unrolled my down-filled sleeping bag on the lower bunk, then sat down and pulled off my mukluks so I could put on an extra pair of wool socks. Zipping up my parka, I headed to the door. “We’d better check on the kids,” I said. “I hope they remember their fire-starting from the fall; they’re going to need it.”
The only heat available would come from wood we burned in the fifty-gallon drum stoves in the cabins — rustic cabins with chinking missing from between the wallboards. Keeping the fires going through the night was critical, as the temperature was to dip to –30° C. We had worked on fire building, and trained the kids to handle axes and bow saws during the fall visit, but only a handful were truly skilled. Each cabin group had collected a bundle of firewood, but as I arrived to check the final cabin, the girls complained there wasn’t much left in the woodpile. I called Garry, the lead teacher on this expedition, and we went to inspect the supply. We stared in shocked silence; whoever had used the camp before us had neglected to restock the wood. Any other time of the year, it would have been just a nuisance, but in January having a good supply of wood was essential for survival.
Garry quickly rounded up a chainsaw, half a dozen of the strongest boys, and George, the fourth teacher. The group headed into the woods to scout out deadfalls they could cut up and haul back to camp.
Camp Wright, southwest of Athabasca in northern Alberta, at the tip of Narrow Lake, was used as a survival camp for Army and Sea Cadets. It was a spartan camp, but perfect for what we wanted our students to experience. There was a generator to provide electricity to the mess hall, but that was about it in the way of services. For many kids, the visit to the fall camp was the first time they had ever used an outhouse — a real outhouse with pit toilets. We brought an ice auger with us, as any water we needed, including drinking water, had to be hauled up the hill from the lake.
It was a wilderness camp carved out of the boreal forest, miles from nowhere, and we were reminded of its wildness every time we walked through the mustering area. There at the edge, just north of the mess hall, stood a balsam fir permanently scarred with the unmistakable claw marks of a bear.
With the short supply of firewood, the afternoon of our arrival was spent cutting, chopping, and splitting the deadfalls that Garry and George pulled out of the forest. Anne and I kept busy by checking to see that every one of the fifty kids had enough clothing for the extreme weather. This far north, darkness would be upon us in late afternoon. By the time the shadows had lengthened, the cabins were stocked with enough wood to last the night, and every cabin group had managed to get a fire going. When the supper gong clanged, the kids streamed into the mess hall for a well-deserved supper of bread and steaming chili.
It wasn’t difficult to convince our young charges to trek to their cabins after dinner and tuck in for the night. By the light of their flashlights, the kids donned layers of clothing and crawled into their sleeping bags. Stories were shared and jokes were told until all the exhausted children slipped into a deep slumber. The crackling fires gradually died down, leaving behind a heap of glowing coals to duel with the dropping temperature. We prayed the coals would win.
Sleep is a luxury teachers can’t afford when they are responsible for a group of students they’ve led into the wild. We took turns slipping out into the night to check that no one was uncovered. I had just returned from my midnight check on the cabins when Garry opened our door. “Come out, you’ve got to see this!” he called. “And go around and get as many kids to come as you can.”
We had no idea why, but we did as he asked.
About half the bleary-eyed kids slipped into their coats and boots, and together we followed Garry down the hill and out onto the frozen lake. We gasped as we looked up at the ghostly green glow above us. The glow morphed into dazzling bands of light — pink, green, yellow, blue, violet — swaying back and forth across the sky, like curtains in the wind. It was the aurora borealis, or northern lights, and they were putting on a show like none of us had ever seen. We stood there in awe, impervious to the cold, knowing we were watching something we’d never forget.
The morning dawned bright and clear. We had made it through the night, and although the temperature was still well below zero, the blue sky and sunshine lifted our spirits. It was a cold but wonderful day. I led the kids through the forest and across a beaver dam on snowshoes. With Anne, they skied across the lake and into the woods. Garry and George had them build a snow shelter called a quinzee. In the end, though, it was the unplanned that excited them. Rather than our carefully designed activities, they talked about working together to survive the brutal cold and tromping at midnight to the middle of a frozen lake to behold the mystery of the aurora. These kids had experienced a profound connection with each other and with the wild — a lesson that could never be taught in the classroom.
~Linda Mehus-Barber
Kelowna, British Columbia
Standing Bear
Regard Heaven as your Father, Earth as your Mother, and all that lives as your Brother and Sister.
~Native American Proverb
For twelve years I guided canoe trips thro
ughout Ontario and Quebec. My love of canoeing and camping is a large part of who I am. Whether it be feathering a paddle through a still lake to silently slip past a moose, manoeuvring through a roaring rapid, or lugging a waterlogged cedar-strip canoe over a steep portage trail, I feel at home in the Canadian wilderness. Many of my trips happened inside Algonquin Park, where much of the scenery is reminiscent of the work of the Group of Seven. I was always inspired by how well they captured “The Spirit of the Land” through their paintings. In fact, Tom Thomson Lake was one of my most frequently visited routes as we made our way from the access point to the interior.
One year, I was leading a group of twelve-year-old girls on a five-day trip at summer camp. With me I had two female counsellors, and Peter, a guide-in-training. Peter was eager to become a junior guide but was paranoid about bears. He and I were sharing a tent, and every night when I left the tent to make a final check of the campsite he would get concerned.
On the morning of day three we had finished breakfast, the tents were down, and the bags were all packed and ready to load into canoes. Peter headed toward the “thunder box” or “kybo,” a wooden box toilet that sat over a deep pit about fifty metres back from the campsite. He returned in a frenzy, barely coherent and sputtering loudly, “b… b… b… bear!”
I told him to calm down, so as to not cause panic in our group. I instructed him to continue loading the canoes. “It’s probably just a raccoon,” I said. “But I’ll go check it out.” I grabbed my hatchet, just in case, and set off for the thunder box. I seriously doubted Peter’s account.
But then I saw it. An enormous black bear was heading toward our campsite. I returned to the group and told everyone to finish packing and get all the campers into the canoes and out into the water. They would leave me one canoe and wait in the lake while I monitored the bear’s advance.