Is love sweet? “It’s written on the wall of the cabin, on a wooden board. It is written: “Here, it smells of love.” That’s exactly it, the sugar shack! Yes, it smells of love! says Réjean Bilodeau, a maple syrup producer from Bellechasse.
“The old cabins, you have to look around, on the boards, everywhere. Often people wrote. They were writing when the sugaring off had started. They were writing when the maple trees had been tapped. Other things too. It often gives ideas of lives that have passed there, in the spring. »
Inexhaustible about the world of maple, this maple syrup producer has spent thousands of hours collecting the history of sugar shacks. He went last summer to Vermont to acquire large iron cauldrons supported by three legs, of the type which were used at the beginning of the maple industry. “With us, these cauldrons have all been broken up and sold for old iron. It cost me a lot to get them, but I wanted them! These objects and some 200 artefacts from the history of maple syrup production are on display, starting this spring if all goes well, in a small personal museum that he has patiently put together at home, on the fringes of his sugar shack. It remains to inaugurate it. “It is first and foremost a personal passion. I put over 10,000 hours into it. »
Witnesses of a culture
“I’ve wanted to present the history of maple syrup production in Quebec for years, on the model of the ecomuseum. I tried to develop a project in collaboration with the municipality, then with the MRC. Everyone was interested, but they imagined that a museum must pay off, that it must bring in money. That’s not why we make a museum. It is our culture that is at stake. »
Very enthusiastic about the economic success of large companies attached to the world of maple, Réjean Bilodeau nevertheless considers that it is necessary to know how to put strictly economic logic in its place. There are, in his view, far richer purposes.
He therefore decided to build his maple eco-museum on his own land, on the edge of his maple grove on Rang de la Pointe-Lévis, in Saint-Damien-de-Buckland, a little east of Quebec City, on the south shore.
A strong symbol
When you think about it, says Réjean Bilodeau, “is there an image more closely associated with Quebec life than the sugar shack? Yet, he regrets, no one has yet protected, in the name of the community, even one of these typical buildings on our territory. According to him, memory does not have to be monumental. There is greatness in the fragile character of these buildings.
“The very old sugar shacks have disappeared. They were neglected. They are just “cabins”. The word says it. They were built with planks, with what we had on hand, as we could. The old ones that we still see standing today usually date from the 1950s. The floor is cement. It helps prevent the square of wood from rotting. However, it needs to be maintained. There are several that have been abandoned. They all crushed over time. »
The sugar shack is a strong image of Quebec
Some, very rare, are a little older still. Smaller, they are built directly on the ground, without a floor. “The square was low. To enter, you had to bend over. Inside, it was fine. The ceilings are of the cathedral type, in the cabins. The vast majority of these buildings have long since been abandoned. They have practically all disappeared, with a few very rare exceptions, maintains Réjean Bilodeau. For years, he has toured many old cabins in Quebec. He recognizes in their owners almost brothers.
How many of these buildings are left? Nobody knows. No inventory exists. It is to be deplored, for years, that none have been duly protected by the State. Nothing has changed anyway.
“None is classified”, regrets Gaston Cadrin, of the Group of initiatives and research applied to the environment (GIRAM). “No subsidy is granted to maple syrup producers to preserve, even on the fringes of their modern enterprise, the traces of past sugar shacks. Yet, it’s hard to imagine something more in tune with Quebec life, not to mention tourism. The sugar shack is a strong image of Quebec. This is an indisputable fact, maintains Gaston Cadrin.
Initially, as they are inscribed in the imagination, the sugar shacks were relatively modest in size. “It was about small family affairs,” says Réjean Bilodeau. “It was first of all fun with family, with friends. They tapped a few maple trees only. It was the great spring festival. We put out the music by mouth. For the sake of profitability, being taken today by finance, it is no longer possible, when one is a producer, to stick to that. »
cabin love
Over time, production increased. “We didn’t make syrup at first. The technology to do this did not exist. We were turning everything into sugar. In winter, we used it to make life easier,” says Réjean Bilodeau.
A few enthusiasts, completely on the fringes of the industry, perpetuate the tradition of the family cabin. Writer and screenwriter Tristan Malavoy is one of them. “With friends, I quietly take over the hut that my father has operated in the spring for forty years. The small family sugar bush is located in Saint-Denis-de-Brompton, in the Eastern Townships. “My father was sugaring off with his father. I have the impression of being in a continuity. We have such a good time there. I leave my problems at the entrance to the forest. It’s demanding, but it’s slow. The work at the sugar shack allows you to talk. Then, we are dependent on nature, on what it gives us or not. Sometimes, we rush and there is not much: it does not flow. And other times, he says, you don’t know which way to turn, although the rhythm is always very different from that which modern life imposes on us. The hut, for Tristan Malavoy, has nothing to do with commerce. “We only have 1,000 taps this year. We could go up to 4000. But that’s enough. It is absolutely not commercial. »
What is the oldest traditional sugar shack still standing in Quebec? Hard to say, says Réjean Bilodeau. One of the oldest, in his opinion, is that of Gaétan Nolet and Sylvie Corriveau. It is located in Buckland.
“There were several, old ones” in the area, says Gaétan Nolet. “We left them crushed to the ground. It is true that mine must be one of the few still functional. His cabin, built on dirt, probably dates from the early 1920s. “It is exactly as I saw it and my father saw it. She is on the right track. Here, for sure, it’s a solid one. There are no others like that in the area, still functional. »
For Gaétan Nolet, the cabin continues to be an experience that allows him to maintain a relationship with the country of his childhood. “I’ve always loved listening to the old ones. Before we relied on the “fourteen day weather forecast” to know when to cut, I remember that the old people relied on the moons. They also spoke of crows. When the crows arrived in earnest in the sky, it was time to go slash! With climate change, it’s not the same. »
Today, a commercial sugar bush has, on average, more than 16,000 taps. Gaétan Nolet and Sylvie Corriveau’s ancestral cabin allows the sap of 500 maple trees to be boiled. “We don’t have electricity. Everything happens by gravity. A few old-fashioned boilers have been placed near the hut.
“I have many memories of sugaring off when I was little,” says Gaétan Nolet. “For conservation, almost everything was turned into hard sugar. We were packing it. They saved with that, during the winter, on white sugar. The syrup was poorly preserved. “We put that in gallons, with paraffin to seal the cap. My mother used to do that. That’s what sugars are, too: our memories. »