Le temps des sucres

In late winter, when days warm above freezing and nights still drop below, maple sap begins to run. Families and communities gather at the cabane à sucre (sugar shack) to boil sap into syrup and share a heavy seasonal meal — eggs, beans, ham, pancakes, all drowned in syrup.

The signature treat is tire sur la neige: hot syrup poured in ribbons onto clean snow, then rolled onto a wooden stick as it sets into soft taffy. The practice descends from Indigenous knowledge of tapping maples, adopted and ritualized by settlers, and survives today as much as a social season as a food process — a marker that winter is finally breaking.