Maple Syrup Festival

Feature

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Bruce Reinhart (L) and Kevin Klein, of the South Bruce Buckskinnners, sit around the fire with their children

For more than 35 years, the Saugeen Bluffs Conservation Area has hosted the annual Maple Syrup Festival where visitors can step through a portal of time into an era when the pioneers, coeur de bois and First Nations people lived off the land in Bruce County.

It was a time when everyone waited for spring and the running of the sap in the giant maple trees. Patiently, they would tap the trees and hang buckets to gather, drip by drip, the liquid that would eventually become sweet maple syrup.

Fur trappers would lay out their wares, teepees were sometimes the living quarters of not only the First Nations people but also the voyageurs who acted as interpreters and guides.

For many who take part in the Festival, it is a time to dress in the attire worn by the early settlers and explorers, who opened up Bruce County to the white people from Europe and the British Isles.

Today, the Maple Syrup Festival, is visited by hundreds of people over the two days celebration. The weatherman cooperated for the first day of this year's festival that began Saturday, March 28th, with bright sunshine and warm temperatures, and that will run through Sunday, March 29th.

An early furtrader and his wife

Cooking chickens over an open fire results in a lot of smoke

The 21st century is still evident

Claire & Carylie Rands (held by Uncle Doug Calhoun) liked the horses best

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28/03/2009 08:19 PM

Ed Maxwell and daughter Hanna

Richard & Gayle Allen cook dougnuts the old-fashioned way - they are then dipped in pure maple syrup

Metis Voyaguer, Gino Ferri and buckskin maker Gilbert Whitney (in the background)

John MacDonald and Eldon McDowell provided old-fashioned fiddle music

Bruce Reinhart of Mildmay with an original flintlock rifle

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