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Episode 6 - The Goo so Good We Made It Our Flag
40 Plays5 months ago
Maple syrup was originally invented in pre-colonial times by goddamned maple trees as a transportation system for nutrients, hormones and other necessities of plant-life. Also, the stuff is worth more than gold and we're not kidding. We also try out a bunch of chocolate instead of doing the news.
Heritage Minute:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/syrup
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
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Transcript
Plane Mix-Up and Clarification
00:00:00
Speaker
So, we were talking about the C-series, or the Q-series, excuse me, jets, right? Well, they're prop planes, but yeah. What? The Q400s are prop planes. No, they were jets. They were basically a baby 737. Oh, then we were talking about different planes. Yeah. It's, um, Oh yeah. The Q 400. Sorry. You know what? That's a mistake in the last episode. So anyone who like goes in, like you said Q 400, I screwed up. The Q 400 is a bombardier plane, but there's CS 100. Was it a CS 100? What were they Boeing? I'm sorry. The CRJs.
00:00:38
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. C100. Yeah, so the last episode we meant to say the Bombardier C-Series, CS100, CS300. Those were the planes, which eventually became the Airbus A220s, which are flying. they were They're basically like tiny planes. They're tiny jets. They're not like you know not the sort of planes that you would fly with. um Taylor switched with fly, although maybe she got big enough she'd buy one. But they would be used kind of in between having, you know, a prop plane for, you know, going short distances and a 737. It was sort of to be in between. It was an area that Bombardier was trying to capitalize on that really only had a competition from, like, I want to say, you know, this is my ignorance of the entire space sector, but in Breyer and breer and ah
00:01:30
Speaker
Is it CMAQ? I think it's the name of, or COMAC, sorry, COMAC is the Chinese plane manufacturer. I think COMAC has a very similar plane, but I will say that Embraer planes are forever in a bad place for me, not for the plane itself, but for one of the most traumatic flights I've ever been on.
Unpleasant Flight Experience
00:01:47
Speaker
Oh, what's this? Okay. So I was flying from Toronto to Chicago. This was about 11, 12 years ago. Well, there's your mistake. Yeah, well, this was when I was a consultant and I was, uh, sitting in one of those, uh, Bombardier, sorry, in one of those Embraer planes in the, I believe it was like a two and one configuration. So it's a very strange plane to be on because like two and one is such a strange layout, but you know, whatever it's a flight between Toronto and Chicago, too big for a dash eight or whatever it is. And too big for, or too small for a seven three seven. So they ran these planes.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, like the margin for what's efficient for a Dash 8 or Q400 is like very particular. Yeah, it's a very strange niche. And so on this flight, I was seated with this guy who was an American and he kept taking poles of his vape on the plane. Oh, dear. Yeah, this is prior to like the airlines, you know, getting wise to vaping. It's like vaping is like, you know, like this plague that was affecting us.
00:02:56
Speaker
now, but it was a a problem then too. And like he got, he had like one of the stewardesses eventually like told him to knock it off and he's like, Oh no, it's electronic and all this sort of thing. There's no smoke. And it's like, and I'm just like, this sucks. But that wasn't really the problem. The problem was that he kept going on about conspiracy spirit, like conspiracy theories to me the whole time. And like he was a 9 11 trooper and was like, going on about like 9-11 to me while we're on a plane which is you know fantastic and like i'm just sitting in the plane and i'm just like i can't wait to get to chicago and this is like my second trip ever to chicago and you know in the middle but this time in the middle of winter as opposed to middle of summer and it was an okay trip but like i the trip was marred by this this idiot this vaping idiot who before the era of savory vapes who was kept spending the entire hour and a half flight telling me about
00:03:49
Speaker
how Bush did 9-11. I'm pretty certain that he probably was there during January 6th. I wouldn't be shocked if he were. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. American like conspiracy weirdos are are a strange bunch. Yeah. um I just wanted to say that actually Richard Nixon did 9-11 as in the 1973 assassination of Salvador Allende.
00:04:17
Speaker
I'm pretty certain that's not the 9-11 my vaping friend made while I was on that plane. ah It's the only 9-11 I recognize. It's a terror attack.
00:04:28
Speaker
All right, let's start this. Do you want to start the show? ah Yeah, sure. Fine, let's start the show. Let's do chocolate. One, two, three.
Podcast Introduction and Chocolate Tasting
00:04:40
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Shwittigan Moments podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tamarack. My pronouns are they, them, or it, it. And joining me today is Heather, and I use she or they, and I am also one of the hosts. We're not talking about planes today, right? We are not talking about planes. I can promise you there is no amount of planeage happening today. I promise you from this point on that there will be no content about airplanes. You can't promise that. Oh, okay.
00:05:15
Speaker
So normally don't we we do the news normally, don't we? If we do, but we have a special segment that you bullied me into. Yeah, it's time for a flashback.
00:05:27
Speaker
many, many moons ago, back in the fledgling days of this podcast, we did an episode about a lady famously known for her chocolate. She was the creator of this chocolate. thing Nobody, you know, usurped her name or whatever. um But yeah, if you tune to our first episode, we made a remark about Laura Secord chocolates. Yes. And we meant to talk a little bit more in depth about the chocolates, but Tamara, fill us in on why we didn't. Uh, while you texted me foolishly, asking if I should buy some chocolates, uh, which I said, Oh, that's a good idea. And then promptly decided to not do any of that. And, uh, and instead kind of just didn't. And. I feel like your memory of this is rather shoddy because the story I seem to recall is I messaged you saying, hey, Laura Secor chocolates are not easy to come by out in the West Coast. Would you mind if I went and bought a bunch of chocolate for us from their website and have it shipped to us so it arrives in time so we can talk about it during the episode?
00:06:39
Speaker
Yes, and I was like, I don't know, I've seen it around. Forgetting that my local grocery store has changed hands and is now just a Jim Pattison, like, save on. As opposed to a Jim Pattison nesters. It had more stuff it used to. Well, nonetheless, Laura Seacor chocolates are not easy to come by on the West Coast. um Generally speaking. They're very much an East Coast thing. Yeah. If you're outside of Ontario or Quebec, uh, you're not going to find this standalone stores. Like this is, this is Purdie's chocolate land. And yeah we don't generally get lower C core chocolates outside of Easter. Now, one big difference between Tamarac and I in terms of diets is that they're vegan. Yes. I am allergic to lactose.
00:07:27
Speaker
And while I'm vegetarian, I'm not above consuming milk because it won't kill me. That meant that ah due to recording being around Easter, I managed to get some Laura Secord chocolate that contained milk. And so I was going to talk about the Easter chocolates that the company puts out and actually are made available on the West Coast. So I did get my hands on a chocolate peanut butter egg. It was really good. Um, I don't really have too many remarks about it now because it's been several months since I consumed it, but I did make some tasting notes in preparation for the episode and I put down, would eat again, was a little too big. Uh, yeah, that's a, that's what I remember from being a kid is two things about Laura Secord chocolates. One, the chocolate bunnies are giant and very just I did buy one of those and consumed it. And it was also too much.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, ah so the other thing that I remember from it is that the chocolate made my mouth feel weird and also made me feel sick after eating some of it. Something I wouldn't find out the reasoning for until my late 20s. I guess mid 20s. So one of the things that worked out really funnily um was that on, I think it was like Easter Sunday, I found myself shopping at a Marshall's. And Marshalls, for those who are not familiar or not listening outside of North America, is ah TK Maxx, if you're in the UK or Ireland, for example. Out of the blue, while I was looking at dresses, I stumbled across a whole bunch of chocolate from Laura Secord. And I bought it immediately because it was vegan. And they also had some chocolates that were not vegan. So I grabbed some maple crunch, which it comes in the a 100 gram bar and a toffee crunch 100 gram bar.
00:09:13
Speaker
I finished the toffee crunch bar and I really liked it. I would eat it again if I were offered the opportunity to eat it. I have the maple crunch in my hand and I probably only finished 50% of it. The maple is going to be a bit of an interesting thing for this episode. admitted um It's a little bit on theme, which is why we're talking about chocolate. But neither one of us have consumed the dark chocolate. So Tamarac is at their home and I'm at mine and I have prepared some chocolate for myself to consume plus a glass of dairy milk. And I believe you have some oat milk. Yes, I have some 70% dark chocolate. I have a little tiny espresso and I have some oat milk. Oats milk? Oats Oats milk. Oats milk, governor. ah i i have so I have some oat milk.
00:10:10
Speaker
I have some oat milk. I have some oat milk. Say that in German again. I want to hear this again. I have some oat milk. What would be oat mint milk? It's oat mint milk. ah ointment well I have no idea what that would be. How do we want to do this? We just want to give everybody an ASMR and then I, or do we would just want to like eat it and then I edit it out in post? Ah, I have no idea how the fuck you're going to edit this entire intro segment. Good luck. wow Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Future Heather. Yes. Thanks. Oh I'm looking forward to this. Thank you. Thank you, Future Heather. Hey, Future Heather, you're the best. I i i love you platonically, but I love you. You do good work.
00:10:51
Speaker
Tim, I'd like to see some damn chocolate. Okay. All right. First bite. This is good. I wonder if I can take a selfie of this and then you can just put but this in me. It'll be the most interesting photo anyone ever sees on YouTube of me. Okay. Because the price tag was on it, I know how much it costs. For what it is, it's pretty good dark chocolate. I probably would stick to Purdie's because their vegan offerings are just way better. And also I'm a partisan hat. I'm going to drink my milk. It's really good with the oat milk though. I don't have any oat milk, I just have dairy milk. I haven't gone grocery shopping this week. So like the thing with a lot of dark chocolate is that they end up being, in addition to being very bitter, which kind of like sucks the moisture out of your mouth and ah off your palate. They also tend to be very like, like very dry, just in general.
00:11:36
Speaker
I feel like 70% is the best way to have dark chocolate. Yeah, it's the it's the it's the top end of edible unless you're a psychopath like me and 90% chocolate is so like a taste you enjoy. That shit is fucking bitter, but i I'm also fucking bitter, so whatever. the um but I've had 90% I think it was 90% and I want to say this was when it was still it was lint because this was back when Sears oup occupied the building that Nordstrom would occupy and that nobody seems to occupy now.
00:12:17
Speaker
And they had an entire lint stand and my girlfriend at the time and I were trying out like the various chocolates that they had available because, you know, you're in your early to mid 20s and you're just kind of being dumb about things. And I decided to try a sample of like, I think it was like 90%. I'm pretty certain it was that high up. The best way I could describe when you start eating chocolate at that point is it may as well be chalk. Yeah, it like it just sucks the moisture out of out of your palate. It's it's incredible. Mm hmm. So Laura's Secret chocolate, if I was living in Toronto, this would be fine. I know I would I would never, ever again go out of my way to consume chocolate from this company. It just luck had it that I would find this stuff sitting in a store in the suburb of Vancouver and spent seven bucks on it, which I think
00:13:10
Speaker
was too much is 300 grams of chocolate that's actually fairly reasonable there like i will say out of all the purchases like actually yeah two things one out of all the purchases i made the toffee crunch was actually my favorite um and that was only three dollars fifty but economically the uh 100 gram bars were more expensive than the um the 300 gram bars so Yeah, I think one of the things that we have in in B.C. in particular is because we have parties and like Rocky Mountain chocolate and stuff like that. Like we have a lot of companies that like cheap chocolate brands usually you don't know that Rocky Mountain is cheap, but like cheap chocolate brands usually don't really know what to do with a dark chocolate. I'm going to correct you on something. Rocky Mountain Chocolates American. Oh, well, fuck them.
00:13:58
Speaker
I actually have never consumed their chocolate before. They have a couple of locations, one that's um near my old place, but Purdy's has their factory not far from where I live. And, you know, I've been eating Purdy's most of my life. Like it was always a thing at Christmas time to get Purdy's delivered, um you know, as not delivered to me, but like my father would get delivered to his work. And my dad's not a person who eats sweets, like he'll eat, I think ice cream and fruit. And that's about it. Um, so you'd always end up coming home with, um, chocolates from, you know, various suppliers from, um, his company. And, um, yeah, like, like you're up on purties.
00:14:35
Speaker
And nowadays, like I don't eat as much chocolate or sweets now, ah but I will say this, I'm not that big on chocolate. The reason why I'm not big on chocolate is I kind of like, like it' it's a bit of a weird split, but like you always compare vanilla and chocolate together. They are both beans, so I guess it's kind of fair. And I kind of like vanilla more. You can do like vanilla has a lot more utility. Chocolate is a very like specific statement sort of thing. Yeah. Like that said, use it all the fucking time in baking. Uh, and that's like pretty much the majority of my chocolate consumption is, is putting it in baked goods. Yeah. And I find that chocolate works really well if you're doing baking, but as a standalone thing, I have less and less enjoyed it. Now that said, I was, when I made the remark about the Laura Secord, uh, peanut butter
00:15:28
Speaker
chocolate egg thing. I love peanut butter and chocolate. that If you want to talk about favorite flavor combinations, vanilla just gets overpowered by everything. But if you want to do something that works hand in hand almost all the time, it's chocolate and peanut butter. But my problem with the Laura Secord chocolate peanut butter egg was that the ratio was not right, like which is why I still love Reese's peanut butter cups. And that's garbage chocolate. Yeah, but it doesn't need to be good chocolate. It just needs to like have a little bit of that bitterness to go with the peanut butter. So that's that's the problem is that i' I'm a little bit spoiled on this, because being that I can go to the United States pretty easily, I can go to Trader Joe's, you know, the closest one being 45 minutes from the border.
00:16:12
Speaker
And I can go and pick up a box like ah you a small little tin box like a plastic container full of dark chocolate peanut butter cups. And they're like these tiny little ones that you could eat in a handful and you'll regret your life. Don't worry about it. Like you just will regret everything in your life because you've ate too many of these things. but they're so fucking good. I think it's the Nora brand, but there's a there's a vegan ah peanut butter cup that is fucking amazing. I thought those were made with sunflower, because I know exactly what you're talking about too. Oh, they might be? No, well, they're not they're not made with sunflower, but they they might have sunflower oil in them if that's an allergy problem. Maybe. I don't have any allergies outside of specific fruit, so you know if any... Okay. um
00:16:57
Speaker
you know, see sis assassins want to go after me just you can get me with most pitted fruit just as an FYI or a tiny bit of apple juice. Yeah, apple apples are something I'm allergic to. there There's your fun fact for everybody. If you're trying to kill me, just get me to drink like a four liters of apple juice, you probably will like cause my guts to like rip themselves apart. Oh yeah, like ah ah less than like 50 mil of of lot of like ah lactose milk and I'm fucking, my insides are my outside. Yeah. And I guess this, that we can end this ah on, I can talk a bit about the maple crunch. I'm going to eat one. No, I don't feel like it. I don't want to eat more chocolate. we We should just move on. I've had too much sugar. and anyone that People will be going like, oh, she's just, you know, she's being a baby, but like, I don't want any more sugar. I've had enough sugar today.
00:17:47
Speaker
So let's talk about Maple Crunch.
Maple Syrup Origins and Impact
00:17:50
Speaker
Particularly, let's roll the clip. And your majesty may be pleased to know that this year, thanks to the help of our Indian friends, we have produced some 30,000 pounds of this sweet gift. And what is this sweet gift? It's maple syrup. I well i i have such a love-hate relationship with maple syrup. I love maple syrup because I grew up on the like fucking fake high fructose corn syrup stuff. It used to be called Aunt Jemima. It's something else now. It's called Peril River because you know sort of like how they have like they kept you using the faces of black persons on their packaging for whatever stupid reason.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's what happens. And eventually we're like, this is kind of fucking dumb. And it's like, yeah, it is. Nothing says person who makes you breakfast every morning quite like racialized person.
00:18:50
Speaker
Anyway, so ah let's say you're a European colonists and you don't have any of your fancy pansy bees around. What do you do? Use onions. I'm not joking, actually. Onions. ah Yeah, onions and beet. But let's say you decide to actually, you know, talk to the people who already live here. ah You might discover that they've had this fantastic thing called maple syrup. So basically tree pee. Oh, oh, we'll get to what it is. ah ah So what is maple syrup? Well, maple syrup was originally invented in pre-colonial times by ah maple trees for transporting nutrients and hormones and other necessities of platinum.
00:19:33
Speaker
flat life It's sap. Very delicious sap. Very sweet. Sometimes, we'll get to why. If you ever like got sap on your hands and licked it because you're struggling with gender as a 10-year-old in the wilderness, ah you'll find that it is not actually that sweet. It kind of tastes like ass. ah That's partially because there's two kinds. there's the There's the zillium, which is on the inside of the tree, so not the stuff that you usually get accidentally on your hands and your mom yells at you while she's scrubbing it off your fingies before you're about to get photos with grandma. And then there's the pholem. The zillium is the stuff that basically takes nutrients from the roots to the leaves.
00:20:19
Speaker
And then the folum is the stuff that transports nutrients kind of all like circulates like post photosynthesis stuff around the tree. So this is tree blood. This is tree blood. Yes, the asylum is basically the like post respiratory or post respiratory blood. The folum is the pre respiratory blood or whatever. in this metaphor. Yes, it's tree blood. The mechanism of how it transports around the plants, ah as if you want to do a little like Wikipedia like knowledge hole that is short, but under an hour, I promise. Check out the Psilium Wiki page for the debate about how exactly this shit moves around trees, because it's strange.
00:21:04
Speaker
But yeah, Asylum Sap is used in a number of plants, as used by food for humans around the world for ages. ah Plenty of non-human animals eat the stuff. There's a whole bunch of like insects that bore into trees to feed off sap flows, see pine beetles and stuff like that. So like this isn't anything new. this is fairly common. It's used for alcohol sometimes, particularly in Eastern Europe off bird sap. The insect thing is a little bit creepy though if you keep up with the blood metaphor. But anyway. Well, doesn't that kind of also imply that certain birds are involved too? Because I'm thinking of like, um what's a bird that would actually do something like this?
00:21:49
Speaker
Like I know hummingbirds, for example, live off of something similar. Yes. And then there's woodpeckers that come to mind. although I don't remember what woodpeckers do specifically if they have any role in consuming of. They're picking the bugs that are ah like hanging out and eating the folem. Okay, okay, that makes more sense because I was trying to think about this here. I was like, no, I don't think the woodpeckers consume anything to do with the tree itself, but them going after the bugs makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the bugs basically live between the bark and the wood where the pholom kind of where those capillaries exist. And then if you've ever picked up a piece of wood that has all those like little squigglies on the outside, that's like worms and things like that that eat at the pholom.
00:22:35
Speaker
and And most of the time, the tree's fine with this. it's It has built-in immune responses to make sure that it doesn't get out ah out of hand for the most part. So yeah, a harvesting step thing people have been doing for a long time. But it turns out that you can't just drill a hole and ah drill a hole into a maple tree and expect maple goo to flow out. Well, you can, but what flows out is not going to be incredibly palatable. There's actually a very specific set of environmental conditions that allow for concentration of sugar in the roots during part of the day and the sap to still flow enough to be harvestable during another part of the day. And for Eastern Canada, for maple trees, that happens around late winter, early spring at time of writing. Put a pin in that. I don't like where this is going. I feel like it's going to become depressing fast. hey You know, it's a Tamarack episode when? Yes.
00:23:31
Speaker
All right, this was something that ah the indigenous population in Canada figured out basically for as long as we have records for that basically you tap the trees, you wait until the end of winter, and then you can kind of like start collecting them process from there, it's still not done, what you're going to get is a very, you're gonna get a very like thin watery still sugary but thin watery goop and that's not really convenient so and there's also going to be other products in it bacteria and things so you're going to want to evaporate or boil off a lot of that moisture and that's when you finally get syrup do you have to run this through like say cheesecloth or whatever because you're not going to be getting just liquid out of it you are going to get like other things that may not necessarily be good that you can deal with from a like a filtration standpoint apart from microbes
00:24:27
Speaker
not really like it will I believe it is filtered these days but in ye olde times no not really because you have to keep in mind this is this is tree blood and the tree's already doing a little bit of like cleaning like this is this is traveling through either by some sort of magical property of water or by uh by osmosis or by capillary action. Again, one hour-ish Wikipedia rabbit hole. I was going to make a quip about whether or not they have a liver inside of a tree, but that i me and biology are kind of actually really shitty, and I do know that there are no such things as tree livers, at least not in the in a mammalian sort of way.
00:25:12
Speaker
Well, I mean, the the whole structure of the tree from root into stem is kind of a type of like filtration system for this. But yeah, we are not a plant biology podcast. I just thought it was really funny to say that maple syrup was invented by maple trees.
00:25:28
Speaker
Anyhow, like all good things, early colonizers were taught by First Nations folks how to harvest and process maple syrup, and it quickly became a food staple given that it has very high caloric content, particularly when combined with like fats and stuff to form kind of like blocks of it, and also because quite crucially, it's available late winter and early spring which is when winter winter food stores are going to be at their absolute thinnest. So is this where the whole thing about pouring syrup and ice comes from?
00:25:59
Speaker
Uh, yeah, that was the thing that First Nations folks were doing, uh, which is ah fucking delicious. I like to try it. I've never been out in, um, was it, um, there's a festival in Quebec, uh, that's, I want to say in February or something that would serve this sort of thing. And I do know that, uh, based on things that people told me about visiting Quebec city, that you can actually get this treat. They'll just be, you know, slush with, um, maple syrup porta top. Yeah, um I haven't ever had it in Quebec, but as a ah thing in our, I think middle school French class of all things, the the last year I took French, that would have been like grade seven. we yeah We just made some with snow. One thing I should point out, and this is kind of a side note. You may be hearing like us talk about Canada in a certain way. Canada is a very large country.
00:26:53
Speaker
It's a very large country. It's a very large country. And to put it in the context, I did not visit Toronto until 15 years ago, and I'm approaching 40 years old. And it's just not a common thing to be going from Vancouver to Toronto, Vancouver to to Quebec City, Vancouver to Montreal um on the regular. Like I these days, um it's not unusual to find me in those cities. It's something I know people there and friends with people there. Um, but like growing up, like these places that I would end up going to were like Seattle, you know, it's like, the so the idea of like finding Quebec city, having, you know, maple syrup on slush as a very strange concept is only because, you know, if you want to go and visit Quebec city, you're looking at a five plus hour flight or a, you know, three to four day of constant driving just to get there. Or 12 days on via rail.
00:27:49
Speaker
No, it's not that long. It's probably about this at the same time. If you were to like reasonably drive, it's just that you get somebody to drive the train nonstop um almost with the exception of whatever CN or CP KC are doing on their fucking tracks. Anyway, so subject to future episode, but also, yeah, it's a long ass journey. Anyway, post kind of colonial contact, uh, the process of making maple strip hasn't, hasn't really changed. It's been mildly streamlined and obviously it's been industrialized. Would you like for you to pull my pin out on that at time of writing or do you want me to to continue on? Oh, you might as well tell me all about this. All right. So ah to pull that pin out a about as at time of writing.
00:28:33
Speaker
As the climate changes, the ideal zone for maple tapping shifts further and further north. This is a bit of a problem, because maple trees take a while to be ready for harvesting, upwards of 40 years into their lifespan. So this is a bit of a problem, as 75% of the world's maple syrup comes from a small regional area in southern Quebec, suck at Vermont. And that's a lot of production to relocate. ah It could be done speculatively, like speculating on where there will be a tolerable zone for production in 40 years and change from the initial site selection. But that requires you to predict where climate change is going to be in four decades, and also you need to still be around making maple syrup.
00:29:19
Speaker
at that time. Now, there is someone who could potentially do this, put a pin in that. ah But at current pace, no major sites of maple syrup production will be within the ideal zone for for for making it by 2100. The entire industry at its current state will be and like completely unsustainable at current pace. that's reminded me of a problem sort of as a tangent to this with with trees is so we eat a lot of nuts right so we have you know cashews and walnuts and all that and you can just go into a store and you can buy those but one of the things that people don't realize is that acorns are actually edible and the only reason why acorns have never really made it as something you would find on a store shelf on the regular
00:30:12
Speaker
is that the sort of acorns that you'd wanna eat, and I imagine there's other things, cause like, for example, um almonds, if you don't grow them properly, as in if you don't use the right type of almond, you're gonna kill people. But ah the thing about acorns is that their trees take forever to mature to the point where you can start harvesting them for their nuts. And when it comes down to, and I'm almost certain that probably takes more than 40 years for an acorn tree to grow. So if we're struggling with just 40 years for a maple tree, That's probably the reason why we'll never see acorns as an option for a topping on your ice cream. Yeah, or that weird acorn-based coffee alternative. That that corn-based coffee alternative? ah Yeah, you need to have a
00:30:58
Speaker
particular kind of weird guy at your office in order to, uh, to have seen this. But yes, I have seen it. Uh, anyway, uh, just to cap off the doom. I'm just looking at this up. Sorry real quick here. This is wild. I kind of want to try it because like I do have a caffeine sensitivity issue, but anyway. Uh, so I just, just to cap off the doom, I want to reiterate at current pace of climate change, we are accelerating. Cool beans. Love it. I i love this. Yeah, alright, so. Maple syrup. It comes from plants. Plants which also need that sap to live. And being living creatures and having no regard for the wants or desires of humankind, the harvest year to year varies as it does with all plants. Except... Since a new tree isn't ready for harvest well into its maturity, and you can't exactly over harvest the trees you have without killing them, setting you back 40 years, you can't exactly harvest more to make up for a shortfall or a bad year. And since it's all harvested basically within the same geographic area,
00:32:04
Speaker
Again, suck at Vermont. If you have a bad year for most of the crop, you have a bad year for most of the crop. like it it It affects everybody pretty much equally because it's, again, a small regional area in Southern Quebec. One of the things that a lot of people need to remember is that You may have noticed that produce prices have gone up. They're going to continue to do so until, well, there's no produce to sell. So um if you think that every year we're going to keep getting those bell peppers or we're going to go, you know, like if you keep thinking that stuff is going to be able to be on the shelf forever, um think again. Don't don't think that this stuff is not going to affect you eventually. However, here's the difference between maple syrup and the bell peppers.
00:32:46
Speaker
Maple syrup doesn't spoil. That's one of the reasons the First Nations, particularly the Algonquin people, love this stuff. So it's akin to honey. Yeah, it's a late winter food that you can stockpile and it doesn't go bad. So in 2002, if you are the Quebec maple syrup producers, or French name I'm not going to attempt to pronounce, ah You buy a bunch of warehouses in rural areas all around the province of Quebec, and you overproduce on good years and store the excess for years with poor harvest. That's pretty normal behavior. Yeah, ah it's just another one of the Canadian agricultural cartels.
00:33:26
Speaker
Cool. Um, we have a lot of them and they all kind of work the same way. Everybody sells a fixed amount to them and they basically act as a monopoly middleman. Usually they're cooperatives. So anyway, we'll get into it. This, this was a normal Agra co-op that already existed. The the Quebec maple syrup producers, like they formed in the 1960s, again, around the time as most of the Agra cartels did in Canada. And then they became a little bit strange when they decided to create this strategic stockpile. Did it work? Well, hey Heather, let's say you're a multinational food manufacturer in the year of 2008 and wanted to make maple brown sugar oatmeal the best kind. How much money will you need to spend on maple syrup to make what I cannot stress enough is the best kind of oatmeal.
00:34:18
Speaker
Well, considering that 2008 was a great year economically. Yes, it was definitely not a year where a lot of people are going to need inexpensive staple foods. Shoot at me. Let me tell me. Well, if you're Quaker Oats and said $2.40 per pound, the same as last year, you'd be incorrect because that would have been too bad harvest ago. Now it's the future year of 2008. Good year. yeah It's a really good year. Nothing is nothing bad is going on and worse. Obama got elected and and racism was solved.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yes, racism has just ended, but we are three bad harvest deep. So that'll be $4 a pound, please. So did ah Quaker, which I believe was a Pepsi company at the time. that Were they happy about it? No, they were not. Oh, OK. But hey, that was three bad years in a row. Cut the strategic reserves some slack. Surely that was an anomaly, and there wouldn't be any other incidents that would deplete the stockpile unexpectedly. Oh, this is this is foreshadowing. foreshadowing is a literary device. Okay, so I've mentioned they bought a bunch of warehouse spaces, yeah? Sure. Random rural towns. There's plenty of those to go around in Quebec. Yeah, dotted all over the province. Yeah, plenty of those, especially along in the St. Lawrence.
00:35:37
Speaker
So between 2011 and 2012, 9,571 barrels of maple syrup worth 18.7 million loonies, or 25.5 million loonies today, were replaced with barrels of water in one of the cartel warehouses, ah one about two hours out from Montreal.
The Great Maple Syrup Heist
00:35:57
Speaker
I'm going to say um water, famously sweet. Actually, if your water is sweet, that's probably a problem. Famously sweet and famously the same weight and density as ah as maple syrup. Wait, could you swim in maple syrup? No, they're not the same density or weight.
00:36:15
Speaker
Oh. Yeah, ah so this was discovered in July of 2012 because during the next inventory of the warehouse where these were found missing, the inspector noted abnormally light barrels because he was climbing on them. Oh shit. Why was he climbing on them? Apparently that's part of the inspection is climbing up on the barrels, which is A, king shit, B, please do not climb on stacks of barrels. That's a work safe problem. um One of the things I read is that he reported that the barrels were buckling and shifting under him. These were unsecured stacks of barrels in a warehouse and he was alone.
00:36:56
Speaker
You know like one of my biggest fears is like having an injury at home and then being like hurting myself like badly enough that like nobody finds me for days on end and then people find me eventually my cat's like eating half my face or something. Yeah, yeah, same. I think we all have that fear. This was an inside job. So there's people inside the Maple Syrupka Cartel that are like, hmm, let's fuck around? Like, who did they sell it to? Yeah. You're, you're Le Catre du Lotion here. It's a collection of people with incredibly French name.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, really hard valier atti end sam pire ah atheons yeah tarre your tars that's not a French name. That's Jutras. Yeah. ah Yeah. ah to Etienne St. Pierre was the syrup reseller who's the fence. My apologies to anybody in in Quebec who hears me speak any level of French and gets it all wrong. I'm making an effort because I try and keep my French up to date. But anyway, sorry. i do not israhe deicch okay whatever meens fracture after that
00:38:06
Speaker
but anyway ah for all the german speakers out there please write into mailbag at shewin higamomas dot c to comment on their german pronunciation ah Not my German pronunciation, the fact that that was nonsense. Anyway, you had, you had, uh, Avik Sharan or Sharan, uh, whose spouse owned the warehouse where the syrup was stolen from. And because you need one, you have Sebastian Utras, who was the getaway driver. He was a truck driver who, uh, who transported all the, all the ill gotten maple syrup.
00:38:40
Speaker
Because this was 20, what year was this? 2012? Yeah, this is 2012. You know, maybe he was the Uber driver. Like, you know, actually, did Uber exist in Quebec in 2012? Who knows? I don't believe so. No. No. Well, OK. I don't think it was even in Canada in 2012. Anyway, yeah, so there was also like a dozen more people that I couldn't fit into neat heist movie roles. The fun part about this is that this was at the time, and I believe it still is because I haven't found any evidence to the contrary, the largest heist in Canadian history. You know what, I was going to correct you and say that the heist at Pearson last year of all that gold was it, but the gold was only worth 20 million dollars. 25.5, baby. Yeah, I looked at that one too. Sponsorship scandal wasn't a heist. Oh, I don't care. It wasn't even a caper. The sponsorship scandal was like well within the rear view mirror of the Liberals at that point.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah. So like this is, yeah, this is, this is the biggest heist and or caper in Canadian history. So this was all Stephen Harper's fault. Uh, yes, this was all Stephen Harper's fault. Again, like former prime nationalized so like just like the Americans have their like nationalized strategic oil reserve. We need to nationalize our strategic maple syrup reserve. Could you imagine, like, I guess you could, you could turn maple syrup into a biofuel. You could, it it it is like some sort of hydro, it it is the hydrocarbons, sugars. Yeah, it would be the worst thing to put into your car's engine. Like it would gum it all up to all hell pretty quickly. and Well, you'd refine it like you do with like corn sugar because like corn syrup is... No, pork is directly in the gas tank. It's just putting famously for fine to do is putting sugar in a gas tank.
00:40:28
Speaker
It doesn't fuck up the gas tank as much as you would think. I thought that's what they were doing during ah they going back to 2008 because they had those, you know, bring in your clunkers and um thinking of the plane, the clunk, bring in your clunkers. They would just pour a sugar into the gas tank and then run the car as hard as they can with no oil at the same time. I think the no oil would be more of a more of a thing that would would help. and That's fair. But the sugar and gas tank thing I believe is mostly a myth that like if you have enough gas to run the vehicle, the sugar is not actually going to do much. Like set any sediment, sugar can clog the fuel injectors or fuel filter if there's too much of it.
00:41:10
Speaker
So you're not going to fuck up the engine. You're just going to fuck up the injectors of the filters, which makes sense because you're putting something that shouldn't be in there. But like you could also put in sand. Sand would fuck up your car if it got into the ah into the head like the pistons or whatever. Yes, and also, unlike sugar, sand will bond with the gas. Really? It will produce sludge. I didn't know that. Kitty litter is the best thing to do because then it'll actively soak up the gas. Yeah, well, kitty litter is famously good at absorbing everything, and I'm very familiar with that thanks to the little doofus that's sitting next to me as we talk. Hey, that's one of our staff members.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah, my co-worker here is currently, I think, hiding under my bed. Oh. Because I slammed to the table during the last recording session. Anyway, ah yeah, so that's maple syrup. What did we learn? That maple syrup is a precious commodity and um is arguably worth more than gold. Yes, yes it is. It is the gold of Canada. Well, we do have gold in this country, like real gold more. And then we have the gold of Canada. If it's the correct grade of maple syrup, sometimes it's the Amber of Canada. Okay. So one thing I'm going to say about, um, as a side note, and and before we finish off is that from what I understand about grading, you'll see like grade A or grade triple A or whatever it all it is, is about the color. It doesn't actually mean anything about the flavor because I believe in blind taste tests, there's no difference, but like, it's just the color.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah, the the flavoring is mostly impacted by the a point in the season that it's harvested, ah mostly because as it gets ah so like the the mechanism of how this works is that when it's cold, the sugars concentrate in the roots because they can't move because it's through either capil osmosis or capillary action, again, that's a fight for plant biologists. like It still needs the water in the sap, the water component of the sap to be liquid. So if the tree is too cold for it to move effectively, the sugars just kind of congeal in the roots. And when it warms up, then they're suddenly liberated, but there's there it's a lot more densely saturated with sugars, which is what's ideal for it.
00:43:37
Speaker
As the weather gets warmer, the amount of sugar that's concentrated in the roots versus other things like metals leached from the soil and things like that becomes much lower. ah So you end up with a less sweet product, which actually I prefer. One thing um as a side note is if you're visiting Canada and you're looking to buy maple syrup, my personal advice is to actually go to a grocery store and just buy whatever maple syrup you see on the shelf there. a lot More often than not, and you'll see this in um even in drugstore chains, but especially like those little
00:44:12
Speaker
ah souvenir shops that just sell everything for four times the price. The maple syrup that's being sold in there is like not really worthwhile in terms of like cost per milliliter. I would recommend that you just pop into a Safeway or a save on foods or whatever. If you're in Western Canada, if you're in Eastern Canada, I don't know, go to sobies or or Metro and just grab yourself a bottle there. and just take that home. You're gonna get far more bang for the buck. um If you're really lucky, you might be able to find the really cool um can of maple syrup, which actually has some nice art on it. And you get something like, I don't know, 400 milliliters in those cans.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, ah if you are looking for maple syrup in a glass bottle, I actually genuinely recommend Uncle Luke's, mostly because they label on their bottles the season that they're in, and it's all color-coded and everything, so you know what you're getting. It's like fucking wine. Yeah, it and honestly, it's still cheaper per milliliter than the stuff you'll get in the gift shop. Don't buy the gift shop stuff. The stuff, the one that keeps getting bottled up in the like maple leaf shaped glass container is dog shit. Like it's just a waste of money. like It's still maple syrup. It'll still taste fine. In my opinion, you're just getting so few for it. Like if you really want to get something fun, you can get those maple syrup. Like, like, I think they're sold as like little tiny bites or whatever they are. And you can chew on those and those are okay. And if you only find them in a gift shop, it's fine, but just don't buy the syrup bottles. Just don't. Yeah, no, don't go to a grocery store. It's way cheaper.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah, maybe avoid Loblaws, but you know, whatever. Yeah, I mean, yeah, avoid Loblaws. Check for any strikes. Don't don't cross a picket line. But other than that, go to a grocery store. Yeah, exactly. So ah yeah, that's an episode. It is an episode. Well, If you have any comments or questions, we have an email. It is mailbag at shawiniganmoments.ca or you can check out our website at shawiniganmoments.ca where you can find links to all options for listening to the podcast and also see photos of the two respective staff members that we were just talking about a few minutes ago. Yes. I guess we can say that the next episode will be on when the goo was turned into a flag. Yes. I think that's a podcast.
00:46:35
Speaker
That, that is a podcast.
00:46:48
Speaker
shewinnigan moments is written and recorded on the unseded territories of the squamish musquieum stolo and sewatooth first nations in what is otherwise called vancouver