A quintessential product of Canada is Maple Syrup, made by boiling Maple tree sap until it becomes a sweet golden brown liquid. This year, Thomas Aquinas SS teachers and students tapped several maple trees in preparation for the season. If you don't have several maple trees in your backyard, you can enjoy this family-friendly celebration at Bronte Creek Provincial Park, Monthsberg or Crawford Lake.
Conservation Halton celebrates the sweet return of Maple Season at Mountsberg and Crawford Lake. Starting March 4, guests can visit the 150-year-old sugarbush at Mountsberg’s Maple Town and see how sap tapped from the maple trees is transformed into maple syrup or explore Crawford Lake to learn more about the Indigenous origins of maple sugaring. Maple Season programs are offered on weekends, holidays, and March Break until April 9.
Mountsberg will host two Maple Season programs: Maple Town and the Sugarmaker’s Breakfast, and at Crawford Lake, visitors can partake in Sweetwater Season. Bronte Creek Provincial Park will celebrate the Maple Syrup Festival.
Sugarmaker's Breakfast
The Sugarmaker’s Breakfast is a unique and exclusive event, offered only on Feb. 25 and 26, where you can help kick off the start of Maple Season. The two-hour experience includes a wagon ride, a maple syrup-tasting flight, making maple taffy on snow, a guided tour, and a delicious pancake breakfast by the wood stove. Guests of the Sugarmaker’s breakfast will also have the rare opportunity to tap one of the park's 150-year-old sugar maples and hang their pails to begin collecting crystal-clear sap.
Maple Town
The second program offered at Mountsberg, Maple Town, is a family favourite. Through independent exploration and guided exhibits throughout the sugarbush, visitors can witness maple sap transformed into syrup in the evaporator, warm up by a fireside lounge, or let the kids run wild on the natural playground. Satisfy sweet cravings with maple sugar candy samples, maple syrup drizzled pancakes at the Pancake Pavilion, and other maple products available to try throughout the day or take home from the Country Store retail shop. Visitors can add a horse-drawn wagon ride for an unforgettable experience.
Sweetwater Season
Maple Season also includes a third program called Sweetwater Season, hosted at Crawford Lake. This experience focuses on the Indigenous heritage of maple sugaring and features the First Harvest: Celebrating Sweetwater exhibit. Visitors can step back to the 15th-century site when maple sugaring was the first harvest of the year. Sweetwater demonstrations will run throughout the day, where guests can gather by the fire and learn all about the history of maple sugar making. There will also be guided maple syrup-tasting flights where you can try different grades of maple syrup, similar to a wine tasting.
“We always get excited about Maple Season at Conservation Halton, and we are even more pleased to offer the programs in their original format this year,” said Brenna Bartley, Education Manager at Conservation Halton." With over 600 maple trees, Mountsberg’s sugarbush has been producing maple syrup for over 150 years and educating the public for over 40 years. We see people come back to this event year after year, and we’re proud to have become a part of so many families’ annual traditions. We love offering multiple programs for our visitors to enjoy a fun and educational experience whether they participate in Maple Season at Maple Town or Sweetwater Season.”
Maple Syrup Festival
Closer to home, Bronte Creek Provincial Park celebrates the maple sugaring season, starting on the first Saturday in March. The festivities are open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. every weekend in March and March Break. Volunteers will offer a guided tour of Maple Lane, where interpreters costumed for the 1890s demonstrate different historical ways of collecting and making maple syrup. The tour ends in the middle of Spruce Lane Farm, where you can learn how to make fresh maple sugar or enjoy a stick of delicious maple taffy before visiting the various farm animals in the yard.
To ensure you don't miss out tickets, pricing, and details about Conservation Halton's Maple Season, visit conservationhalton.ca/MapleSeason. More information about Bronte Creek's Maple Syrup Festival can be found at brontecreek.org/MapleSyrupFestival.