"Mah-kwan Kadeek" from the language of the Maliseet people of New Brunswick translates to the place where maple sugar is made.
Most Indigenous people living near the inland waterway of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Valley produced maple sugar as their basic source of sweetener many years before the Europeans arrived. An Indigenous male was usually in charge of boiling sap while his wife and children assisted by gathering wood. Sap was placed into hollowed basswood logs. Hot stones were then placed into this sap, causing it to evaporate until only maple sugar crystals remained. Forty drops of sap makes one drop of syrup. From birch bark containers and log troughs to wooden buckets and iron kettles, to plastic pipelines and modern evaporators, maple syrup remains as it always has been... our first taste of spring.