We had a great time yesterday evening at the cabane à sucre (sugar shack). It was about a 1-hour drive to the Sucrerie de la Montagne, a Quebec historic site near Rigaud, just a few kilometers from the Ontario border. We went with a group of friends, mostly anglophones, most of whom had never been to a sugar shack before.
Late March and early April are when the maple trees are giving their sap for syrup, and the érableries (sugar farms) host big dinners at their farms for city guests. It's a great way to get a taste of traditional Québec culture.
It was pretty cold when we got there -- we still have snow on the ground in Montreal so we all wrapped up as warm as we could. Poor Amita June fell in a puddle as we were walking across the parking lot, which caused not a small amount of crying, so Maj and I cleaned her up in the car. But the tears cleared up as we got close to the sucrerie. Amita called out, "BUCKETS!!" when she saw all the taps in the sides of the maples. There must have been 1000 tapped trees right near the main lodge.
The sucrerie itself was a pretty impressive set-up. 4-5 buildings in an 18th-century rural style, hewn from logs, caulked with clay. There was a big outdoor fire with people sitting around, but we edged our way into the bakery, first thing, where we saw a few dozen loaves of bread baking in the stone oven.
Then we went into the main dining hall -- dozens of tables laid out for guests. We were big enough to take our own table, and AJ took a high chair at the end. Each table had a quart bottle of maple syrup on it. The first course was split pea soup (a habitant classic), followed by a brunch-y meal of omelettes, mashed potatoes, beans, fresh bread, ham, sausage, meatballs, and tortière, the classic Québecois meat pie.
For dessert, we had coffee, maple sugar pie (you can feel the enamel of your teeth coming off), and... pancakes with maple syrup. All during dinner we were serenaded by a band playing classic Québec folk tunes on traditional instruments, including a saw.
We waddled out of the cabin, and I wasn't looking forward to the walk to the car, which made me glad that there was a horse-drawn carriage waiting for us. The "carriage" was about the size of a flat-bed truck, pulled by two Clydesdales that must have been 3 meters tall at their ears. Amita loved seeing the horses and taking a ride, and I loved not having to walk.
It's a good time -- I highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't had the experience.
tags: quebec sugar shack
RoCoCoCamp
I spent most of the day today sending out invitations to wiki people about RoCoCoCamp. RoCoCo is the Montreal version of RecentChangesCamp -- it's an "unconference" about wiki technology and wiki culture happening 18-20 May 2007 here.
I've been pretty frantic about contacting people since I got involved in a serious way in RoCoCo in February. but I want to make sure that people who are involved in wiki, or more generally in technologies for community and collaboration, can make reasoned decisions about coming. We've got a really exciting group coming already, of course, and I don't mind anyone missing it because of schedule conflicts or lack of funds. But I'm torn up inside thinking there are people who want to come to RoCoCoCamp who just don't know about it.
Please, reader: if you have any suggestions for wiki developers or practitioners, or other people who might benefit, Contact me and let me know. Or just pass along the RoCoCo URL to them, and make sure they know that they're invited.
tags: rocococamp wiki recentchangescamp invitations
Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast
Tomorrow morning is the third Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast, 9AM at Bistro Etc. on av Mont-Royal, corner of Chambord.
This is the 3rd monthly MTEB, and I'm pretty excited about it. I missed the February event through ignorance, and the March event because I was in Austin. I'm determined not to miss this one!