Claudine and Thomas Alary don’t mess around when it comes to maple syrup. 

As the pair are selling the last of this spring’s syrup at Luskville’s Sucrerie Alary, they are also in the middle of a bittersweet transition. The young siblings are preparing to take over operations of the family business – a tradition nearly five decades in the making. 

The sugar shack has been a staple along Highway 148 for 49 years, but it hasn’t always looked the way it does today.  

Grandparents Hélène and Pierre-Yvon Alary started production in 1977, working out of a silo across the street. Over time, operations moved to their current location, growing into a family-run sugar shack that sells maple syrup and other maple products while offering visitors a chance to enjoy a taffy on snow, a cozy fire or a quiet walk in the forest. 

The early years of the business were anything but easy. Pierre-Yvon, who was working as a teacher at the time, would get up early in the morning to boil sap before heading to work. Hélène took over during the day, keeping the fire going until Pierre-Yvon returned to continue production until late at night. 

Hélène said at the start they didn’t have a lot, so they sometimes had to get creative to find solutions. On a particularly chilly day, she was trying to heat up sap so it could flow through a pipe toward the boiler. 

“We didn’t have any electricity, so I couldn’t put a heat lamp on. I went back home, I got a tomato juice can, and I put a candle into it and I heated up my [sap],” she said. 

Over the years, the business evolved. By the 1990s, it had expanded from 200 to around 1,500 taps – a small operation in the world of maple syrup production, but enough to keep the Alary’s hands full. 

In the 2000s, the family built a tubing system to collect sap, as well as a larger boiler to accommodate the increase in production. In 2011 the family acquired a reverse osmosis machine, condensing the runny sap into a thicker liquid and making it easier to boil. 

Ordinarily, you would need 43 litres of sap to make one litre of syrup – but with the osmosis machine you can create a thicker substance. Only 10.75 litres are required to make a litre of syrup, making it less time-consuming to produce the sticky stuff. 

“It’s saving wood, it’s saving time, saving mental energy. Back in the day, my grandma would have been out there stoking the fire [ . . . ] It just means the syrup is boiling in a more efficient way,” said Thomas. 

In recent years, Hélène said the work has become tougher, forcing her to reconsider her role.

“I’m 80, so I’m not young anymore. Everything is heavy now, and you’re not as quick as you used to be. This is mostly why we’re transferring. If we were capable, we’d wait until they were a bit older.” Hélène said.  

Next year, Claudine, a biology major, and Thomas, a diesel mechanic, will step forward into an ownership role, taking the reins for the first time. They already have big visions for the future of the business.  

Thomas said he plans on digitally mapping out the forest to maximize sap collection efficiency. 

“The tree that’s next to the pumping station, let’s say I can collect 100 per cent of the sap it gives me, but the tree in the very back, maybe I can only collect 30 per cent of what it gives me because my vacuum isn’t getting there to be able to bring the sap back.” 

Claudine has been using her science brain to map out a history of their forest’s sap collection.  She has been going through 49 years of her grandfather’s journals, putting the numbers into spreadsheets to map out production trends over time. 

“He used to keep diligent notes. Every single day, he’d be like, ‘On Mar. 20 I tapped 40 trees, and then minimum and maximum temperature’,” she said. 

Claudine is also using her social media savvy to try and reach new customers beyond their loyal local base.  Recently, she has been posting old photographs of the business to establish a photographic timeline of its history, posts she said have been very successful. 

“When you click on our Facebook profile, we wanted to show that it’s not just three pictures. Once we got it moving with a couple of Facebook posts, we got more Google reviews. And now we get a Google review almost every week,” she said. 

Claudine and Thomas want to create more of an educational approach to maple syrup. They say customers want more of an experience when they visit the sugar shack, and to feel a connection with the people who are producing the sweet stuff.

“I think where we can expand the business is not only with the maple syrup, but in education or the other products that we sell. We can get more clients, but really where we can expand what  the client knows about maple syrup,” Thomas said. 

“I like to talk to the clients about how maple syrup should be sold like wine is sold, where we talk about terroir, where we talk about a certain kind of grape that was used [ . . . ] There’s no difference between that and maple syrup.” 

Pierre-Yvon, reflecting on the future of the business, said while the technological advances have helped the business, there’s some parts of the work that will never change. 

“To repair a line, you have to go do it. Your phone won’t do that [ . . . ] There will always be physical work,” he said, adding that he’s not sad to step back knowing that the business is still in the family. 

For Claudine and Thomas, stepping into their legacy means approaching it in their own way. While their grandparents relied on experience and instinct, the siblings bring a different set of tools. 

“They have so much more lived knowledge, whereas maybe we’re doing a little more of the scholarly stuff. We can be scientific about it, we can calculate angles and degrees,” Claudine said.

Thomas said while they might be taking a slightly different approach, they’re still sticking to a time-tested formula his grandparents knew all too well. 

“What we replicate here is the love for the maple syrup, the family, the community. If people want to come and just sit on the swings with the kids, eat one taffy on snow, have a walk in the bush, that’s all I want, for them to say, ‘Hey, every year we come here, it’s a beautiful family moment,” he said.