Bookworm, no. 152
Greg Hudson reviews Peter Kuitenbrouwer’s “Maple Syrup.” Emily Mernin on Monroe Lawrence’s “Gravity Siren.” Inside the June issue.
Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada’s Sweetest Obsession
Peter Kuitenbrouwer
Doubleday Canada
328 pages, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook
The cover of Peter Kuitenbrouwer’s Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada’s Sweetest Obsession depicts someone collecting sap that will (presumably) be boiled into the thick sweet liquid. If only making and selling maple syrup were that simple. Kuitenbrouwer, a journalist and registered forester who makes his own syrup every spring, demonstrates that the history and business of maple syrup is more robust and complicated than the idyllic scene you might see on a bottle or book.
Through research and reportage, Kuitenbrouwer reveals how maple syrup went from being a traditional Indigenous staple to becoming the livelihood of large Quebec families working in sugar bushes blessed by the Catholic Church. And, of course, he describes today’s high-tech industry. In between are stories of monopolies, collective action, and one of the most famous heists in modern Canadian history.
As the industry contends with shorter sugaring seasons (thanks to climate change), it’s working to find balance on many fronts. How do producers make enough syrup to meet global demand without flooding the market? While more syrup is made more quickly using modern methods, like pumps and reverse osmosis, some connoisseurs argue that the quality suffers. Is it more important to have a natural variety of trees in a sugar bush or to have as many syrup-yielding trees as possible? Kuitenbrouwer doesn’t provide definitive answers to such questions, likely because there aren’t any. But as he tells of building his own sugar shack, he provides a bit of a warning: be wary of tapping your first maple, because the syrup will get into your blood.
—Greg Hudson
Gravity Siren
Monroe Lawrence
Beautiful Days Press
98 pages, softcover
Partway through Monroe Lawrence’s Gravity Siren, a forest burns. A detailed scene of volunteers moving among plumes of smoke, scorched trees, and head lamps overtakes the dreamlike poem. Heat is “miragey,” helicopters overhead are “deafening,” and harm is “expressed in / lush Fahrenheit.” The speaker moves through the danger, a teary-eyed vessel for the blaze. “Listen, weather is / finally alien to us,” they warn, their feelings of futility raging in tandem with the flames. The “solar panel tiles” they installed weren’t enough: “Now the / moose is ripping its own / hide from itself as it stumbles / from the river hissing.”
The fire is “the brightest / thing there is / or will ever be, in our / petroleum’s long engulfing.” And it never goes out. Lawrence writes from within a burning world that is losing “its bluish- / ness,” and grapples with the unwieldy emotions that come from trying to build a life amid ecological destruction. Corners of British Columbia wilderness appear along with fragments of memories. “I will show / this,” says the speaker, before bringing the reader into some distant meadow, the air filled with “long tints of darkness.” Addressing a beloved “you” throughout, they make lofty promises. In “the flaming dream,” they insist, “i would / find you there, in a Place / where the sky / Is fire.” These are urgent lines, full of the kind of distortions and disjointedness inherent to moments of distress. In them, the catastrophe of being human—with all its existential drama and failings—becomes synonymous with the planet’s “wild disaster.” The body, too, becomes a mirror for the land and its creatures; insects “flow like smoke from coursing bark,” just as they “come pouring from my calves.”
Lawrence suggests that our deepest sensations—love, pain, memory—are inextricable from our surroundings. If we can see ourselves in the “shadow & light” that enshroud us, we may be able to answer the defining question of this slim volume: “What else / is there but expressing / to others, what they have meant to you?”
—Emily Mernin
From the Archives: The Problem Goes Beyond Cash
In case you haven’t noticed, Alberta has been in the news lately. While some flirt with separatism, it’s worth rereading Amanda Perry’s “Alberta and Me,” about her complicated relationship with her home province, from the July/August 2023 issue.
To Click or Not to Click?
We know that few things are as annoying as crashing into a paywall after innocently clicking a link. So we’re happy to report that we’ve updated our websites’s backend. Readers of Bookworm can now access any reviewcanada.ca piece we share—even when they’re not signed in as subscribers to the magazine. (But don’t let that stop you from subscribing!)
Inside the June Issue
“As a result, the unavoidable occurred: Tempers flared. Power struggles ensued. Egos clashed. Angry threats flowed. In short, grown adults behaved like men, which is to say like jerks.” David Marks Shribman reads Allan Levine’s The Dollar a Year Men: How the Best Business Brains in Canada Helped to Win the Second World War.
Jude Isabella considers David Suzuki’s Lessons from a Lifetime: 90 Years of Inspiration and Activism, co-written by Ian Hanington.
Bronwen Jervis takes a firm stand for the master of the macabre, Stephen King.
And much more!