We had a great launch for my book Maple Syrup, A short history of Canada’s sweetest obsession, at Flying Books on College Street a couple of weeks ago. It was lots of fun because people came there from all walks of my life. My wife Mimi Maxwell and our son Frits Kuitenbrouwer attended, along with two of my sisters. Plus an old room-mate from my McGill days came in from Ottawa. Special guests included the guy who raised me and who taught me to make maple syrup, who flew in from California with his girlfriend to be there. Lots of people came from Forestry at the University of Toronto, along with journalists, old friends and new friends. What a night!
I have also been a guest on Breakfast Television in Toronto and CJAD Radio in Montreal. Then the other day this review landed on Instagram from Chris Nuttall-Smith, a food writer who was the Globe and Mail restaurant critic for a decade. Here is what Mr. Nuttall-Smith has to say:
This book is an absolute masterpiece, hands-down the best non-fiction Canadian food book I’ve read.
The reporting is as deep and intelligent—and to me, at least, as eye-popping—as any you’ll find, and Kuitenbrouwer’s storytelling, informed by a maple syrup fascination first stoked when he was a child growing up in Quebec’s sugarbush, is just bloody glorious.
Among the highlights: superb archival reporting on the Indigenous origins of maple syrup making, and how the Canadian and Ontario governments systematically stripped them of their forests; the little-told story of the US maple syrup baron who built an early chokehold on Quebec’s industry; the cultural and religious factors that helped Quebec eventually rule the industry; the rise of the maple syrup cartel, and with it Big Maple (waaaay bigger, and more private-equity industrial than I would ever have guessed); and most of all, how those same big business forces pay the least for the tastiest syrup, and are trying to “re-educate” Canadians to love the thin, light, barely-better-than-corn-syrup stuff, because it’s far easier to produce at industrial scale.
I don’t know Kuitenbrouwer at all, and don’t owe anybody involved any favours. I was just wowed and enchanted (and if we’re honest here, insanely jealous) with every page. This thing should be on every single food-loving Canadian’s shelf.
Thanks Chris!
