Park Memories

Submitted by Resident Florence Gundill

I like to recall times such as when every spring the smelts came into shore and the men would go out and catch them and we'd meet on the East Beach and cook them on a fire and have a sort of potluck.

Also, every year George Iviney and Jack Mitchell would gather maple sap and we'd keep it boiling night and day until it was the right consistency for maple syrup. The men would take it in turns to go out in the night to keep the fire alight. Then, Ginette (Iviney) would make pancakes on a Sunday morning and we'd meet in her yard and have a maple syrup breakfast.

In the fall, before the leaves fell, they would have to mark the maple trees, for they could not tell from the bark which tree was which. One year they put pails on oak trees and wondered why they could not gather sap!

Another time, after days of boiling, they put an extra log on the fire which got too hot and the sap boiled over and fell into the fire - with one mighty flame the fire roared up and we lost the whole year's harvest.