Without electricity since Wednesday noon, a sugar shack in the Gatineau region saved the furniture for the most important weekend of the year with a good dose of mutual aid, resourcefulness and generators.
La Sucrerie du Terroir, in Val-des-Monts, was preparing to welcome some 2,000 people during the Easter holiday, or almost a quarter of the total attendance for the year.
Preparations were going smoothly until around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the power cut dry after the ice fell.
“It has been complete for the long leave for several weeks. If it had been necessary to cancel all that …”, sighed the co-owner of the sugar shack, Jean-Nicolas Marcotte.
With the help of one of his brothers, a friend, an electrician and three generators, he made sure to restore power to the essentials of a sugar shack: the cold room and the pumps. water.
It was enough to roll the essentials of the sugar shack, but the Sucrerie had to trade the lamps for the candles… to the delight of the customers.
“Thursday evening I had brought some lamps from my house to have a little light, but at some point the generator gave up and there were only candles left. The cooks had headlamps and made crisse ears. It was rustic! The world was tripping, he thought it was really “hot“!”
La Sucrerie du terroir will be able to serve all of its customers in a more “old school” atmosphere, rejoiced Jean-Nicolas Marcotte.
Sugar shacks decided to prevent the blow several years ago by investing in huge generators, a question of avoiding closures in the event of a storm, snowstorm or ice storm.
This is how Stéphanie Laurin, owner of the Chalet des érables in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, in the Lower Laurentians, can sleep soundly, in good weather, bad weather.
In this context, the most difficult is not the power cut, but the management of customers on the phone who ask if the sugar shack remains open. “We have a full-time person who answers the phone to reassure people!” she launched.
“I had a lot of customers this afternoon who arrived hungry because they hadn’t eaten since yesterday due to lack of electricity. They were doubly happy!” said Ms. Laurin, who is also president of the Association of reception halls and commercial sugar bushes of Quebec (ASEQC).
Véronique Ménard, from the Sucrerie de la Montage, in Rigaud, purchased a large generator in 2019.
“It simplifies our life for everything. We walk normally, despite the lack of electricity,” she said.
For the latter, the problem is not electricity either: it is rather the lack of manpower!