We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,271,621-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist
What it’s about: The most Canadian crime-of-the-century possible. Across several months in 2011 to 2012, a shadowy network of criminals pulled off an unthinkable heist, stealing $18.7 million worth of maple syrup from a storage facility in Quebec.
Biggest controversy: That Rick Moranis came out of retirement to do a stupid cellphone commercial and not a movie where he puts an Oceans Eleven-style gang of very polite master criminals to pilfer Canada’s greatest liquid assets.
Strangest fact: The syrup thieves and Walter White used the same methods nearly simultaneously. In 2012 Breaking Bad episode “Dead Freight,” Walt and Jesse siphon methylamine from a train’s tanker car, replacing the chemical with water so the weight will be unchanged. The syrup thieves did exactly the same thing with 600-pound barrels of syrup, except they started in 2011, well ahead of Walt and Jesse’s scheme, but the Breaking Bad writers wrote the episode well before the syrup heist was exposed. (Eventually, the syrup thieves got lazy and simply emptied the barrels; as it turned out that the syrup was only inspected once a year, so their crime went unnoticed until the end of the year.)
Thing we were happiest to learn: Fear not, pancake lovers, Canada has a strategic syrup reserve. Back in 1966, several of Quebec’s leading syrup producers decided to coordinate their marketing efforts, forming the Federation Of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (FPAQ, which abbreviates the French translation). FPAQ controls 94% of Canada’s maple syrup (and therefore 77% of the world’s supply), and has been likened to a drug cartel. They maintain a permanent supply of liquid gold, the International Strategic Reserve, stored in warehouses across several Quebecois small towns. It was from one such warehouse that our thieves drained 9,571 barrels of syrup.
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: The article doesn’t give nearly enough detail on this black market syrup operation. Once the syrup had been drained, it was transported by truck to, “a remote sugar shack,” and then sold in small batches to “legitimate syrup distributors,” in Vermont and New Brunswick who were unaware of the syrup’s ill-gotten origins. But it’s unclear what a remote sugar shack looks like, or how the thieves were caught. Over three days in December 2012, seventeen men were arrested, including ringleader Richard Vallières and his father Raymond. But Wikipedia gives no clue as to how they were identified or caught, and cryptically says Raymond Vallières was “convicted of possession,” although we can’t imagine possession of maple syrup in any amount is a crime. Richard Vallières was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison in 2017. Six years would be added to his sentence if he failed to pay a fine of $9.4 million, but it’s not clear which of those happened.
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: Maple syrup has a surprisingly mysterious history. “The chemistry responsible” for its unique flavor “is not fully understood,” and neither are its origins. North Americans were tapping maple trees and boiling sap to make syrup and sugar long before the arrival of Europeans, but neither oral tradition nor archaeological evidence provides any clue as how how the practice originated, or who decided tree sap might taste good. But the Algonquians are credited with a method of tapping trees still used today, making a v-shaped incision in the trunk, and using a funnel to collect the sap.
The maple syrup Wikipedia page also details the economics and classification of syrup, going into great detail about the grading system (based around color). Maple sugar and cane sugar also have a surprisingly fraught rivalry; before the Civil War, maple sugar was the choice of abolitionists, as cane sugar was produced by slave labor; after the war, cane sugar came to dominate the market and maple producers shifted their focus to syrup. (Wikipedia also notes that anything labeled “pancake syrup” is an appalling concoction of high fructose corn syrup and artificial maple flavoring.)
Further Down the Wormhole: Another competitor to maple syrup (also, unfortunately, largely produced by slave labor pre-Emancipation) is molasses. A syrup made from sugarcane or sugar beets, molasses is primarily used as a sweetener or baking ingredient in modern times, but before the 20th century, it was used as an ingredient in making rum and beer. Blackstrap molasses, made by boiling down molasses three times instead of just once, is a more bitter concoction used in ethanol, cattle feed, and fertilizer. (The 1951 song “Black Strap Molasses,” sung by Groucho Marx, Jane Wyman, Danny Kaye, and Jimmy Durante, spoofed the syrup’s exaggerated health benefits, claiming it, “makes you live so long you wish you were dead.”) Shockingly, molasses actually did turn deadly once, in an absurd tragedy we can’t believe we haven’t covered before now. We’ll recount the Great Boston Molasses Flood next week.
78 Comments
“although we can’t imagine possession of maple syrup in any amount is a crime”Are you kidding? In Canada, snorting dried maple syrup is the country’s leading cause of death among Tim Hortons employees.
I’ve been to a bar in Canada where they give you a sidecar of maple syrup with your whiskey
The best thing about this comment is that I can’t tell if you’re serious.
There’s a bar somewhere in the Maritimes where they put a mummified toe in your drink — I think it Anthony Bourdain featured it on one of his shows? — so a syrup sidecar seems believable and tame by comparison.Also, at one point the toe was stolen, so a regular who was close to death had it stipulated in his will that one of his toes was to be chopped off and donated to the bar.
It wasn’t stolen, it was ate.
Eating is just stealing with your mouth, when you think about it.
No, he paid the associated fine with eating the toe.
There’s a place in the Yukon that serves a Sourtoe Cocktail, maybe that’s what you’re thinking of? https://thetakeout.com/latest-footnote-to-sourtoe-cocktail-saga-captain-dick-1838409250
Ah, yeah, that must be it.
You’re thinking of the Sourtoe Cocktail of Dawson City, Yukon. (It’s easier to lose a toe to frostbite there.)
Yeah, this is one of those moments where I’m reminded that my memory is a complete and actual idiot.
Sortilege (whiskey-based maple liqueur) is totally a real thing, and delightful.
I dunno, I feel like this crime could have been more Canadian. Maybe the gang members are tipped off to the time and target of the raids by a member committing certain penalties in a local hockey game.
They definitely pulled off the crime while wearing a lot of white denim, and sped away from the scene while blasting Bret Hart’s entrance music.
…after apologizing…
Even their ski masks were denim. It was a Canadian Crime Tuxedo.
Canadian Crime Tuxedo is totally my new ska band name.
Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up, eh?!
Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, eh?
Not only that, with an abandoned Molson factory being used as the country’s largest marijuana grow-op for two years(!) has to be in the running for most Canadian crime.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Place_(Ontario)
This is Quebec, and the organized crime element in the packaging and distribution exemplifies French Canadians about as much as solid waste management exemplifies New Jersey.I assume French Canadian TV dramas include long segments paralleling similar segments in The Sopranos, where refined people sit around complaining about how every time there is a maple syrup heist it’s the French who are suspected, when it just as easily could have been an Anglo gang driving over from Ontario, and how come nobody ever talks about contributions from people like Marc Garneau or Armand Frappier.
I figured moose poaching would also somehow be involved.
Those hosers, eh
it’s unclear what a remote sugar shack looks like
It’s just a wooden shack, unfortunately nothing like the Ernie Barnes painting. No lovemaking going on, but a lot of boiling down sap so you don’t have to carry as much of it out of the woods.
In Vermont, “sugaring” is a verb, which means just what you described.
It’s a funky old shack, but you gotta get back. I recommend traveling by Chrysler, preferably a big one.
Don’t forget your juke box money!
That had to be near the beach, not the woods. I remember them serving Rock Lobster.
Terrible thing to ask, but did the Sugar Shack location once serve as a church?
Don’t think so, but I bet some people saw God there.
I’m surprised that no one else has mentioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Shack
The painting of the same name being the cover of a Marvin Gaye album, along with the similarly named B-52’s song, probably creates a lot of confusion.
Is quebec storing barrels of pure Maple sap or already boiled down syrup? I’m assuming both keep forever, but it takes like 30+ gallons of sap to make a small bottle of syrup so it’s probably easier to store the syrup. Also, as a native Ohioan, Ohio maple syrup has always been just as good as the stuff those jerks in Vermont make.
I don’t doubt that maple syrup taste varies little by geography. But we just make much more of the stuff here in Vermont.
I had looked into tapping the trees in my yard to make maple syrup years ago. From what I had read, the sap needs to be cooked ASAP and doesn’t keep well. So, waiting to fill 20-30 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup was out of the cards for me. Although, it may be a different story with storage in a factory setting.
Yeah, it’s kind of impractical on a small scale.My dad did it one year, and from tapping I think about a dozen trees he got maybe a quart of syrup.The sap also creates huge amounts of smoke when you boil it down, and I remember my mom getting really pissed off about all the smoke in the kitchen and making my dad take the whole operation outside and finish boiling it down on the grill burner.
That’s less of a Breaking Bad, Maple Edition episode and more of a Malcolm in the Maple Middle show.
The sap also creates huge amounts of smoke when you boil it down, and I remember my mom getting really pissed off about all the smoke in the kitchen and making my dad take the whole operation outside and finish boiling it down on the grill burner.Steam, not smoke, unless your dad was actually burning cordwood in the kitchen. Your mother still should have been grateful, in that case, since old, worn out tires were used as a fuel source for evaporators well into the 1970s. (Yankee frugality/cheap bastardism at work – rather than pay to dispose of them, they’d burn ‘em instead, and it was that much less wood to chop.)
I’ve got one tree with 3 taps in it (only had 2 in it last year) and I got a decently sized bottle out of it. I don’t really mind the massive amounts of steam (because you’re boiling down 39/40ths of the volume out) since my house is so ridiculously dry right now. It’s like a really good smelling humidifier.
There’s plenty of small operators in Vermont who have their own sugarshack, but even they usually boil down hundreds, if not thousands of gallons each year.Its really not equivalent in scale to home brewing or winemaking.
From what I had read, the sap needs to be cooked ASAP and doesn’t keep well. So, waiting to fill 20-30 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup was out of the cards for me.No, sap will spoil/ferment/grow mold quickly, since it’s mostly water with just enough sugar to be a great food source for a variety of microorganisms. And it’s generally around a 40:1 reduction, not 30:1.
The secret is, you don’t make a gallon of syrup. (Think about it, would you ever buy a gallon of maple syrup to put in your fridge at home?) My Mom’s a teacher, and used to tap the maple trees on her school’s grounds to make syrup as a project for her kids, and she’d usually have about enough to do a pancake breakfast for the class, and that was enough.
Ohio maple syrup has always been just as good as the stuff those jerks in Vermont makeHah! That’s cute.- native Vermonter
Nothing from Ohio is as good as things from other places.
Source Michigan Maple Syrup consumer.
In Canada… First you get the syrup, then you get the power, then you get the women.
Username checks out!
What this article leaves out, is that the Maple Syrup Monopoly/Cartel is worse than just being a price fixing scheme.Not only do they fix/set prices.They also have the Gov’t on Quebec on their side to not allow anyone who is not in the cartel to sell maple syrup in quebec. Let’s say that again, the Gov’t of Quebec enforces penalties for anyone outside the Cartel who attempts to sell maple syrup in the open market.This is tough for Americans to wrap their head around since it is so anti-consumer. The gov’t literally helps them penalize others for not joining their cartel/monopoly.
First you get the syrup, then you get the pancakes, they you get the ‘beetus.
In Canada… First you get the syrup, then you get the power, then you get the women… whose brothers tell you to give your balls a tug, you titfucker…
Netflix has an excellent docuseries called Dirty Money that covers different financial scandals in each episode. This is covered in one of its episodes – would recommend watching. The crime sounds ridiculous on paper but when you hear why it happened, it starts to make more sense.
Vanity Fair also had an article on this back in December 2019, I think.
Incredibly, one of the most realistic aspects of Riverdale is Cheryl’s family controlling the town through their control of the maple syrup trade, which is heavy connected to organized crime & has cult-like rituals
But Wikipedia gives no clue as to how they were identified or caught….My guess it was Mrs. Butterworth screaming from the back of an umarked van.
Mr. Butterworth left a trail of bodies while saving her. Y’see, he’s got a very specific set of skills . . . .
Oh, Canada…
Also, between this and the murder of Dino Bravo, I’m shocked how crime-ridden Quebec is.
The Great Boston Molasses Flood should rightfully be known as the Masshole Mollasacre.
The grandaddy of “make up the short weight” schemes like this was the 1960s “Salad Oil Scandal — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_Oil_scandal —
still cited in fraud investigation and forensic accounting texts. That ended up as a $100 million+ scam, focused on loan collateralization, rather than mere theft. I’m sure there were smaller scale crimes on similar principles dating back to the Middle Ages or earlier, though — the proverbial “pig in a poke”.
The Great Molasses Flood produced what I assume to be the greatest children’s book of all time.
I guess the owner of the storage facility was a real sap…
He was always a bit slow, maybe too thick . . .
This could be an Agatha Christie novel — starring Miss Marple’s Canadian cousin, Miss Maple.
The thieves were unfailingly loyal — because maple syrup is thicker than water.
sadtrombone.com
To pull off a heist like this, you need to be decisive — there’s no room for waffling.
I guess we know the plot to the next season of Riverdale.
If they ever get out of prison, they might follow it up with an International Heist Of Pancakes.
Maple Syrup: The folk music of heists.
Maple Syrup shortage? You know what that means:
I’ve been a maple sugar maker for 20 years and I can assure you that NOBODY employs this method any more:
“But the Algonquians are credited with a method of tapping trees still used today, making a v-shaped incision in the trunk, and using a funnel to collect the sap.”
It’s far too crude and damaging to the tree. We typically drill 5/16 or even 3/16″ holes and use plastic or metal taps to direct the sap into a pail, or if you’re a big operator, into a network of tubes and pipes that lead to bigger storage tanks.
I’m not sure what kind of comment/username synergy that would be . . .
I would love to have seen a Canadian cop sticking his pinky in a barrel of syrup and then tasting it to verify that it was pure.
Every Canadian is duty bound to show the rest of the world the well researched CBC version of this story: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2274760602
C-PSA: You’re allowed to carry 3g of maple syrup on your person for ‘personal use’.