The sugar maple is a large, slow-growing hardwood native to the deciduous forests of eastern Canada, flourishing especially across Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces. Its broad, five-lobed leaf is so emblematic of the country that it occupies the centre of the national flag. Unlike many trees, the sugar maple stores an abundance of starch in its trunk and roots throughout the winter; as the days lengthen, that starch is converted to sugar and dissolves into the sap that rises through the wood. The species is remarkably long-lived, frequently enduring for well over two centuries, yet it will not yield a worthwhile flow of sap until it has matured for roughly forty years.

The gathering of that sap depends on a narrow and capricious window in late winter. A productive run requires freezing nights followed by mild, thawing days; this alternation builds the pressure that drives the sap out through a tapped hole. Producers bore a small spout into the trunk and either hang a bucket beneath it or, on larger operations, connect a web of plastic tubing that channels the sap downhill to a central tank. The raw sap is deceptively watery, and roughly forty litres of it must be boiled down to yield a single litre of finished syrup. Because the harvest hinges so completely on temperature, an unusually warm winter can shorten the season drastically.