On Sunday May 3, 2026 the Midland-Penetanguishene Field Naturalists Nature Book Club held their monthly meeting, hosted by Book Club member Liz Schandlen at her home in Wyebridge. The book under discussion was “Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada’s Sweetest Obsession” by Peter Kuitenbrouwer. Mr. Kuitenbrouwer has had an international career as a journalist, but also writes forest management plans and manages forests. He has taught about forests to students from pre-grade school to post-graduate at the University of Toronto. His family, he writes, “owns a 34-acre farm, thick with trees, animals, birds and – in season- mosquitoes, near Madoc, Ont, about halfway between Toronto and Ottawa.” Every spring Mr. Kuitenbrouwer makes his own syrup on that farm.

There is a lot to learn about maple syrup, even in a “short history”, and our group felt that Mr. Kuitenbrouwer did an excellent job of tapping his source material for items of interest – the food’s indigenous origins, the sugar shack culture in Quebec and the province’s maple syrup cartel, the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist of 2011/2012, George C. Cary Vermont’s Maple King, the impact of climate change on maple syrup production – all told with an engaging and informative style. Unfortunately perhaps, the book was published before the recent Artemis II space mission, so there’s no chapter about maple syrup’s recent journey to the moon, taken there by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. We all agreed that the book is a real page turner, provided that your messy maple syrupy hands don’t make the pages stick together.

Our reading material provided lots of inspiration for the peripherals that accompany any good book club meeting. We had maple syrup music (Gordon Lightfoot’s “Love and Maple Syrup”, Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs “Sugar Shack”), lots of maple sugar candy and treats, and a very interesting maple syrup taste test. We had bottles of 3 local syrups on hand – Windlee Farms Syrup from Midland, Williams Maple Syrup from Wyebridge, Shaw Maple Syrup from Oro-Medonte – and 2 bottles, light and dark, from a Quebec maple syrup company Escuminac. Our tasting samplers ranged from light, through amber to dark. We were quite surprised at how different each one tasted. It perhaps wouldn’t be fair here to reveal which syrups came out the winner in our taste test, as our methods were anything but scientific. Suffice it to say, much as when we discuss and evaluate books, the groups’ opinions varied and occasioned much discussion. And repeated tastings! One syrup in particular was voted the best by 3 of our members, while 2 others rated it the worst! As Mark Twain said, “It is difference of opinions that makes horse races.”

Has anyone else read Maple Syrup: A Short History? Or perhaps is inspired by this review to read it? (This book is available at both the Midland and Penetanguishene Librairies.) If so, send us your thoughts and we’ll enter them into the official Nature Book Club minutes. If anyone would like to join us at future book club meetings, email us at [email protected] and we’ll let you know where and when we’ll be meeting.

On Sunday Apr. 19, 2026 the Midland-Penetanguishene Field Naturalists Nature Book Club held their monthly meeting to discuss the book Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton.

Over the years, there have been some classic autobiographical books that have celebrated the human connection with the natural world – in particular with different animals. Our Book Club has read several of them: Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell; H is for Hawk for Helen MacDonald;  My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell; A Wolf Called Romeo by Nick Jans; The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey; The Soul of an Octopus, The Good Good Pig and several other books by Sy Montgomery.  

Raising Hare deserves to join this illustrious group. Chloe Dalton has written a highly engaging and beautiful memoir about her experiences of rescuing a baby hare and raising it to adulthood at her home in a restored stone barn in the English countryside.

Book Club member David Cowl was unable to attend this month’s session but shared his thoughts by email.  “It is a beautifully written account of the transformative power of nature through the eyes of an individual isolated and working from home during the Covid pandemic…The European Hare is an endangered species as a result of habitat loss, shifting agricultural practices and a year round hunting season. ” What a destructive and cruel being man is, how many living beings and plants he annihilates to maintain his own life.”, from Leo Tolstoy’s ” Hadji Murat” is as true today as it was in 1912…I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the natural history of this species. So happy to see that the author was able to convince some local farmers to leave a vegetative border around their fields for songbirds and mammals. If I close my eyes I can actually visualize my favorite quote by the author, ‘I startled hares that ran and leapt, cresting the tops of the grass with a smooth flowing motion, dolphins of the meadows.’ Simply beautiful.”

The general consensus among those members present was that this book was a very enjoyable, and perhaps even inspiring read.  We were a bit surprised as the discussion went on to discover that over 60% of those in attendance had some experience at being the caretakers (we won’t say owners) of rabbits. (And yes we know rabbits are not the same as hares.  The book taught us that.  But they are in the same family (Leporidae) though in different genera).  Liz shared with us her story of finding an abandoned kit (the term for a baby rabbit.  A baby hare is a leveret) some 40 or 45 years ago.  She also showed us some photos of her adoptee – not on her phone but actual printed glossies!  It was over 40 years ago after all.  Liz identified with Ms Dalton as she remembered her efforts to successfully rear her young charge and ready it to return to the wild.  “We did everything wrong” said Liz.  “There was no Google back then.  But we phoned the Wye Marsh for help and they referred us to an expert who told us to feed it Carnation Milk.  With a bit of effort, that seemed to work.  We called him Norman”.  Unlike the author, Ms Dalton, most of us couldn’t resist naming our rabbits. 

Has anyone else read Raising Hare?  Or perhaps is inspired by this review to read it? If so, send us your thoughts and we’ll enter them into the official Nature Book Club minutes.  If anyone would like to join us at future book club meetings, email us at [email protected] and we’ll let you know where and when we’ll be meeting. 

Here’s our list of upcoming books for discussion:

Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival by Canadian author Trina Moyles

How My Dog Saved My Life: 30 Tales of Courage and Compassion by Cate Cochran

On Sunday March 1, 2026 The Midland-Penetanguishene Field Naturalists Nature Book Club held their monthly meeting at the home of Book Club member Ken MacDonald.

The book under discussion this month was Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant that Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer.  The book tells the purportedly true story of a German boy and an Indian circus elephant and their struggle to stay together over 79 years and across three continents.  The book is full of dramatic incidents – shipwrecks at sea, miraculous rescues, diabolical circus owners, encounters with bloodthirsty revolutionaries in India, disastrous fires in the circus big top, pachyderm poisonings, and on and on, with our heroes Modoc and his friend and trainer Bram Gunterstein sailing through it all to establish Modoc’s claim as the greatest elephant ever.

Our book club group was unable to come to a consensus on this book.  With six members in attendance and one member submitting his evaluation by email we were pretty evenly split.  Four in favour and three against.

First from the pro-Modoc group: Club member David C. observed “This is a fabulous true story about our relationships we develop with our Creator, the people in our lives and animals. It is an emotive book about loves lost and found, hope and faith. It’s told through the eyes of a man and his elephant on their journey through life. The final few chapters will surprise you … proof that we can overcome the odds and obstacles and rise again.”  Other members enjoyed the book for its theme of the friendship and connection between a boy and his elephant, for its portrayal of different times and lands, and its call for more humane animal training methods; what Ralph Helfer calls “affection training”.

And now from the Modoc opposition: Time to discuss the elephant in the room! Calling this a true story is like calling a fast food burger “farm to table” because it originated from a cow.  None of the European or Indian place names in the book are places that actually exist.  The young boy Bram, although apparently raised in pre World War 1 Germany with no formal schooling, is perfectly fluent in English as he travels throughout the world.  The story stretches over the time period 1896 to 1975 with no mention of the 2 World Wars or any accounting of their impact on the events in the book.  Indeed, Bram, a German national, has no problem being brought into the USA during the 1940s to work for Barnum and Bailey.  No passport required!  And even though the book states that in his later years Bram became a noted animal trainer in Hollywood, when you search for any record of Bram’s existence on line you will come up empty.  Except for the various references to this book.  In the middle period of the book dealing with Modoc’s time with the Barnum and Bailey circus in American there are a few events that do seem to correspond to actual historical occurrences (the Hartford fire, the poisoning of elephants in 1941), but the actual details bear no relation to what is portrayed in the book. 

So is Mr. Helfer’s elephant tale, as he states – “true-at least as far as I know.  It’s the best I can do.”  Or is calling it true simply a marketing device to give the book more weight and an air of significance.  Ralph Helfer’s background is that of a Hollywood animal trainer (he famously trained Clarence the Cross-eyed Lion of the eponymous movie and the Daktari TV show, TV’s Gentle Ben and one of the MGM Lions) and the owner of several California zoo/theme parks.  One of our book club members remarked that as they paged through the book, it read more like a Hollywood script than a historical account.

So should you read the book? Do you care if a story is true? Some of our club members would say no and enjoyed the book for what it is, or purports to be.  Others felt this book needs to be quickly moved from non-fiction to fiction.  And perhaps not very believable fiction at that.

The Book Club has 3 more Nature Books on their To Read list for the coming months and we’ve set the date for our next 2 meetings. 

Sunday Apr. 19, 2026 2 PM – Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton (another Hair-raising tale like Modoc!?)

Sunday May 3, 2026 2 PM – Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada’s Sweetest Obsession by Peter Kuitenbrouwer

We’ve added to our reading list for June the book Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival by Canadian author Trina Moyles.  I know the Midland Library has a copy of this book.  The date and location of our June meeting is TBA.

If anyone out there would like to join this group of happy readers or has comments on some of the selected books, send an email to [email protected] and we’ll let you know where we’ll be meeting. 

Happy reading everyone.