“It was disbelief,” Wally Martin said as she recalled the “overwhelming” number of visitors who flocked to the very first Elmira Maple Syrup Festival on April 10, 1965.
More than six decades on, the pioneering pancake maker still remembers the unexpected crowds that launched an event that became famous and has been held every year since.
“It was a beautiful day,” said Martin, who was then aged 28 and was joined by her mother, Lovina Wraase, in making the iconic Canadian breakfast treats smothered in lashings of local syrup.
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