Pancake Flipping Adventures at the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival
Nothing says spring is right around the corner like the Elmira Maple Syrup festival! Since 1965 the community of Elmira has hosted the world’s largest single-day syrup festival for increasingly larger crowds. Anything maple has a place at the festival, including pancakes. After all, what’s a stack of pancakes without maple syrup? Just ask the festival mascot Flapjack. To help celebrate this perfect marriage, one of the events at the festival is a contest where teams of 5 “flip” an oversized pancake into a large skillet using various props. This Pancake Flipping Contest pits teams against one another in the name of charity and fun. Josslin Insurance has been a sponsor of the festival since 2013 and their team of Syrup Heroes compete in the contest.

It might seem easy to flip an oversized pancake down a line of 5 people using a spatula, tennis racket, swim flipper and frying pan but with the pressure on plenty of pancakes end up on the floor. The goal of this flipping line is to have the pancake land on your side of a skillet, which results in one point. If it lands on the other team’s side of the skillet it is a point for them.
With their capes and masks, the Josslin Syrup Heroes put on a good show and were able to collect a decent pile of food donations for the Woolwich Community Services, but the Waterloo Chinese Canadian Association took the top spot for the fourth year in a row! Maybe next year the Festival will award bonus points for coordinated costumes. If that’s the case, watch out, Elmira!
