Fir resin, Canada Balsam

Natural Glue

for optic

and microscope slides

With its rating of refraction of the light which is identical to glass, the fir gum is searched out around the world to stick the high precision optical lenses or to make microscope components. This substance is known around the world as “Canada balm”.

100% Natural

Manually collected by artisan gatherers

Nothing added, not treated

Just filtered

Also avalaible on 15 ml, 50 ml and 500 ml.

The resin of fir comes from the emergences on the bark of the Balsam Fir, majestic fir that we find in Quebec. Frech colonizers, thank to Amerindians, have learned the multiple uses and properties of this gum. They were using it notably as a cold remedy, in case of scurvy, on wound and burns… even the holes in their canoes were filled in with this percious gum…

Common(s) names (s) : Fir, Canadian fir, balsam fir, Canada balsam.

Botanical Name:  : Abies balsamea, Terebenthina canadensis (resin), family: pinaceae.

French Names : Sapin, sapin baumier, arbre de Noël.

Used parts : The resin which lit from the tree-trunk (fir gum), needles (essential oil), buds (herbal tea). Derivative products : fir gum or Canada balm (resin).

Habitat and origin: This typically Canadian tree, most important plantings find in Quebec, prefers a cold climate and a consistently humid soil. This is the most sturdy of all the conifers.

History

Amerindians have quickly initiate French colonizers to multiples uses that they were doing with fir gum: medicine against cold, scurvy, wounds and burns and, in an other kind of things, sealer for several packaging and for the canoes maden from tree bark.  Under the French System, the collect of fir gum came quickly an activity that the trappers use as a second seasonal income. According to the botanist Marie-Victorin, the fir gum was one of the essential articles in the popular medecine of french Canadians. At the time of the intendant Jean Talon, the resin was also uses for the making of shoes and the shipbuilding.

A bit later, it was used to varnish violins and, because of its rating of refraction of the light which is identical to glass, the fir gum will be searched out around the world to stick the high precision optical lenses or to make  microscope components. This substance is known around the world as “Canada balm”. We still use it today in dentistry for some canal’s treatment; we find it in some toothpaste; it comes in making of different varnish and painting. Not counting the fact that the Christmas Tree of excellence is not other than our Balsam Fir.

In Quebec, the artisan collecting of the fir gum is still a small seasonal business. We take the resin locally sold as a natural medicine and internationally for different industrial uses.

On the issue of medicinal use, we mainly know the uses of the turpentine, fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from trees, as the balsam fir and pine. It offeres the advantage to be easierly use than the gum, which has the unpleasant characteristic to be gummy. We usually name the same “Canada balsam” or  Terebenthina Canadensis (Canadian turpentine) the gum of turpentine from which was extracted and we gave them the same proprieties.

At the end of the XIX century, we still use the turpentine in Quebec’s hospitals, as we can read in the Traité élémentaire de matière médicale written by the Providence Nouns, in the 1890’s edition. Stimulant, diuretic and, at high doses, purgative, its action applies mainly on the urinary system and the mucous of the respiratory tracts. It was very popular, used as medicated plaster or as ointment, on wounds, old ulcers, affected parts of rheumatisms,  backaches, etc.