I'm waiting on some Berkshire pork from a friend who raises them...alder might be a bit difficult as we are in Eastern Ontario and I never see it here..
I'm originally from the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right on the Canadian border. We has what we considered a scrub tree, The tag alder. It grew everywhere, and is a wonderful wood for smoking fish and pork. If you have tag alder in Eastern Ontario, use it. If not, there are other great woods that should be available to you, such as sugar, or red maple, white oak, any of the birch family. Basically, you are looking for a clean burning hardwood that will produce a blue smoke.
Contrary to what many say, the wood should be bone dry to produce the right smoke. And, you can pick up hickory, mesquite, and other smoking woods in the garden/bbq section of many larger department stores, such as Walmart, target, and such. Here's a site that tells the kinds of woods used for smoking food, and where they are found. I;m sure some of them are available to you. And there are online sites where you can order wood as well.
https://www.langbbqsmokers.com/pdfs/app_woods.pdfOH, the site mentions hardware stores. And yes, you can fet oak, maple, and other woods at hardware stores. However, yo must make sure that the wood is natural, untreated wood, and, because it's been processed/finished, it's going to be more expensive.
Tip- wooden pallets are made of oak, or maple, due to the strength of the wood. They are untreated, and can often be had for free from many businesses just trying to get rid of them. You don't have to search very hard to find them. Free smoking wood, can't beat that.
Seeeeeyal Chief Longwind of the North