How Sweet It Is

After losing everything in Syria, one family re-established their chocolate business on Canadian soil, sharing their story—and their amazing confections—with the world.

- Lisa Jackson 

FOR 55-YEAR-OLD Assam Hadhad, a happy life requires two ingredients: peace and chocolate. Once a leading chocolatier in Damascus, Hadhad, who originally arrived in Canada as a Syrian refugee, is now reclaiming both.

For three decades, Hadhad’s company in Syria shipped handmade chocolate all over the world, but after civil war erupted in 2011, in the wake of broader social unrest, he lost everything. Hadhad fled to Canada in January 2016, and within seven months he had returned to his craft, opening a shop in Antigonish, N.S., which he’s christened Peace by Chocolate. In this town of 4,000 residents, he sells handmade treats from a backyard shed; remarkably, his startup venture has quickly become a cherished confectionary business in Canada.

“We’re not only working in the chocolate field—we’re working on peace-building projects,” says Tareq Hadhad, Assam’s 25-year-old son, who acts as a spokesperson for the business. “[My father] really believes that whoever eats chocolate will be happy in life.”

ACCORDING TO TAREQ, his dad first fell into chocolate making by chance. Fuelled by a sweet tooth, the self-taught chef began borrowing chocolate cookbooks from a Damascus library in the 1980s and “playing with chocolate whenever he could,” says Tareq. Soon, the hobby morphed into a serious venture.

“He started to create his own recipes,” adds Tareq. “He learned how to roast cocoa beans, how to make special flavours and mix them with chocolate. He was creating so many different kinds.”