Peace by chocolate

You can taste resilience in a chocolate bar.

Altruism too.

And, most delicious of all, peace.

I know this because I bit into a Peace by Chocolate candy bar yesterday and here’s what I learned: we humans are even better than the richest, deepest, sweetest chocolate.

That’s saying something.

Peace by Chocolate is a company born in chaos and founded on hope. The Hadhad family ran a booming chocolate factory for 30 years in Syria . They shipped chocolate all over the Mideast and Europe until, one day in 2012, bombs fell on Damascus and destroyed the Hadhad family home, their factory and their lives. They fled to Libya where they lived as refugees for three years.

Eventually, the family made its way to Antigonish, a Gaelic region of Nova Scotia. There they began making chocolate again.

They infused their chocolate with the same ingredients that had made them so successful in Syria, and, in an homage to the people who had taken them in, they added some Canadian charm.

The three bars I purchased were named for Canadian phrases and they included translations.

I bought the Give’R, the Hey Buddy and the Eh?

My daughter Molly has been trying to convince me to stop buying things based on their name for years. What can I say? I painted my kitchen “Friendly Yellow”. I’m a sucker for a warm turn of phrase.

But, these chocolate bars are actually really tasty. And, through their “Peace on Earth” initiative, they have donated more than $700,000 to peace-building projects around the world. And their boxes include messages from Canada’s sweetest and oldest couple.

So I highly recommend Peace by Chocolate.

As they say in their slogan, One Peace Won’t Hurt.

And we could all use a little peace right now.

Note: If you intend to order from Peace by Chocolate for Easter, I encourage you jump on that. I ordered my chocolate bars on March 11 and they arrived on March 26. This is a family company working as hard as they can to fulfill orders swiftly.