Chocolatier Fredericton

[Laila Berri]

Ashead chocolatier for Fancy Bites, Nancy has trained with master chocolatiers Melissa Coppel, Kriss Harvey, Luis Amado, Kirsten Tibballs, Lana Orlova, and Martin Diez, through numerous classes from Europe, the USA, and Canada. She is a member of three international baking/chocolate schools. Nancy naturally blends her passion for art and fine food with her impeccable eye for detail and flair for all things beautiful. Her new Chocolaterie in Fredericton offers an array of bonbons, artisan bars and candies, and delicate pastries and macarons.

Come visit the bright and beautiful home of Fancy Bites in Fredericton to see the entire collection, including seasonal offerings like Chocolate Dipped Fancy Ice Cream Bars, Cold Brewed Coffees, and Cold Brewed Herbal Teas.

New Brunswick is a fully bilingual province, with more than 30% of the population declaring French as their primary language. Ginette is a French-speaking Canadian and Frdric worked in the chocolate industry in Paris, France, moving to Canada in 2011 and opening Adorable Chocolat in Shediac where French is the prevalent language spoken.

While chocolate bonbons, truffles, and confections were the primary focus of Adorable Chocolat for the first three years, in February, 2017, the new Scorpion Bars were launched elevating Adorable Chocolat to the category of hybrid chocolatier, and one step closer to bean-to-bar.

Be it Switzerland, Australia, France, or any part of the world, Chocolate casts its spell far and wide. The heady blend of Chocolate and your words sure weave magic and keep the reader riveted. Always love reading about your chocolate experiences.

Very interesting post.Since you brought this topic up, I often wanted to ask a question. Does Quebec have different chocolate, from rest of Canada, and if so, is it because of the French influence and past there?

Oh Doreen! You always make my chocolate cravings worse! This time, paired with the handcrafted caramel! Sounds amazing! I love New Brunswick and it looks like Adorable Chocolat gives me another reason to get back there one day soon. Great article!

The children of Canada were furious. The first protests were held right there in Ladysmith, where many of the kids had grown up in families of coal miners and loggers, familiar with the power of unions and collective action. They organized a boycott of the ice cream parlour, marching up and down the street with placards and an old Buick covered with chalk slogans like "Don't Be A Sucker" and "We Want 5 Bars Then We All Shall Buy Them."

In some cities, the police were called in to break up the protests. But the kids weren't alone in their cause. As they took to their adorable picket lines, they found plenty of support from adults. Chocolate bars weren't the only products with skyrocketing price tags. During the Second World War, the government had introduced strict price controls. But with the war now over, those controls had been lifted. Prices were soaring. The inflation rate soon passed 14%, more than double what it was in 2022. The chocolate bar came to represent all those rising prices, a rallying point for resistance. And so, the striking children attracted the support of consumer associations, parent groups, and labour unions. Some stores even refused to carry the eight-cent bars, selling their existing stock at the old price in solidarity.

As sales of chocolate bars plummeted, confectionary manufacturers rolled out their own public relations campaign. They claimed the massive price hikes were outside their control, the result of higher production and labour costs. They suggested that if Canadians wanted lower prices, the government should reduce taxes. They told newspapers their profits weren't rising at all. One representative told The Toronto Daily Star that if the kids didn't call off their strike "chocolate bars could disappear from the market entirely." Newspaper ads begged customers to understand that "5 Chocolate Bars just aren't possible NOW!" Some chocolatiers even tried to bribe strike leaders with free candy.

These were the early years of the Cold War. Just days after the Second World War ended, a cipher clerk working at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa had made a dramatic defection, turning himself in to the Canadian authorities with shocking evidence that the Russians had been running an elaborate spy ring in the capital. His revelations shattered the fragile alliance between the Soviets and the West, sparking decades of distrust, paranoia and nuclear tensions. In the months leading up to the candy strike, newspapers had been filled with stories of Communist plots being uncovered and Communist spies being put on trial. And the rising tide of the Red Scare gave the chocolate manufacturers the ammunition they needed in their fight against the striking children.

Suddenly, the kids' momentum was gone. Parents forbade their children from joining the marches. Organizations began withdrawing their support. Newspapers denounced the protests. And the Chocolate Bar Strike fizzled. The candy companies had won. The five-cent chocolate bar was gone forever.

But while the children were disappointed, they also walked away with their heads held high. "Even though the price of candy bars remained at eight cents," one of the kids explained many years later, "I think we were proud of the fact we stood up and protested and stood up for our rights as children.

Imagine a Toronto where the tallest building is only three stories high, where Lake Ontario reaches Front Street, where the wagon wheels grind through the muddy roads, the air smells of smoke and animal, and the surrounding lands is farms, fields, and forests. This was what the neighbourhood looked like in the early 1800s.

A huge crowd of angry children was marching down Bloor Street. There were hundreds of them on that spring day in 1947, disgruntled and filled with purpose. They were armed with picket signs emblazoned with outraged slogans, and they left leaflets on every parked car they passed. The price of chocolate bars had just gone up \u2014 and Canadian children weren't going to stand for it.

It all started on Vancouver Island. A week before that march down Bloor Street, a group of kids in the town of Ladysmith, B.C. \u2014 on the road between Victoria and Nanaimo \u2014 paid a visit to a local ice cream parlour after lunch. When one of the students went inside to buy a chocolate bar, he was shocked to find the price had shot up overnight. A day earlier, the bars had cost a single nickel \u2014 the same as a bottle of pop or an ice cream cone. Now, they were eight cents each \u2014 a sudden jump of 60% that was repeated in shops all over the country. \\\"All of a sudden we went in and bang-o,\\\" Parker Williams remembered decades after his visit to the ice cream parlour, \\\"a chocolate bar's eight cents! And that just hit us like a slap in the face.\\\"

The children of Canada were furious. The first protests were held right there in Ladysmith, where many of the kids had grown up in families of coal miners and loggers, familiar with the power of unions and collective action. They organized a boycott of the ice cream parlour, marching up and down the street with placards and an old Buick covered with chalk slogans like \\\"Don't Be A Sucker\\\" and \\\"We Want 5\u00A2 Bars Then We All Shall Buy Them.\\\"

When the kids' picture appeared in a Vancouver newspaper, it sparked a national movement. The protests quickly spread across the country. Over the next ten days, children everywhere from Halifax to Montreal to Calgary organized their own boycotts and marches. In Regina, students walked out of class. In Burnaby, they blocked traffic with their bicycles. In Victoria, they shut down the provincial legislature. In Ottawa, they marched on Parliament Hill, demanding an audience with the finance minister as they declared they would rather \\\"eat worms\\\" than an eight-cent chocolate bar. In Fredericton, they pooled their sugar rations so they could make fudge instead. A new protest song was heard in the streets of New Brunswick: \\\"We want a five-cent chocolate bar / Eight cents is going too darn far\u2026\\\"

In Toronto, five hundred high school students from Central Tech, Central Commerce and Harbord Collegiate had joined the march down Bloor Street, ending with a rally at Christie Pits park. Thousands more signed a pledge to promise they wouldn't buy a single chocolate bar until the price was lowered back down to five cents. And more protests were coming. That rally was going to be followed by an even more impressive march in Toronto the very next day \u2014 it promised to be the biggest yet, part of a nation-wide day of action against the price-hike. A week after it began, the children's strike was still gaining momentum.

As sales of chocolate bars plummeted, confectionary manufacturers rolled out their own public relations campaign. They claimed the massive price hikes were outside their control, the result of higher production and labour costs. They suggested that if Canadians wanted lower prices, the government should reduce taxes. They told newspapers their profits weren't rising at all. One representative told The Toronto Daily Star that if the kids didn't call off their strike \\\"chocolate bars could disappear from the market entirely.\\\" Newspaper ads begged customers to understand that \\\"5\u00A2 Chocolate Bars just aren't possible NOW!\\\" Some chocolatiers even tried to bribe strike leaders with free candy.

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