ANTIGONISH: The Hadhad family’s sweet success story of fleeing war-torn Syria has finally made its way to a smaller version of the big screen in Antigonish, less than a decade after Tareq Hadhad arrived to the town during a cold 2015 winter.
Festival Antigonish hosted three sold out screenings over the weekend of Peace by Chocolate a movie by Vortex Media based on an inspirational true story, one that may seem familiar to people throughout the Strait area.
“It went really well,” Festival Antigonish Artistic Director Andrea Boyd told The Reporter. “It was lovely to have the whole extended Hadhad family here, so there were 20 members of Tareq and Alaa’s family.”
On opening night, along with the screening, there was a panel discussion with Tareq and his sister Alaa, along with Antigonish Mayor Laurie Boucher and Peter Wade, a founding member of Syria-Antigonish Families Embrace (SAFE), the organization which sponsored the Hadhad family in coming to Antigonish.
“It was interesting, at the end of the film, where there is some information on the context of the story, it says that since 2015 Antigonish has welcomed over 100 newcomers to Canada from Syria,” Reema Fuller, Festival Antigonish’s managing director said. “Peter Wade from SAFE was talking about when the group first started their goal was to just bring and help one family, and Tareq just happened to be the first.”
Now, 24 families later, SAFE is still going strong, because there is a need.
“Another interesting thing they said is they wanted to go to a big city, Tareq called it MVT, Montréal, Vancouver or Toronto, that’s where they wanted to go,” Boyd said. “And the person who was helping them said ‘no, no, no, I’m going to put you with a small town, because that is where you will have the most success and you will thrive,’ and now they can’t imagine living anywhere else but Antigonish.”
Jonathan Keijser’s story, which was shot mainly in an old Victorian house in Montréal in 2020, tells the firsthand story of the Hadhad family, whose lives were completely turned upside down in 2012 when their home, along with their father’s chocolate factory the family had run in Damascus since 1986, was destroyed in the ongoing Syrian civil war during a bomb strike.
“It was beautiful, what a great chance to tell a story about integrating into small town Canada,” Boyd said. “It was great to see the story of a new family from Syria settling into a small Nova Scotia town and being embraced by the community and finding their own moments of strength to thrive.”
Tareq Hadhad arrived in Canada an aspiring doctor; however those dreams would need to be placed on hold in his new country.
After his immediate family arrived in the small, rural Nova Scotian town, his father Issam immediately began making chocolates in the family kitchen, approximately 200 pieces a week and started selling them at the Antigonish Farmer’s Market, where they quickly grew in popularity.
By 2016, the father and son founded what is now known to be a spiritually minded confectionary company Peace by Chocolate, turning out tasty handcrafted treats via a community-built shed adjacent to their home.
“It’s not just about the community support, it’s about the family and the people in that story really finding their strength,” Fuller said. “As Tareq was saying, it’s about leading with kindness and compassion.”
Boyd suggested she liked the portrayal of the local Antigonishers, like Frank Gallant, who was so instrumental in helping the Hadhad family get to they point they are today.
However, it wasn’t until a late-2016 speech about refugees and immigration at the United Nations by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, that Peace by Chocolate’s reach really began to grow outside Antigonish.
Tourists from all over began to show up at the shed looking for a taste and a piece of Hadhad’s chocolate, Sobeys began to take notice, establishing a distribution deal with their eastern Canadian grocery chain and offering the family business a building that could be utilized as a factory to expand on production.
“With this film, when Andrea reached out to the distributors, we were just looking for permission to screen the film,” Fuller said. “We did know there was no plan at the time to be screen in Antigonish at all, and this was a made in Antigonish story so we were so glad to be able to being the film here, even if it was to small audiences at a time.”
Fuller suggested it was an important film to screen as it’s one that should be shared, noting the tremendous pride in the audience during the showing.
“There’s nowhere else that they’re being screened, you would have to go to New Glasgow, that’s the closest place to see this movie,” Boyd said. “So for us, it really lets us diversify what we’re presenting.”
By introducing films to their community, it also introduces their space to new community members.
“For instance, Andrea had a welcome speech before the event stated and we had Joseph Khoury, a former board chair who speaks Arabic, doing Arabic translation the entire welcoming speech,” Fuller said. “Which made such a difference for one third of our audience, who suddenly could feel truly welcomed and included, because they could understand something in their own language, opposed to trying to understand something in English.”
As for take-away themes from the movie, Boyd indicated the forgiven one is peace, while another strong one hits at being kind to your neighbours.
“A kind of line from the film is neighbours and newcomers are the same,” she said.
Today in 2022, 10 years after living in a Lebanon refugee camp, Peace by Chocolate is so much more than a thriving business, as they do business under a highly philanthropic lens, and they continue to donate portions of proceeds to peace-building initiatives not only around Canada, but across the world.
Peace by Chocolate is now being showcased in select Cineplex theatres across Canada, which will be shown at all the locations across Nova Scotia, including New Glasgow, Truro, and Sydney.