The shimmering teal-turquoise arch curves around Tareq in the Zoom frame and, for a moment, it seems like he is actually standing in the Queen’s Marque Peace by Chocolate boutique in Halifax. Tareq Hadhad wears a crisp white shirt, a charcoal suit jacket and his trademark smile. He has just come from a photoshoot, and the newlywed is settling in back home on a Saturday evening. The telltale blur around Tareq’s outline is the only giveaway that the background is a digital rendering of the newish but already iconic retail space on Halifax, Nova Scotia’s waterfront. The flagship shop is a grand addition to the Peace by Chocolate story—a story that blossomed in the tiny maritime town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. But before there was Peace, there was war, and the Hadhad family story begins not in rural Canada but in Damascus, Syria.
It is probably not a stretch to suggest that Tareq Hadhad and his family’s journey to Canada is the most well-known of the Syrian resettlement stories that arose from the Government of Canada’s ambitious undertaking to resettle 25,000 Syrians in a three-month period from late 2015 to early 2016. There is not only a bestselling book but also a (dramatized) award-winning movie that details the flight of the family from Damascus after the bombing of their chocolate factory, their time in Lebanon in a refugee camp, the dead-of-winter arrival in Canada, Tareq’s struggle to pursue a career in medicine, and the founding and flourishing of the Peace by Chocolate enterprise. And then there was the Justin Trudeau shout-out at the United Nations, the dinner with Joe Biden, and an appearance on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. There were articles in the New York Times, Canadian Geographic, and a BBC podcast.
The momentum and pace of this kind of high-profile exposure and support from global media and political leaders in the space of only a few years would be overwhelming to most. Tareq acknowledges a surreal moment on his honeymoon this past summer when he and his bride, Mila, were flying Qatar Airways and Peace by Chocolate played on the in-flight screens. Tareq views the media and attention through the lens of an entrepreneur, a business owner, admitting that few small businesses “have a movie based on their story” and that most “struggle to generate enough noise to be noticed.” Tareq laughs as he recounts another surreal moment when US President Joe Biden was visiting Ottawa and had been gifted a Peace by Chocolate bar with Peace written in English on the wrapper: “[Biden] was walking all around Ottawa with all the media following him with the bar in his hand, and he was showing it to them, telling them, “If you don’t give me hard questions, I’m probably going to share this with you.” It was really remarkable because you can’t ask for this stuff. And you cannot pay for this stuff. And you cannot really imagine that this is even possible.”
On hope
Tareq, a self-proclaimed optimist, admits that there was a time when he could not imagine what was possible. He shares that for a period after the start of the civil war and the many long months of violence, airstrikes, and occupation that followed, he lost hope: “I just felt to myself that probably there was no way for us out of there, that the future was very dark and that we certainly could not get anywhere on the planet. I applied to fifteen countries; no one interviewed me. No one really asked me, What’s your application about? What do you want to do in the new country? No one opened the doors for us.”
But Tareq also resists the idea that hope can only be squashed or sparked in the darkest moments, like those brutal years in Syria: “When you talk about hope nowadays, it has some negative connotation to it. It’s like you have to be down to hope for better days ahead. You have to live in the darkness to hope that there will be light someday. You have to lose everything to hope that you can rebuild. But you really don’t have to be there. You can even just hope that whatever you have can continue. I think hope is not about intensity; it’s about consistency. Learning the art of hope, the skill of hope, is everyone’s game to master.”
France: O
Canada: won
One day, a door was finally opened for Tareq and his family—a door opened by Canada, by way of an invitation from the Canadian Embassy in Lebanon, miraculously inviting the family to emigrate together. In fact, the day before, UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) contacted the family, offering an interview at the French Embassy in Beirut. However, for Tareq’s mother and sister, the interview came with a condition: remove your hijab. It wasn’t just, as Tareq phrases it, that his mother and sister are proud Muslim women, it was that they didn’t feel welcome, that they felt discriminated against from the very first step of the process.
Ultimately, for the Hadhad family, Canada was an easy choice, but not one made lightly: “Our entire family sat down in Lebanon when we got the call from the Canadian Embassy and the invitation to emigrate all together, and we agreed that this was it. If we were to go, we would focus on making the journey the most successful possible, because if we took that chance away from other people who really wanted to stay in Canada forever, then we would never forgive ourselves.”
The family knew others, many others, who didn’t get or take that chance. The Hadhads were part of a WhatsApp group of displaced Syrians, friends, some of whom “gave up” waiting for resettlement and took the difficult and dangerous journey by boat to Europe, paying smugglers along the way. Tareq expresses this as a loss: “They walked all the way to Germany, or they went to Sweden; if they had waited only fifteen days, they would have been in Canada now.” He reflects on this pivotal time as “a game of patience, a game of believing.”
‘Magine
We’re very excited to welcome Peace by Chocolate founder here tonight, Canada’s own Tareq Hadhad!
“That introduction still rings in my ears,” Tareq says, slightly shaking his head in disbelief at the memory of the moment host Mark Critch—and fellow Maritimer—welcomed him to the set of the Canadian comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes in 2020, a few days after Tareq’s citizenship ceremony. “Mark and I were sitting there. It was two months before the pandemic. Hundreds of people were there for the recording of the episode, and I remember their reactions at the end. It was phenomenal. For me, it was like, Hey, I belong. I have the audacity of belonging here. I have the audacity of contributing. I have the audacity of celebrating the values of this country.”
Occasionally, as Tareq speaks, there is a hint of Maritimer in his speech, and he shares with delight some of his favourite Nova Scotian expressions: G’wan wit’cha, right some good, ‘magine—also now names of Peace by Chocolate chocolate bars. More importantly, Tareq helps this writer with the correct, local pronunciation of Antigonish and is confident that equipped with only these three phrases, plus a solid ann-uh-guh-nish, any come-from-away would be welcome in Nova Scotia.
Peace makers
Oddly, this local pronunciation is a detail with which the film Peace by Chocolate seems unconcerned. The movie takes other creative liberties, so many that Tareq felt compelled to add a disclaimer on his own website: The movie is actually based on real events to a degree of about 60% to 70%, with the remaining 30% or so being created for dramatic effect.
Filmmaker Jonathan Keijser has suggested that the film is more like a composite narrative of the immigrant experience, and specifically, the Syrian refugee experience. Another fictional aspect in the movie is a character whose chief purpose is to express anti-immigrant sentiment, in particular the old and tired argument that they are taking our jobs.
This was a notion Tareq intuitively wanted to get ahead of from day one of his arrival in Antigonish: “One of the early conversations I had with many [local] people was to let them know that we did not come here to take your jobs.” In fact, apart from a pandemic pause, job creation has been foundational to the ambitions and growth of Peace by Chocolate—the opening of the newest shop offering multiple employment opportunities for “management, sales associates and peace makers.”
Tareq talks about a focus on “creating more jobs in remote areas and creating a network of peace ambassadors,” but philanthropy and community partnerships are top of mind for him too, such as that with the Trans Canada Trail: “All the proceeds from the sales of the Peace by Chocolate Trans Canada Trail-themed chocolate bars will benefit maintained trails that were affected by climate change events, right here at home in Nova Scotia.” The founding of the Peace on Earth Society has also enabled the business to direct a percentage of sales to organizations such as the Red Cross to support fundraising for earthquake, flooding, wildfire and other relief efforts around the globe. The impact and legacy the Hadhad family have created in just eight years—and during a pandemic—is staggering.
The ties that bind
These accomplishments mean a great deal to Tareq, but he is always looking forward to new markets and audiences and more partnerships, including a deeply personal one: marriage. Tareq relishes re-telling the story of his parent’s first date and his chocolatier father gifting his mother a box of chocolates, which, as the family lore goes, sealed the deal. When asked if that same technique advanced his cause with his wife Mila, Tareq laughs, “I actually tried, but it didn’t work. I failed on that mission. So probably that early connection was not based on chocolate—but now it is!”
Born five minutes away from each other in Damascus but meeting for the first time decades later at a photoshoot in Edmonton, Alberta, Tareq and photographer Mila Zidan were married on May 20, 2023. When it came to shooting the wedding photos, Tareq reports that Mila was in her element and more than comfortable giving direction to the photographers: “She was very specific about the angles to use and natural light! The photography terms and acronyms I will never understand. She was having fun. Watching her, I thought to myself, This is your playground.” Having celebrated 100 days of marriage on August 28th, Tareq is still basking in a newlywed glow and excited for what he calls “a lifetime partnership of soulmates.”
Tareq admits that planning and executing the wedding itself was “an amazing amount of work,” and credits his and Mila’s families and friends for the “biggest amount of love and support that anyone can really wish for.”
Indeed, since that snowy December day when Tareq arrived alone in Antigonish, family reunification has been a slow but constant theme; now, in addition to Tareq’s parents and an uncle, five of his six siblings live in Canada. Tareq is grateful that they can be together and acknowledges that it must be painful for other families separated at the time of immigration and not yet reunited. And although most of Tareq’s immediate family have been reunited, he says that his uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents are scattered across 23 countries.
Tareq recognizes that the Syrian diaspora here in Canada, specifically those who arrived in late 2015 and throughout 2016, have likely had vastly different resettlement experiences from one another, yet he says he feels “connected [to them] in many ways” and that they share the “same sense of resiliency and perseverance.”
When asked if family reunification here in Canada means there is no foreseeable return to Syria for himself or others, Tareq rejects the correlation: “There was no way for us, for our generation that had to leave the country, no way for us to go back. Even now, the borders might be open, but there are zero opportunities. There’s no infrastructure for anything—not for life, not for business, not for education. The basics of healthcare are almost gone. I think that every single family would be wasting a lifetime if they thought that reunification in Canada or anywhere else would take away the essence of their roots in Syria or any other country they call home by birth.”
One peace at a time
Even Canada’s own Tareq admits no country is perfect. “I did not sign up just to the country’s excellence—I also own its mistakes and failures.” He laments the inequalities in Canadian society and the crises of homelessness and affordability, declaring the fight against such injustices as much his as that of people who were born here.
As a displaced person, Tareq is critical of the Government of Canada’s historical and current role in Indigenous displacement and cultural genocide. He expresses disappointment that the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (then-Citizenship and Immigration Canada) publication Discover Canada, which he received upon arrival in 2015, made no mention of “anything Indigenous or the different Nations here on Turtle Island.” Tareq feels strongly that “as much as we celebrate the newcomer perspective,” it is vital that we don’t ignore the “injustices that Indigenous people have had to live through over time.”
It is through the lenses of social and climate justice that Tareq further explains what he means by peace: “I talk about peace with the understanding of its absence; one might not feel it if it exists, but everyone would feel the absence of it.” When asked if he agreed peace could be defined not as the opposite of war but as “a peaceful environment in which people have access to food, clothing, and a home” and that a wildfire or a flood could equally be considered a “peace-disturbing” event, Tareq agrees: “Exactly. The effects of climate change are a different battle. Wars are still there, don’t get me wrong, but there is a whole different threat on the horizon.”
What you can do for your country
It feels almost impossible not to ask the man who is a prolific public speaker, has met two American presidents, and someone whom Mark Critch jokingly asked on national television if he found Justin Trudeau “too clingy” whether he is considering running for political office. After all, a federal election is looming in 2025 and his Instagram bio includes a red heart emoji before the word politics. Tareq quickly responds: “No, no, no, I’m not.”
Tareq adds that being a peace advocate is something he cherishes every day and that he believes one “can change the world much faster through business and entrepreneurship than politics.” He insists his immediate goals are to grow the business, with a specific eye to expansion in the US market in the next few years. “We still have a long way to go, but we are building very solid ground for it.” For a company whose products made their way to the International Space Station, the dream of becoming a “major chocolate company in North America” seems easy to reach.
The peace advocate hedges a little, though: “For the time being, I’m staying out [of politics], but you never know what the future holds. Whatever the country needs me to do. If the right way to be there for Canada is to be a soccer player, I will have to learn how to play soccer.”
