“War can kill anything in a person, but it cannot kill values and hope. Syrians are a naturally happy people, and we aspire to live in a spirit of giving, generosity and hospitality.”
Just desserts
With these words, Tareq Hadhad described to UN News the difficult journey his family took from the Syrian capital to the remote Canadian city of Antigonish.
The Hadhads are a long-established Damascene family and from it came judges, engineers and doctors for generations. But, what they are best known for is chocolate, a legacy that Mr. Hadhad’s father, Issam, built in 1986.
That year, the senior Mr. Hadhad decided to leave mechanical engineering and start making chocolate despite the fact that there were only a few well-known companies in the Middle East in that field at the time.
Chocolate for good
The younger Mr. Hadhad said his father wanted to be in a field “that made people around him happy”as frustration prevailed among …