The Syrian refugee family who rebuilt a bombed Damascus chocolate factory in small-town Nova Scotia

From a Damascus factory to a potluck in Antigonish

For close to thirty years, Isam Hadhad ran one of the larger chocolate operations in the Middle East. The family factory in Damascus employed around 30 people and shipped specialty confections across the region and into Europe. In late 2012, in the middle of the Syrian war, the factory was destroyed by a bomb. The family lost the business and the building in a single night and fled to Lebanon, where they spent roughly three years as refugees with little certainty about what came next.

In 2015 and 2016, a group of residents in Antigonish, a Nova Scotia university town of about 5,000 people, sponsored a Syrian family without knowing their names or their story. The family they were matched with was the Hadhads. Within weeks of arriving, Isam did the one thing he knew how to do better than almost anyone: he made chocolate. He brought a batch to a community potluck, and it was gone within ten minutes. At the local winter market soon after, people lined up to buy it, in a town small enough that a line of two hundred people meant something.

“Back home in Damascus, the Hadhads had owned a successful business, a chocolate factory that employed 30 people.”

By August 2016, just eight months after arriving, the family had opened a small factory in Antigonish and named it Peace by Chocolate. The name carries the mission: the company donates a share of its profits to peace-building work and built the brand around the line One Peace Won't Hurt. One month later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told their story on a global stage, at the Leaders' Summit on Refugees at the United Nations in New York. The early company had already donated some of its first profits to Fort McMurray wildfire relief, paying forward the welcome it had received.

What they actually make

The filled bars: The core of the line is a filled chocolate bar that blends a Belgian-style couverture with Syrian-inspired fillings, nuts, fruit, and warm spices. The 92 gram Peace Bar is the signature, and the brand has expanded into milk, dark, and peppermint variants.

The gift boxes: Assorted boxes like The Chocolate Lovers Box and the Canada Gift Box carry the gifting side of the business, which is where the brand's story does a lot of the selling. People buy these to give, not just to eat.

The newer bars: The family has kept up with the category, including a Dubai-style pistachio and crispy kataifi filled bar that rode the 2024 to 2025 pistachio-chocolate wave. It is a reminder that under the heritage story is a real, modern confectionery operation that ships nationally.

How it compares to other Canadian chocolate brands

Peace by Chocolate sits in an unusual spot. It is more artisan than a mass bar, more widely distributed than most craft chocolate, and it carries a mission that almost no competitor can match. Here is where it lands next to other independent Canadian chocolate brands you might find on the shelf:

Categories and positioning reflect publicly listed information on each brand's site as of June 2026. Pricing intentionally omitted because it varies materially by retailer. See the live product links below. Mid-Day Squares is profiled in its own Maple Made edition.

Why people love it, beyond the chocolate

Most independent food brands wish they had a fraction of the public goodwill Peace by Chocolate has earned. The story has been told in a Canadian Geographic feature, a 2020 book by Jon Tattrie published by Goose Lane Editions, and a 2021 feature film directed by Jonathan Keijser that screened at festivals and on streaming. The United Nations profiled the family again in 2025. That is a level of earned attention that money cannot buy.

What makes the affection durable is that the brand keeps acting like the story it tells. It is one of the largest employers in Antigonish, it has hired and trained newcomers, and it routes a real share of profit into peace work rather than treating the mission as marketing. When shoppers put a bar in the cart, they tend to know exactly why they are doing it, and they tend to tell the person they are giving it to.

What the press is saying

Where to actually buy it

Each link below goes directly to a Peace by Chocolate product page or a live retailer listing, not just a homepage, so you can add a real item to your cart without hunting:

For the full list of grocery and specialty retailers near you, see Peace by Chocolate's store locator and grocery locations pages.

Frequently asked questions

Bottom line

Peace by Chocolate is the rare brand where the story and the product are the same thing. A family that built and lost a chocolate business in Damascus rebuilt it from scratch in a Nova Scotia town of five thousand, and turned a community welcome into more than a thousand points of distribution across the country. The chocolate is good. The reason to reach for it is better. If you have never tried it, the 92 gram Peace Bar is the simplest place to start.