Source: United Nations 2
“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 Syria’s youth after the events of 1982, when the Hafez al Assad regime committed the Hama massacre.
Founded “from scratch”, the company grew to employ hundreds of people.
In 2008, it began exporting to several countries in the Middle East and Europe in line the senior Mr. Hadhad’s aspiration: to “deliver the message of the Syrians all over the world” through a universal product that everyone knew and loved, his son explained, adding that the goal was not only to increase sales, but to embark on several development and relief projects in Syria.
“My father believed that if you are successful in your life, you have a responsibility to raise others to success,” Mr. Hadhad said.
Peace by Chocolate
Isam Hadhad makes chocolate in the factory.
Time for survival
Before 2013, the entire family of more than 60 people lived in one building chockful of memories just south of the Al-Midan area in old Damascus, standing their ground for two years after the war began.
“I lost many members of my family,” Mr. Hadhad said. “My sister’s husband was arrested, tortured and then killed in prison. Many of my cousins disappeared, some of whom we still know nothing about and some of whom were summarily executed.”
The chocolate factory was targeted in airstrike in 2012 and the following year, as Mr. Hadhad and his brother were walking in a street in downtown Damascus, a missile fell nearby.
“Amid the dust, I thought my brother was dead,” he said. “I picked him up and ran home. When I got there, I told the family this is not the time to build a business or study. This is a time for survival.”
‘We are not victims’
The family made the excruciating decision to seek refuge in Lebanon, leaving everything behind. The following year, they learned that the regime’s forces had “looted their homes, burned them down and bombed them to cover up the crime”.
“There are many Syrians who have lost much more than us,” Mr. Hadhad said. “We are not victims. We are victors regardless of the outcome because we were able to survive the war with our lives and start our lives again.”
The family registered with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and moved many times in Lebanon until they settled in the city of Sidon. While Mr. Hadhad said the Lebanese people were very hospitable to the Syrians, because no official agreements had been signed, they could not work, rent homes or go to school.
Refugees giving back
Lebanon, as a country of four to five million people at the time, received more than a million Syrian refugees in a very short period of time.
“That’s equivalent to 10 to 15 million American refugees entering Canada in a year or two,” he said. “Of course, the country wouldn’t be able bear that burden. But, Lebanon absorbed that burden over 13 years.”
Indeed, the burden of the war wasn’t just on Syria and the Syrian people, but on the peoples of the entire region, including the Jordanians, Lebanese, Turkish and Iraqis.
However, the Hadhad family was determined “at every stage of our refugee story to prove to the world that we can give to the host community and not take”.
For his part, Mr. Hadhad spent most of his days in Lebanon volunteering with several relief organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNHCR, providing his expertise in healthcare to both Syrian refugees and their Lebanese hosts alike, having reached the final stages of his medical studies before leaving Syria.
Canada bound
The family’s goal was to return to Syria, but when that seemed like a distant dream and their fears grew for the future of the young children who had missed years of education, they began applying for resettlement in other countries.
In 2015, despite many interviews at embassies from around the world, not a single one would accept them, Mr. Hadhad said.
“Late that year, things changed,” he said. “The new Canadian Government had pledged to receive about 25,000 Syrian refugees, and my family was one of them.”
Peace by Chocolate
The Hadhad family celebrating Canada Day.
UN intervention
The UN was the turning point in the Hadhad family’s story. Without being identified as refugees by the UNHCR, they would not have been able to even apply for resettlement in Canada.
The Canadian embassy conducts cross-checks through the UNHCR, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) also played a key role in their resettlement process.
But, the major credit goes to Canadians themselves. The tragic drowning of toddler Alan Kurdi and his family in the summer of 2015 while trying to reach Europe had spread throughout the globe, the cause of Syrian refugees became a global cause.
Canadian hospitality, one family at a time
Community leaders in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, home to 5,000 residents and 5,000 students at St. Francis Xavier University, raised enough money to host one Syrian family that matched the Hadhads, and so they sponsored them without knowing their names, the way they looked or even their backgrounds.
“The community in Antigonish are pioneers in their DNA, and when they saw they could make a difference, they started the process of registering an organization called SAFE (Syrian Antigonish Families Embrace),” Mr. Hadhad said.
“I don’t know how people who are almost 8,000km away from Syria or Lebanon could be so concerned with our ability to restart our lives and to see my siblings and my sister Alaa’s children go to school. I did not expect that there would be human beings among us on this planet with such a spirit of giving because we lived through wars and saw how people kill each other.”
He said he came to Antigonish, on the eastern coast of Canada, because of them and because they believed that he, as a person, had the same values, dignity, respect, rights and freedoms that apply to anyone in Canada.
One peace won’t hurt
This act left a huge mark on him and prompted the family to do everything in their power to give back to the Canadian community “that believed in us and our humanity and tried to support us in every way”, he said.
“This community restored our faith in humanity. Regardless of the colour of your skin, your religion or where you were born, you are qualified to be a human being.”
It was also the community “that gave us the idea of peace with its kindness and generosity that match our values”, he added.
Peace by Chocolate
The original factory shed built by members of the community and located on the family’s property next to their home.
‘Peace by Chocolate’
To prove that nothing is impossible with hope, the family spotted a niche job opportunity to build on the legacy they were forced to leave behind in Syria. While it took decades to register their chocolate company in Syria due to government corruption, it took only a few weeks in Canada.
From there, the road to success began on all levels.
“Our project did not start for a purely economic reason, nor did it start for a purely humanitarian purpose; it combined the two,” Mr. Hadhad said.
“That is why we named it Peace by Chocolate. Many companies around the world aim to make profits, but our goal was to support the community and at the same time to try to grow the company to become one of the largest companies in Canada.”
‘Canadians pull together’
A few months after the opening of Peace by Chocolate in 2016, wildfires swept through Fort McMurray in Alberta in Canada’s mid-west. The Hadhads were watching the news as Canadians lost everything as their homes burned down, forcing them to seek refuge at Canadian Red Cross shelters.
“Canadians always pull together, so we felt a responsibility to give back to the people who welcomed us with such warmth and kindness,” Mr Hadhad said, explaining that they launched a fundraising campaign, donating profits from Peace for Chocolate to help aid organizations.
In September of that year, at the UN Leaders’ Summit on Refugees in New York, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau highlighted the Hadhad’s story and their contribution to the relief efforts in their new country just months after their arrival.
Kindness pays off
Since then, the Hadhad’s company has raised more than $655,000 to support relief projects for across Canada alongside 11 partnership agreements with such organizations as the Canadian Red Cross.
“Thanks to the support of the Antigonish community and the country as a whole, we have been able to grow our company and have paid tens of millions in taxes to back into the Canadian economy,” Mr. Hadhad said.
“Kindness pays off, and the best investment you can make is to be kind to others.”
Peace by Chocolate is now the third largest employer in Antigonish, home to the company headquarters and factory. With the senior Mr. Hadhad as president and his son, Tareq, the CEO, the company has a branch in Halifax, the provincial capital, and its products are sold in more than a thousand stores across Canada.
Mr. Hadhad said the Peace by Chocolate website has become the largest e-commerce platform in Canada’s Atlantic region, and it aspires to become the largest chocolate exporter in the country and to open branches in the United States, Japan and the Middle East.
Peace by Chocolate
Tareq and his father Isam meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the first time.
Refugee to employer
Despite the major differences that separate the family from their new community, what brought them together was “much stronger”, and they never felt like outcasts at any time or that they are obstacles to becoming part of that community.
Mr. Hadhad said any successful refugee or migration story has two sides. There is, of course, a major role for the host community to play, but “the main responsibility lies primarily with the migrant or refugee”.
“No one is going to knock on your door and ask about your story or your ambitions for the future. The first step always comes from the migrant or refugee themselves to tell their story,” he said.
That is exactly what he did. He spoke with the local newspaper shortly after arriving and made the front page. The word spread. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) sent a correspondent to visit the Hadhad’s every month to follow up on their integration.
A sense of belonging
In addition to the warm welcome from Canadians themselves, stability was a major factor in the family’s integration, with the Hadhads granted permanent residency upon arrival.
In many countries, as a refugee, “you can’t think beyond an hour, a week or a month because your situation is always temporary,” Mr. Hadhad explained.
“What Canada also gave us was ambition for sustainability,” he said. “You can think 10 or 20 years into the future or even for the rest of your life. You can build projects and plan. Canada gave us a sense of belonging and citizenship even before we became Canadian citizens.”
He said he has the utmost respect for “the Canadian brand” and what it stands for.
“Regardless of what politicians, individuals or economists do, I am proud to belong to this great country and to be a Canadian citizen today.”
UNHCR/Darren Calabrese
Tareq Haddad with his family and friends in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for his citizenship ceremony in January 2020.
‘More than a miracle’
After more than 13 years of war, destruction and displacement, Mr. Hadhad described the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime as “more than a miracle” as many Syrians had lost hope of getting rid of the oppressive regime that had terrorised the country for more than 50 years.
The future of Syria seems “very bright” to him, thanks to the efforts of its heroic people who refused to leave Syria and those who sought refuge in other communities around the world and built strong relationships there, he said.
“My city, Damascus, is the oldest city in the world. It has survived much greater disasters than what happened to it in the past 50 years,” he said. “God willing, we are on the road to recovery, and I have a strong belief that the Syrian people will overcome all the difficulties of the war and build a country that we can all be proud of.”
After 12 years in exile, he is now looking forward to visiting the country soon to meet those loved ones he left behind, including one of his sisters.
Pride and duty to the homeland
Supporting the Canadian community was a duty to pay back those that embraced the Hadhads in their hour of need, and now the family is focusing on its moral obligation to help their homeland.
From working on licensing in the Middle East to be closer to collecting donations through Peace by Chocolate sales, the Hadhads aim to support relief organizations and those helping Syrian refugees return home. Efforts are also underway to connect the Syrian-Canadian community by presenting models of projects in Syria that it can support.
“It is an honour for us to contribute to rebuilding it again and to support our Syrian people,” Mr. Hadhad said.
Peace by Chocolate
The Hadhad family and many supporters join them in the opening of their factory in Antigonish in 2017.
Creating a happy ending
In a message to people facing hardship and forced expulsion, Mr. Hadhad stressed that “believing in values, in oneself and in a bright future is very important, but what is more important is fighting despair in all its forms”.
“I advise anyone anywhere around the world looking for an opportunity – if you don’t find it, create it yourself,” he said.
“As long as we are able to continue our lives, we are able to create new opportunities for ourselves and our new communities. We must not forget to give back to the countries that opened their doors to us, and at the same time be proud of where we came from, because we are ultimately ambassadors for our culture, our countries, and our values.”
Mr. Hadhad cited author Mary Robinson: “nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
MIL OSI United Nations News –