Talk about encroachment upon boundaries! As if it weren’t already bad enough that TikTok is being defamed and flayed in the Supreme Court of the United States as China’s usurper of American teenage passwords for future surreptitious purposes, I learned today that my erstwhile favourite corner store sweet Cherry Blossom is imperilled. Even more disheartening is the company officials offered no reason for the evacuation. It resonates with all the platitudes surrounding the condemnation of tobacco smoking! Yet another cause for a freedom march.
Cherry Blossom, a mainstay of Canadian candy store shelves for decades, will soon disappear as Hershey Canada has decided to no halt production.
Never having been an habitual candy buyer, whenever I succumbed to the toxic temptation in the field house tuck shop at boarding school following afternoon football practice, Cherry Blossom was the sweet I counted on for delivery. It was unrepentant sugar.
Cherry Blossom was first produced in the 1890s by the Lowney Company’s Canadian subsidiary before a series of acquisitions eventually landed it in the hands of Hershey Canada in the late 1980s.
“Known for its signature combination of maraschino cherry, roasted peanuts, and chocolate coating, this Canadian confectionery icon has created sweet memories for generations of fans,” a spokesperson tells CityNews.
The Walter M. Lowney Company, an American candy and chocolate manufacturer, created the Cherry Blossom in the 1890s and eventually opened a factory in Quebec.
Operations were eventually taken over by Hershey Canada in the 1980s, with the candies being manufactured in one of its plants in Smiths Falls, near Kingston, until it closed in 2008.
It is for me yet one more instance of serendipity in my life that the syrupy sweet was manufactured in the little known Town of Smiths Falls in the same County of Lanark where I ended practicing law for my entire career.
After an apprenticeship to a Lancaster confectioner in 1873, Milton S. Hershey opened a candy shop in Philadelphia. The venture failed, and so did a subsequent one in Chicago. After a third failed business attempt in New York City, Hershey returned to Pennsylvania, where he founded the Lancaster Caramel Company in 1883. The Hershey Chocolate Company was founded in 1894 as a subsidiary of Lancaster Caramel Company.
Hershey’s chocolate is available in 60 countries. In 1903, Hershey began construction of a chocolate plant in his hometown of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, later known as Hershey, Pennsylvania.
By coincidence many years ago when driving through Pennsylvania en route home from a winter sojourn we passed through the town of Hershey which inspired our curiosity. We stopped there for lunch in a mountain top hotel by the same name. It has forever left a haunting impression, testament to an age of grandeur long since past.
The success of Hershey is uncommon and quite unanticipated. It is as much a definition of American entrepreneurial achievement as that of Henry Ford and one more example of the lingering appeal of life in the United States of America. Clearly it pays to be sweet!
In 2024, after 61 years of stock splits, the original 666,316 shares of Hershey common stock received by the Reese family represent 16 million Hershey shares valued at more than $4.4 billion, paying annual cash dividends of $87.6 million.