This is just a little story, but it’s a special piece of New Brunswick that I think is worth holding on to. We were at our host’s place in Fredericton as the sun was starting to set, and her friend Brenda showed up. The first thing Brenda did was hand me a chocolate bar wrapped in a piece of paper. I quickly saw that the paper had a handwritten explanation on it. It began: “This is no regular chocolate bar.”
It was invented in 1920 when Arthur Ganong—whose descendents run the company today—asked his candy maker, George Ensor, to make him a new sweet. (As an aside, I haven’t looked it up so I’m not sure what it means to have a candy maker. In the meantime if anyone would like to volunteer to be mine, don’t hesitate.) The issue was, Arthur was an avid fisherman and wanted it to be made in two pieces. One piece for him and the other piece, as he said to George, for a ‘pal o’ mine.’ Thus the Pal-o-Mine came to be.
Brenda wrote and then later explained that the Pal-o-Mine was particularly memorable to her because on election days, her father would be out sharing a drink with some friends. Her mother would always be fretting about him being out and not home where he ought to be, “but I never minded,” confided Brenda with a grin, “because he always came home on election day with Pal-o-Mine bars for us kids.”
She grew up in the same town as the Ganong Brothers Ltd. chocolate company, and they could get chocolate bars back then for a dime.
The paper explanation concluded in a way that I liked so much I’m going to quote it in full, capitalization included: “You should NEVER eat the bar by yourself. You must share it with a Pal.”
I particularly like these photos because with the late afternoon sunshine, the yellow chocolate bar and Brenda’s sweater and smile, there’s a vivid sense of warmth that really is true to the feeling of our evening with Brenda, David, Viviane and Terry. Pals are made quickly in New Brunswick, it seems. Particularly with a chocolate bar invented in 1920.