Chocolate museum in the townships

While we were walking around Bromont we imagined what it would be like to live there. The Eastern Townships of Quebec are in an attractive area, but the range of attractions if you don't ski is limited, especially at this time of year. Were we to move into one of the new houses popping up like mushrooms all around Bromont, we'd be certain to take any visitors of ours to the Musée du Chocolat on rue Shefford.

Shefford is a very English sounding name, and there are places with names like Stukely and Farnham close by. (Stukely, England, is where my father-in-law was born, and my own father lived near Farnham, England.) This part of Quebec was originally settled by British Empire Loyalists forced north of the border after the American War of Independence. In other words, by homesick Brits. Nowadays though, you'll hardly hear a word of English spoken in these parts.

Anyhow, we visited the museum last Saturday, and once you've walked through the Confiserie or Chocolate Shop, the first thing you see in the museum itself is a sculpture, inspired by Rodin's Le Vase des Titans, carved in 1994 from 100kg of chocolate by the artist Catherine Gagnon. The notes said that it symbolised the enslavement of workers on a cocoa farm in the Antilles:

Elle évoque l'époque du colonialisme espagnol dans les Antilles. Les trois noirs enchevêtrés aux racines du cacaoyer symbolisent une facette de l'histoire de l'esclavage.

Above their heads, bowed under its weight like three versions of Atlas, was a bowl of cocoa beans. Catherine Gagnon and other artists had also created paintings from chocolate, landscapes mainly, but one by Louise Cadère was a lavish version of Gauguin's Nave Nave Moe in tinted chocolate (2006).

The museum smelt of chocolate. There was a coy reference to Casanova and his preference for chocolate as an aphrodisiac:

Casanova déclarait qu'il avait abandonné le champagne au profit du chocolat bien plus efficace!

On one wall was a world map of chocolate consumption with the Swiss heading the list at 12000kg per annum. On the opposite wall we could learn about the history of chocolate starting with Christopher Columbus' arrival in what is now Honduras, in 1502, and being given some cocoa to taste. The Mayans and the Aztecs had been enjoying cocoa for centuries and some of their native tools for crushing the beans, such as a "stone rammer," were exhibited along with more sophisticated equipment.

Bars of chocolate as we know them weren't invented until 1847 by the Quaker family Fry and Sons. Other famous chocolate manufacturers were listed in the History, of course, not least Mr Mars who first brought out the Kit-Kat bar in 1932, and chocolate boxes and tins old and new were on display advertising Cadbury's, Suchard, Laura Secord, Côte d'Or, Hershey and Chocolat Menier with photos taken on the premises of their chocolate factories in 1869 and 1908.