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Wabano Fine Chocolates continues sweet tradition

In the basement of an Indigenous community centre in Ottawa's Vanier neighbourhood, 57-year-old Pierrette Vezina gently stirs a simmering pot of chocolate, smiling over the thick, milky mixture.

Vezina's tiny chocolate factory does much more than produce sweet treats: it also helps fund programming at the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, an important resource for Indigenous people living in the capital.

"We put a lot of love in our chocolates," said Vezina, a former recreational therapist who learned the craft from a Swiss chocolatier. "Each has a teaching."

Kate Tenenhouse/CBC
Kate Tenenhouse/CBC

Each day the warm liquid is hardened and shaped into chocolate wolves, turtles, moons, dream catchers and feathers, the Métis chocolatier said.

The chocolates, each accompanied by a card bearing an Indigenous teaching, are then wrapped by volunteers and sold to shops and community centres across the city.

Wabano Fine Chocolates also gets orders for weddings and private gatherings, Vezina said.

Busy holiday season

During the busy holiday season, the smell of melted chocolate wafts from the basement kitchen on Montreal Road.

Volunteers, mostly students and people who face barriers to finding work, help prepare the chocolate to fill the orders.

"A lot of the [volunteers] are community members who have had challenges, but they come here and we give them a little bit of confidence. It's a safe place to try things," Vezina said.

To create smooth chocolate that breaks off with a snap when bitten, the volunteers must temper the melted chocolate by slowly heating and cooling as they stir.

Kate Tennenhouse/CBC
Kate Tennenhouse/CBC

"Chocolates take a lot of patience," Vezina said. Even the mistakes can turn out delicious, she noted.

Indigenous ingredients

Vezina considers chocolate an purely Indigenous ingredient because it was first given as a gift by Indigenous peoples of South America to Indigenous peoples living in the northern part of the continent.

"[The indigenous peoples of South America] are the ones that brought it to the world," she said.

"Europeans [then] took it and they took the credit, but that's OK because they made it more affordable."

Kate Tenenhouse/CBC
Kate Tenenhouse/CBC

Flavours and other ingredients important to Indigenous culture are sometimes mixed into the chocolate, Vezina observed.

Vezina, who is a diabetic, doesn't eat the chocolate very often.

Her joy, she said, comes from the understanding that the social enterprise will bring in revenue for the centre.

"I always want to help make sure that there is always a Wabano here," she said.

Supplied
Supplied

If you'd like to place an order, you can email Pierette Vezina directly.

Vezina also shared her recipe for Wabano's crunchy milk chocolate bark with CBC Radio's All In A Day.

Recipe

Ingredients

  • 3 cups milk chocolate.

  • 1 cup milk or dark chocolate pearls.

Instructions

  1. Melt the milk chocolate pieces in a bowl over a pot of warm water.

  2. Remove from the heat and temper chocolate by stirring with a spatula until thickened.

  3. Spread melted chocolate in a shallow pan and sprinkle chocolate pearls over the top.

  4. Place the pan in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

  5. Remove from the refrigerator and break into pieces.

  6. Serve and enjoy!

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