Buy British – in Canada

When Reverend Michael Coren moved from Britain to Toronto, he wasn’t short of Marmite, Dolly Mixture or Glacier Mints

There are no specific numbers of how many shops selling British chocolates, sweets, food, and memorabilia exist in Canada, but estimates are in the hundreds.

They began in the 1970s, catering to a small niche market. Back then, before the internet, British Sunday papers would arrive by Monday lunchtime and these shops were the best places to buy them.

As online news developed and hardcopy papers were less in demand, these relatively few shops branched out into selling food. By the early 1990s, the number of shops selling British chocolate and biscuits had multiplied. In Toronto there are at least a dozen. In towns around the metropolis, that number quadruples.

With names such as British Pride, Across the Pond, the Scottish Loft, the products on offer vary with the seasons but the constants are familiar: Mars, Double Decker, Twirl, Galaxy, Minstrels, Yorkie and Fry’s Chocolate Cream.

And the menu goes well beyond that. Every type of British biscuit, often from Marks and Spencer, sweets, bottles of Fairy Liquid, Imperial Leather soap, Coronation Street and EastEnders mugs, football scarves and hats, tea towels picturing various royals, books about the Lake District, and a plethora of Downton Abbey, Doc Martin and Carry On DVDs.

Fox’s Glacier Mints, actually much less common in Britain, and Dolly Mixture, also much harder to find in the UK, are never out of stock.

Why the success? Canada is far from as British as it once was, two generations of immigration have changed the country’s tastes, and while we’re still a monarchy – and have the Union Jack on several provincial flags – the pull of US culture and commercialism is difficult to resist.

It’s partly Brits and the children of Brits still longing for things they’d likely never buy if they were in London or Manchester. But most of those queuing up for their Branston pickle have little if any connection to a country they’ve often never even visited. In other words, there’s profit in imagination as well as nostalgia.

It’s comfort-shopping for some, and Anglophilia for others, especially Americans who flood the branches just over the border in Niagara and see Canada as the closest thing to Dibley they’re likely to find.

For someone like me – I’ve now lived away from Britain, my childhood home, for most of my life – it’s almost a form of regression. I’d never have visited these places 20 years ago but, as I age, I grab lifelines from a happy past.

While contemporary Brits frequently look to the foreign for glamour or thrill, those living 3,000 miles away, British or otherwise and young or old, see the UK as offering something special and unique. And, yes, they even buy Marmite and claim to enjoy it. Rule Britannia’s exports. Sponsored