Wildfruit Bugs, Chicken Bones & NB Power

Except for preventing scurvy, Wildfruit Bugs are nutritionally worthless, like most other fruit snacks. Take sugar, add corn syrup and corn starch, and a dash of fruit juice and other flavors; then glaze with mineral oil and carnauba wax; and color it up with various dyes, my favorite of which is Tartrazine Yellow 5 (Wiki asserts that Inca Cola wouldn't be yellow without it; now where can I get some Inca Cola?).

Nutrition isn't why we bought the box. Lilly wanted it because she's partial to fruit snakes from time to time; I wanted it because it's a third-string brand make by a company I'd never heard of, Ganong Bros. Ltd. of St. Stephen, New Brunswick. That and because of the demented cartoon bug on the box.

Maybe I should have known about Ganong, a confectioner of some renown in Canada, it seems. Or at least in the Maritimes. Or maybe just in New Brunswick. I know and admire confections from a lot further away than that -- Yorkie, Ritter Sport, Toblerone, Lotte -- so there's no reason I shouldn't have heard of something with a fun name like Ganong Chicken Bones, one of the company's products. It might sound like something you'd see on a dim sum cart, but it's actually a candy formed by a pink cinnamon shell over chocolate, and apparently beloved in Canada, or the Maritimes, or at least New Brunswick, especially around Christmas.

I suppose if we'd stayed longer in New England, we would have visited New Brunswick by now, but as it is, NB and the rest of the Maritimes are a stretch of a destination from the Midwest. But if we ever get it in our heads to see the Bay of Fundy, we'll have to drop by the old Ganong factory en route.

Lately Ganong has been in the news for something other than its candies. Something about the chairman of the company participating in a formal report to recommend the sale of NB Power of Hydro-Québec, and how that's drawn the ire of some New Brunswickians -- Brunswickers? Brunswickis? I'm in no position to comment on the merits of that transaction, but it strikes me as an odd kerfuffle for a candy company executive to find himself in.