July 04, 2006

Canadian Cheez Crisis Continues to Grips Budapest

We had barely posted yesterday's exclusive story about a minor but interesting cheese-related kerfuffle at the Canadian embassy when several readers, including at least one Canadian, wrote in to take us to task for not doing our homework and actually identifying by name the cheddar-cheese-coated extruded cornmeal snack in question. For the record, the product is Hawkins Cheezies®, made by W.T. Hawkins Ltd., of Belleville, Ontario. While we apologize for this oversight, we did a little more digging. And it turns out that while Hawkins (and apparently the embassy in Budapest) claims that Cheezies® are a "purely Canadian icon," in reality they are about as Canadian as the Fourth of July, which by the way is today.

No joke - it's spelled out right here on the company's website:

W.T. Hawkins Ltd. was founded in small town Ontario from a revolutionary idea first created in the United States… Founding owner, W.T. Hawkins and Jim Marker, who is the actual developer of Cheezies®, had spent years in Chicago in the confectionery industry perfecting their craft… Hawkins and Marker decided to head north with their product and soon a Canadian tradition was born.

Given our current feud with the United States, we're not going to say any more about this (or about the business of "Canada Day" oh-so-conveniently falling just a few days before the Fourth of July). Let's just not hear about anyone at next year's Budapest Canada Day celebrations trying to claim credit for Tiszai halászlé or Diós bukta, eh?

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