There are few benefits to getting sick, but here's one: You can sample the full, sweet line of Scarborough, Ont.'s biggest export.
Every year, ailing Canadians and Americans pop seven billion Halls cough drops, each one produced in Toronto's easternmost borough. Take a moment to visualize this: That's one lozenge for every man, woman and child on Earth. Or enough candies to circle the planet nine times. Or almost enough medicated sweetness to reach the moon. It all began in England.
Brits Norman and Thomas Hall started a soap and jam company in 1893 that discovered the throat-soothing properties of menthol and eucalyptus in 1927. The frosty confectionaries started rolling off a conveyor at 40 Bertrand Ave. in Scarborough three decades later and, by 2008, following numerous mergers and acquisitions, Halls was the biggest candy brand in the world, accounting for one-third of candy revenues at parent company Cadbury. Halls now belongs to the Mondelez International stable, formerly Kraft Foods Inc., which employs 200 workers at its two-storey Toronto factory. Okay, one more stat: That's roughly one worker for every 35 million candies.
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