The Sweetest Block on Rue Masson: A History of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory in Montreal

In 2006 we had just been granted permanent residency in Quebec and were looking for an artist’s studio space. It seemed likely that we’d find one along the northern edge of the Plateau, in one of the semi-abandoned industrial buildings lining the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks. We looked at several of them but the one we liked the most was on rue Masson. We were told it had been a chocolate factory. That worked for me. Being in such a space, aided by rich and and warm smells of cocoa being fashioned into chocolate bars, even if just imagined, was just about perfect. Little did I know…

The Cadbury building, as we called it, was built in 1909 by Fry Cadbury Ltd, the Canadian arm of the English company that in 1847 produced the first eating chocolate bar. Cadbury turned chocolate from a bitter drink into a solid confection that could be sold, unwrapped and savoured. Cadbury made a fortune on its products. A small part of its operation was a five-story brick industrial building at 2025 rue Masson on the north edge of Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal, solidly built and purposefully designed. Through much of the twentieth century the factory hummed along as a genuine anchor of the community, employing 500 workers and producing candy bars by the millions: Caramilk, Dairy Milk, Crunchie. The building was part of the community fabric. The English company itself went through corporate takeovers and transformations, but that was all above and had little affect on the rue Masson operation. That was to change abruptly.

The 1978 Closure and Its Political Storm

On Thursday evening, November 16, 1978, the Cadbury plant on rue Masson closed its doors. The company’s stated reason was economic: demand for chocolate bars had declined, and its Whitby, Ontario plant – east of Toronto – was more efficient. Consolidating production there simply made more financial sense, management claimed.

Five Hundred People Lost Their Jobs

The timing was explosive. The closure came almost exactly two years after the election of the Parti Québécois (PQ) under René Lévesque on November 15, 1976 – the vote that had upended the political order in Quebec and stoked deep anxieties about sovereignty among English-Canadian and British-linked businesses. In that charged atmosphere, the Cadbury closure landed like a provocation. It arrived the very same week that Sun Life Assurance announced it was moving 500 jobs from Montreal to Toronto – part of a broader corporate exodus that would see approximately 150 corporate headquarters depart Montreal in the years following the PQ election.

Many Quebecers did not believe the economic rationale. The company stoked the fight as well. After announcing the closure and the elimination of 500 jobs, it invited workers to a “closure celebration” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal. The gesture was received as precisely what it was meant to be: a tone-deaf insult.

In Quebec a public campaign started to shut down sales of Cadbury products. It was not a fringe effort. The campaign drew support from 250 organizations across the province: political parties, unions, and community groups joined forces to pull Cadbury products off grocery lists.

And it worked. Retailers across Quebec reported a measurable impact on Cadbury sales. The Cadbury closure became a lasting symbol to the Quebec labour movement, showing Quebec workers how they were “at the mercy of both governments and employers” – a phrase that captured the sense of vulnerability felt by working people caught between distant boardrooms and political upheaval.

We Move On

Cadbury is still in Toronto, though it’s part now of some global snack conglomerate whose name means nothing to most people (Mondelez International). But the rue Masson factory is still there – now known as Les Lofts Cadbury – a heritage industrial building converted into artist studios, offices, and flexible workspaces. The name remains, stitched into the identity of the building, even after the chocolate is long gone. Where workers once wrapped Caramilk, creative workers now keep studios and desks in the chopped-up manufacturing spaces.

We were a small part of that story. We moved in when it was still a rough space in a questionable neighborhood. Over the sixteen years that we rented the surrounding area morphed from industrial to mildly trendy. A street café opened nearby selling 20$ avacado sandwiches and a commercial property investor bought the building from the seedy, cash under the table, owner we had known. Huge floor-grinding machines were brought in to polish the concrete floors, which were then painted black. In the hallways small sitting areas were built should you wish to pause and drink cappuccinos. Rents were increasing 15-17% per year. It was time for us to move on…