Alberta
Written in the stars: The legendary tale of Maritime ice cream favourite Moon Mist

HALIFAX — The lore in the Hart household was as rich as the ice cream served every day.
After joining his family’s creamery business, the story goes, Bruce Hart travelled from Nova Scotia to the U.S. to attend ‘Ice Cream University.’
The dates and places are foggy — as often happens with family history passed down through generations — but it was sometime before or after he served during the Second World War and likely took place at what’s now the University of Massachusetts, a school with strong roots in agriculture and food science.
It was there, legend has it, that a young Bruce Hart had the audacity to swirl three ice cream flavours together: banana, grape and blue raspberry.
He called it Moon Mist, a lush ice cream flavour with colourful ripples of yellow, purple and blue.
“My grandfather told us he got to experiment with flavour mixtures, and that’s how those improbable flavours came together that some people love and some may find disgusting,” said Peter O’Brien, grandson of the late Bruce Hart.
“It was always part of family lore that my grandfather invented Moon Mist.”
***
By the mid 1970s, the specialty flavour was catching on. The exact flavour combination of Moon Mist shifted over the years, with a popular local dairy swapping out blue raspberry for blue bubble gum in its recipe.
Yet regardless of the flavours of the tricolour swirls, Moon Mist ice cream would come to be celebrated as Atlantic Canada’s favourite ice cream.
To some, it’s a heavenly trilogy of tastes, while to others it’s an odd mash-up of cloyingly sweet flavours. But it’s defended by many as the region’s unofficial frozen treat.
Moon Mist has become a symbol of the East Coast’s uniqueness in Canada, a cultural marker of sorts for the region.
Ice cream stands and corner stores across the Maritimes scoop out Moon Mist all year long. Many say they go through several 11.5-litre vats on a summer weekend, leaving children in tears and adults in a huff if they sell out.
It evokes both nostalgia and pride, making a cameo on the Nova Scotia-based TV show “Trailer Park Boys.” A local distillery sells a limited edition Moon Mist vodka and folk artists have sought inspiration from the flavour.
“If you’ve ever had a scoop of Moon Mist ice cream, you know it just has a very unique flavour and iconic aroma,” said Rae Ryan, a Truro, N.S.-based research and development specialist with dairy giant Agropur, which acquired Nova Scotia’s Scotsburn dairy in 2017.
“I think it’s so popular because people in Atlantic Canada grew up with it in the 1980s and are now serving it to their kids. It’s had a lot of staying power.”
***
Bruce Hart returned from his ice cream training — and purported invention of Moon Mist — and got to work for the family business, Halifax Creamery Ltd.
The company soon after began making the blend of banana, grape and blue raspberry under its Polar Ice Cream brand.
Hart’s grandson Peter O’Brien, now a 54-year-old classics professor, recalls ordering scoops of Moon Mist at local ice cream parlours as a child.
“My grandfather was big into ice cream, he ate it every day, probably twice a day,” O’Brien said.
“We would go over for lunch or dinner and eat ice cream for dessert and often the conversation would return to his days in the business and how Moon Mist was created,” he said.
The family business was eventually sold to Twin Cities Co-op Dairy Ltd., which later became Farmer’s Dairy Co-op Ltd., though the family stayed active in the industry for a few years after that.
It’s around this time that a competitor came to town.
***
For more than a century, one of the largest dairies in the Maritimes was based out of Scotsburn, a village surrounded by sprawling dairy farms on Nova Scotia’s north shore.
Sometime before the early 1980s, the Moon Mist flavour was likely introduced to Scotsburn by a so-called flavour house, said Jennifer MacLennan, the former marketing co-ordinator with Scotsburn dairy from 1993 until Agropur took over in 2017.
Flavour houses are companies with commercial food labs that develop, manufacture and supply flavours to various industries. The concentrated natural and artificial flavours can be used in everything from ice cream to gum. One of these companies likely promoted Moon Mist as part of a portfolio of new flavours presented to dairies, MacLennan said.
“It was probably introduced to several dairies as an up-and-coming flavour,” she said. “Scotsburn decided to try it … it may have started as a limited-edition flavour but clearly became a favourite.”
Exactly why it became a top seller in Atlantic Canada while dairies in other parts of the country seem to have mostly passed it over is unclear.
Some smaller outfits across Canada offer Moon Mist, including Kawartha Dairy Ltd. based in Bobcaygeon, Ont., which markets it as an “out of this world” East Coast favourite. The Big Scoop in Duncan, B.C., also sells Moon Mist with a twist: bubble gum, banana and grape with a cherry ribbon.
But other than a few smaller dairies, Moon Mist ice cream largely seems to be an Atlantic Canadian phenomenon.
“A lot of flavours can be regional,” MacLennan said. “In New Brunswick, grape nut ice cream was a big seller, but it wasn’t as popular in other areas, like Cape Breton.”
When Moon Mist was introduced, many of the popular flavours were classics like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, she said.
“Back in the ’80s, a lot of the popular ice cream is what you might hear people call ‘old people’s flavours’ nowadays,” MacLennan said. “So when Moon Mist came out it was likely a huge hit with kids.”
For decades, Moon Mist was only sold in 11.4-litre tubs to ice cream parlours. But in 2015, Scotsburn began selling smaller sizes in retail stores.
“I remember urging our marketing department to sell Moon Mist in the 1.5-litre packages in retail stores,” MacLennan said. “It was always a bestseller so it made sense to have it available year round.”
***
While Bruce Hart may have invented the original Moon Mist — and potentially the recipe later used by Farmers — Scotsburn’s would become the favourite of many.
But not all.
A petition launched in the spring of 2020 called on Farmers to bring their version of Moon Mist, with blue raspberry rather than bubble gum, back to Nova Scotia.
The recipe change can be traced back to 2013, when Halifax-based Farmers Co-operative Dairy and Agropur Cooperative of Longueuil, Que., merged.
Four years later, Agropur purchased Scotsburn’s frozen ice cream and frozen novelties business.
With two Moon Mist flavours in house, Agropur made the decision to phase out the Farmers recipe.
Agropur spokesman Guillaume Bérubé said sales volumes of both Scotsburn and Farmers Moon Mist tubs were “almost identical” at the time, but Scotsburn had the advantage of also having the smaller retail-sized format.
In terms of which recipe was oldest, Farmers may have launched Moon Mist first. While Scotsburn traces Moon Mist back to “before the early 1980s,” Bérubé said company’s archives show Farmers launched Moon Mist in 1973.
Regardless, the Farmers recipe — possibly inspired by Bruce Hart’s original creation — was phased out by Agropur in 2017, permanently replacing blue raspberry with blue bubble gum, a subtle but notable change among some Moon Mist connoisseurs.
Agropur now says Moon Mist sales are second only to vanilla in the Scotsburn ice cream portfolio. It’s sold in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island.
“A lot of people growing up in Nova Scotia either went to school with someone who was a dairy farmer or had some connection to the dairy industry, and ice cream is just really popular here,” said Agropur’s Ryan. “It’s part of the culture. We have a lot of scooping stands in the region and the colour combo of Moon Mist is very recognizable.
“It’s always been popular, but there’s been a lot of buzz about it over the last couple years,” she said.
“It’s a happy story.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 13, 2023.
Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press
Alberta
The beauty of economic corridors: Inside Alberta’s work to link products with new markets

From the Canadian Energy Centre
Q&A with Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Transport and Economic Corridors
CEC: How have recent developments impacted Alberta’s ability to expand trade routes and access new markets for energy and natural resources?
Dreeshen: With the U.S. trade dispute going on right now, it’s great to see that other provinces and the federal government are taking an interest in our east, west and northern trade routes, something that we in Alberta have been advocating for a long time.
We signed agreements with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to have an economic corridor to stretch across the prairies, as well as a recent agreement with the Northwest Territories to go north. With the leadership of Premier Danielle Smith, she’s been working on a BC, prairie and three northern territories economic corridor agreement with pretty much the entire western and northern block of Canada.
There has been a tremendous amount of work trying to get Alberta products to market and to make sure we can build big projects in Canada again.
CEC: Which infrastructure projects, whether pipeline, rail or port expansions, do you see as the most viable for improving Alberta’s global market access?
Dreeshen: We look at everything. Obviously, pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and gas, but also rail is part of the mix of getting over four million barrels per day to markets around the world.
The beauty of economic corridors is that it’s a swath of land that can have any type of utility in it, whether it be a roadway, railway, pipeline or a utility line. When you have all the environmental permits that are approved in a timely manner, and you have that designated swath of land, it politically de-risks any type of project.
CEC: A key focus of your ministry has been expanding trade corridors, including an agreement with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to explore access to Hudson’s Bay. Is there any interest from industry in developing this corridor further?
Dreeshen: There’s been lots of talk [about] Hudson Bay, a trade corridor with rail and port access. We’ve seen some improvements to go to Churchill, but also an interest in the Nelson River.
We’re starting to see more confidence in the private sector and industry wanting to build these projects. It’s great that governments can get together and work on a common goal to build things here in Canada.
CEC: What is your vision for Alberta’s future as a leader in global trade, and how do economic corridors fit into that strategy?
Dreeshen: Premier Smith has talked about C-69 being repealed by the federal government [and] the reversal of the West Coast tanker ban, which targets Alberta energy going west out of the Pacific.
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the federal side. Alberta has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to economic corridors.
We’ve asked the federal government if they could develop an economic corridor agency. We want to make sure that the federal government can come to the table, work with provinces [and] work with First Nations across this country to make sure that we can see these projects being built again here in Canada.
2025 Federal Election
Next federal government should recognize Alberta’s important role in the federation

From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill
With the tariff war continuing and the federal election underway, Canadians should understand what the last federal government seemingly did not—a strong Alberta makes for a stronger Canada.
And yet, current federal policies disproportionately and negatively impact the province. The list includes Bill C-69 (which imposes complex, uncertain and onerous review requirements on major energy projects), Bill C-48 (which bans large oil tankers off British Columbia’s northern coast and limits access to Asian markets), an arbitrary cap on oil and gas emissions, numerous other “net-zero” targets, and so on.
Meanwhile, Albertans contribute significantly more to federal revenues and national programs than they receive back in spending on transfers and programs including the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) because Alberta has relatively high rates of employment, higher average incomes and a younger population.
For instance, since 1976 Alberta’s employment rate (the number of employed people as a share of the population 15 years of age and over) has averaged 67.4 per cent compared to 59.7 per cent in the rest of Canada, and annual market income (including employment and investment income) has exceeded that in the other provinces by $10,918 (on average).
As a result, Alberta’s total net contribution to federal finances (total federal taxes and payments paid by Albertans minus federal money spent or transferred to Albertans) was $244.6 billion from 2007 to 2022—more than five times as much as the net contribution from British Columbians or Ontarians. That’s a massive outsized contribution given Alberta’s population, which is smaller than B.C. and much smaller than Ontario.
Albertans’ net contribution to the CPP is particularly significant. From 1981 to 2022, Alberta workers contributed 14.4 per cent (on average) of total CPP payments paid to retirees in Canada while retirees in the province received only 10.0 per cent of the payments. Albertans made a cumulative net contribution to the CPP (the difference between total CPP contributions made by Albertans and CPP benefits paid to retirees in Alberta) of $53.6 billion over the period—approximately six times greater than the net contribution of B.C., the only other net contributing province to the CPP. Indeed, only two of the nine provinces that participate in the CPP contribute more in payroll taxes to the program than their residents receive back in benefits.
So what would happen if Alberta withdrew from the CPP?
For starters, the basic CPP contribution rate of 9.9 per cent (typically deducted from our paycheques) for Canadians outside Alberta (excluding Quebec) would have to increase for the program to remain sustainable. For a new standalone plan in Alberta, the rate would likely be lower, with estimates ranging from 5.85 per cent to 8.2 per cent. In other words, based on these estimates, if Alberta withdrew from the CPP, Alberta workers could receive the same retirement benefits but at a lower cost (i.e. lower payroll tax) than other Canadians while the payroll tax would have to increase for the rest of the country while the benefits remained the same.
Finally, despite any claims to the contrary, according to Statistics Canada, Alberta’s demographic advantage, which fuels its outsized contribution to the CPP, will only widen in the years ahead. Alberta will likely maintain relatively high employment rates and continue to welcome workers from across Canada and around the world. And considering Alberta recorded the highest average inflation-adjusted economic growth in Canada since 1981, with Albertans’ inflation-adjusted market income exceeding the average of the other provinces every year since 1971, Albertans will likely continue to pay an outsized portion for the CPP. Of course, the idea for Alberta to withdraw from the CPP and create its own provincial plan isn’t new. In 2001, several notable public figures, including Stephen Harper, wrote the famous Alberta “firewall” letter suggesting the province should take control of its future after being marginalized by the federal government.
The next federal government—whoever that may be—should understand Alberta’s crucial role in the federation. For a stronger Canada, especially during uncertain times, Ottawa should support a strong Alberta including its energy industry.
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Poilievre To Create ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Joe Tay Says He Contacted RCMP for Protection, Demands Carney Fire MP Over “Bounty” Remark
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Hong Kong-Canadian Groups Demand PM Carney Drop Liberal Candidate Over “Bounty” Remark Supporting CCP Repression
-
Daily Caller1 day ago
Biden Administration Was Secretly More Involved In Ukraine Than It Let On, Investigation Reveals
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
London-Based Human Rights Group Urges RCMP to Investigate Liberal MP for Possible Counselling of Kidnapping
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Poilievre, Conservatives receive election endorsement from large Canadian trade union
-
Business1 day ago
Biden’s Greenhouse Gas ‘Greendoggle’ Slush Fund Is Unraveling
-
Business1 day ago
Trump says ‘nicer,’ ‘kinder’ tariffs will generate federal revenue