Canadians have long raved about Chapman’s ice cream. Not only is supporting the Ontario company a great example of buying Canadian, but the creamery’s ethics have it on a lot of people’s good side.
Case in point: when news broke that the dairy company purchased two superfreezers and offered them up for storage of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Canadians started to share their love for the company on Twitter.
Users started to share other reasons why the creamery is so beloved, including its decision to make a pandemic pay bump permanent for its employees, and its decision to keep paying employees after a fire in 2009 burned down their factory.
Many even encouraged their fellow Canadians to purchase extra ice cream from the company over the holidays as a show of support.
Chapman’s is Canada’s largest independent ice cream manufacturer and was founded in 1973 in Markdale, Ont. by David and Penny Chapman. Their son, Ashley, is now the business’s vice-president.
The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored in temperatures cooler than -70C, otherwise it risks breaking down and becoming unusable. Chapman’s freezers don’t get that cold, but the company had connections in the freezer industry.
“We hooked up with one supplier who had two low temperature -80C units left, and we said ‘ok, we will buy them both,’” Ashley Chapman told CTV News. The freezers are expected to arrive next week and the company has been working with public health experts to coordinate how they’ll be used.
“My parents are seniors. I live in this community. I live in this area. And anything I can do to protect the people that I love around me, I’m just going to do it,” Chapman said in an interview with CBC Radio.
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