Written in the stars: the legendary story of ice cream favorite Moon Mist from Atlantic Canada

The lore in the Hart household was as rich as the ice cream served each day.

According to the story, after joining his family’s dairy business, Bruce Hart traveled from Nova Scotia to the US to attend ‘Ice Cream University’.

The dates and places are obscure — as is often the case with family histories passed down through the generations — but it was sometime before or after he served in World War II and probably took place at what is now the University of Massachusetts, a school with strong roots in agriculture and food science.

It was there, according to legend, that a young Hart had the guts to swirl three ice cream flavors together: banana, grape and blue raspberry.

He called it Moon Mist, a luscious ice cream flavor with colorful ripples of yellow, purple and blue.

“My grandfather told us to experiment with flavor blends, and that’s how those unlikely flavors came together that some people love and others find disgusting,” said Peter O’Brien, grandson of the late Hart. “It was always part of the family lore that my grandfather invented Moon Mist.”

Atlantic Canada’s favorite ice cream

The special taste caught on in the mid-1970s. Moon Mist’s exact flavor combination changed over the years, with a popular local dairy swapping blue raspberry for blue gum in its recipe.

But regardless of the flavors of the tricolor swirls, Moon Mist ice cream would go on to be celebrated as Atlantic Canada’s ice cream of choice.

For some it’s a heavenly trilogy of flavours, while for others it’s a strange mishmash of cloyingly sweet flavours. But it’s championed by many as the region’s unofficial frozen treat.

Moon Mist has become a symbol of the uniqueness of Canada’s East Coast, something of a cultural marker for the region.

Ice cream stands and convenience stores in the Maritimes create Moon Mist year-round. Many say they go through several 11.5 liter barrels over a summer weekend, leaving kids in tears and adults in ecstasies when they sell out.

Evoking both nostalgia and pride, it makes a cameo appearance in the Nova Scotia based TV show Trailer Park Boys. A local distillery sells limited edition Moon Mist vodka, and folk artists have taken inspiration from its taste.

‘A very unique taste’

“If you’ve ever had a scoop of Moon Mist ice cream, you know it just has a really unique flavor and iconic aroma,” said Rae Ryan, a Truro, NS-based research and development specialist at dairy giant Agropur, which acquired The Scotsburn Nova Scotia 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.”

Hart returned from his ice cream training – and supposed invention of Moon Mist – to work for the family business Halifax Creamery Ltd.

Soon after, the company began making the banana, grape, and blue raspberry blend under the Polar Ice Cream brand.

O’Brien, now a 54-year-old classics professor, recalls ordering scoops of Moon Mist from local ice cream parlors as a child.

“My grandfather was big on ice cream. He ate it every day, probably twice a day,” O’Brien said.

Competitor comes to town

“We would go out for lunch or dinner and have ice cream for dessert and often the conversation would go back to his days in the business and how Moon Mist was made,” he said.

The family business was eventually sold to Twin Cities Co-op Dairy Ltd., which later became Farmers Dairy Co-op Ltd. although the family continued to be active in the industry for a few more years afterwards.

It is around this time that a competitor came to town.

For more than a century, one of the largest dairies in the Maritimes was located in Scotsburn, a village surrounded by sprawling dairy farms on Nova Scotia’s north coast.

Sometime before the early 1980s, the Moon Mist flavor was likely introduced to Scotsburn by a so-called flavor house, said Jennifer MacLennan, the former marketing coordinator at Scotsburn Dairy from 1993 until Agropur took over in 2017.

Flavor houses are companies with commercial food labs that develop, produce and supply flavors to various industries. The concentrated natural and artificial flavors can be used in everything from ice cream to chewing gum. One of these companies likely promoted Moon Mist as part of a portfolio of new flavors being presented to dairies, MacLennan said.

Atlantic Canadian phenomenon

“It was probably introduced to several dairies as an emerging flavor,” she said. “Scotsburn decided to try it… it may have started out as a limited edition flavor, but clearly became a favourite.”

Exactly why it became a bestseller in Atlantic Canada, when dairies in other parts of the country seem to have largely passed it by, 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 favorite. The Big Scoop in Duncan, BC, also sells Moon Mist with a twist: bubble gum, banana, and grape with a cherry ribbon.

But aside from a few smaller dairies, Moon Mist ice cream appears to be largely an Atlantic Canadian phenomenon.

“Many flavors 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 flavors were classics like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, she said.

‘Always a bestseller’

“In the ’80s, a lot of the popular ice cream was what you might call people today ‘old people’ flavors,” MacLennan said. “So when Moon Mist came out, it was probably a huge hit with kids.”

For decades, Moon Mist was only sold in 11.4 liter tubs to ice cream parlors. But in 2015, Scotsburn started selling smaller sizes in stores.

“I remember urging our marketing department to sell Moon Mist in the 1.5-liter packs in stores,” MacLennan said. “It was always a bestseller, so it made sense to have it available all year round.”

While Hart may have invented the original Moon Mist – and possibly the recipe later used by Farmers – Scotsburn’s would become the favorite of many.

But not everything.

A petition launched in the spring of 2020 called on farmers to bring their version of Moon Mist, with blue raspberries instead of gum, back to Nova Scotia.

Recipe change

The recipe change can be traced back to 2013, when the 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 flavors in stock, 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 format.

In terms of which recipe was the oldest, Farmers may have launched Moon Mist first. While Scotsburn traces Moon Mist to “before the early 1980s,” Berubé said company records show Farmers launched Moon Mist in 1973.

Anyway, the Farmers recipe – possibly inspired by Hart’s original creation – was phased out by Agropur in 2017, permanently replacing blue raspberry with blue gum, a subtle but notable change among some Moon Mist connoisseurs.

Only second to vanilla

Agropur now says Moon Mist sales are second only to vanilla in the Scotsburn ice cream portfolio. It is sold in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island.

“A lot of people who grew up in Nova Scotia either went to school with someone who was a dairy farmer or had a connection to the dairy industry, and ice cream is just really popular here,” says Agropur’s Ryan. “It’s part of the culture. We have many shovel stands in the region and the color combination of Moon Mist is very recognizable.

“It’s always been popular, but it’s gotten a lot of attention in the last few years,” she said.

“It’s a happy story.”