According to Mr. Norton:

I’ve been baking and eating chocolate chip cookies since I was a young boy. It was fate that I grew up just outside of Boston, down the street from the Toll House Inn, where chocolate chip cookies were invented.  My love for baking sent me to the École de Patisserie in Lausanne, Switzerland where I learned to perfect my passion both for baking and for the ladies; because it was there that I met a young Montréalaise named Julie, the most beautiful woman in the world.  I returned to Boston to work for my father and grandfather in the family bakery, but I could never get the image of sweet Julie out of my head.  I decided that I had to travel to Montreal to find her and profess my undying love for her. 

I had no sooner descended from my train when I bumped into my old classmate from Lausanne, Monsieur Félix Renaud.  He had not lost his arrogance, that know-it-all superiority complex that is worn with such smugness by so many of his countrymen.  He had recently arrived in Montreal himself, thinking that he would be able to bring France’s legendary prowess in the culinary arts to a market that was unaware of the pleasures of fine cuisine.  He had been devastated to find that Montreal was already a haven for some of the finest food purveyors in the entire world, and that impressing Canadian palates was not as easy as he had hoped.  He was down and out, and I knew that I had to help him. 

We went back to his place, and I baked him a batch of my fresh warm chocolate chip cookies to pick up his spirits.  He devoured the whole plateful, then jumped into his kitchen and started pulling out some of the ingredients that he had brought with him from Europe.  Before long, we were laughing and slinging dough back and forth at each other, as we kept on improving the recipes and creating new varieties, incorporating different flavours, nuts, and using bigger and bigger chunks of heavenly imported chocolate. We agreed right away that this was too much fun, and we had to go into business together, to share these wonderful cookies with the public.  And that is how Monsieur Félix & Mr. Norton Cookies was born.

We opened our first store in 1985 on Queen Mary Road in Montreal. There was nothing I loved more than to see the smiles and hear the giggles of delight as our customer after customer would bite into a heavenly fresh baked warm cookie straight from our ovens.  I loved to use my artistry to decorate a large box or tin filled with cookies for someone to offer as a sumptuous gift to someone they wanted to please.  Meanwhile, temperamental Félix stayed in the kitchen, flinging chocolate at me every time I poked my head through the door.  We would even argue about what music we should play in the store; I loved the silky sweetness of Paul McCartney’s tunes, he preferred the funkier sounds of Motown.  One day, when he could take the saccharine sounds of Silly Love Songs no more, he began firing chunks of white chocolate at me.  I grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a bag of rich imported cocoa, and dumped it over his head.  We rolled around fighting with each other, and as he wiped the cocoa from his eyes, I could see that he had disappeared into his creative zone, and voila – Our world famous Ebony & Ivory® cookie was created that very day.

Our business grew very quickly, and much attention was lavished on us.  We created unique gift packages, and opened new stores every few months.  We began franchising in 1990, and opened new stores across Quebec and Ontario.  It was very heady times for a couple of young graduates from a Swiss pastry school.  Félix wanted nothing to do with all of the business issues, the media, and the pressure.  He only wanted to stay in his kitchen with his mixer, oblivious to all of the opportunities that were presented to us.  In 1998, I realized that I had to save our friendship, and that big changes were needed.  We agreed that we needed time to focus on what was important to us, and that the time had arrived to say so long to the business of running stores.  As we sold our stores to a national franchise company, we kept tight ownership of our brand and our recipes.  We would supply the stores with the world’s finest cookies and they would continue to use our name, but we would be free to pursue our passions.

For years we traveled, sometimes together and sometimes apart, exploring and searching the world for new ways to bring happiness to those we loved.

And this is how we have come to create our new line of ready to bake pre-portioned frozen cookie dough that is now available to everyone.  I know that you will enjoy every bite, and I would love to hear from you if you have a story to share about your passion for our cookies.  Please send me an e-mail with any comments that you wish to share.  Please don’t send anything critical to Félix, because he is still quite temperamental, and the next thing I know, he’ll be chasing me with his spatula again!


Contact Mr. Norton: norton@felixandnorton.ca