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At age 74, there’s no slowing down for Jean Paré. She’s the founder and author of Company’s Coming Cookbooks – Canada’s most popular cookbook series that boasts over $18 million dollars of retail sales annually. She is also the principle shareholder in the COMAC Food Group, which includes Company’s Coming Kiosks, Pastels Deli’s, and the Canadian rights to Dominos Pizzas. The Recipe For Success: Life & Times of Jean Paré takes a behind the scenes look at Canada’s most famous cook – from her roots in small town Alberta to the Queen of the Company’s Coming Cookbooks empire. Paré was born and raised in Irma, Alberta and from a very young age, Paré was most comfortable in the kitchen, making dinner for her family or making a dessert for one of her father’s meetings. At 18, after pleading for her parents’ permission, she married her first husband, Clarence Lovig, a young ambitious man with a bright future. Together, they had four children. Lovig did well, first as a travelling motor-oils salesman, then with an auctioneering business that moved them to Vermillion, Alberta. Life was good – they were able to build their dream home – a large ranch-style house that featured a big kitchen where Paré liked to entertain guests. But all was not destined to stay the same. Lovig, once charismatic and flamboyant, had become an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler. And in 1966, he unceremoniously walked out on the family. At one point, Paré was forced to live in a tent with her two small children when her alcoholic husband gambled away everything they had. After selling a rental property she owned in Edmonton and persuading a local banker to give her a loan, she decided to open up a small diner in Vermilion. Although it wasn’t the success she had hoped it would be, she did find love there and ended up marrying her most frequent customer, Larry Paré, in 1968. Paré, then decided to start a small catering business to help pay off the debts that her first husband had accumulated. Paré responded to increasing requests for her recipes by publishing a cookbook. And on April 14, 1981, 150 Delicious Squares hit the shelves as the first cookbook in Company’s Coming series. Since then, more than 75 new Company’s Coming titles have been published. |
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