MONTREAL — While much of the business media focus on Hostess Brand Inc.’s financial woes in the States, the people who hold the rights to Hostess name in Canada are uninvolved and will let the chips fall where they may.

They will also continue to wield the reins of this country’s biggest trucking firm.

In Canada, the Hostess trademark is owned by the Montreal-based cheese mogul Saputo Food Inc,. and Saputo holds arguably the most sway on the board of directors of TransForce Inc., Canada’s largest for-hire fleet.

And in a statement to CTV news this week, Saputo spokesperson Sany Vassiadis says the U.S. Hostess situation is completely removed from the Canadian operation.

"It’s totally separate. We have nothing to do with the Hostess brand in the U.S.," Vassiadis said.

Hostess Inc. in the States is one of the largest private fleets in the country so thousands of drivers’ positions are at stake.

Also, with Hostess’s filing of Chapter 11, the future of another brand-name came into question; i.e., Wonderbread.

Again, the Canadian product is safe. In Canada, Wonderbread is a product not of Hostess but of the George Weston Food Empire, which also controls Loblaw’s.

And while American commentators are finding that the potential loss of their beloved Twinkies and Ho-Ho snack foods are giving them plenty of stories to chew on, neither of those snack food products were ever really popular in Canada.

The most popular food in that category is of course the venerable and delicious Jos Louis. It is marketed under the Vachon label (indeed the chocolate-covered-cream-filled cake was named after Mrs. Vachon’s two sons Joe and Louie almost 70 years ago!)
Today, though, Vachon, like Hostess and TransForce, is part of the Saputo stable.

Not bad for an Italian immigrant family that started with little more than a guy delivering home-made cheese around Montreal on his two-wheeler.