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Loblaw, meanwhile, is one of Canada’s biggest and most successful companies, employing 200,000 people across the country. Its PC brand of ketchup is produced at a plant in Winona, Ont., that employs 430 people; French’s retail ketchup is manufactured in Ohio.

Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at the University of Guelph’s Food Institute, said the social media response was more emotional than rational.

“Other brands may be as Canadian as French’s,” he said. “In the end, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about perceptions.”

So how, exactly, did that perception spread so quickly?

According to an analysis performed for the Financial Post by McGill University computer science professor Xue Liu and his students Mingyuan Xia and Xinye Lin, the original viral Facebook post by the Orillia construction worker doesn’t show any signs of meddling by French’s or anyone else. “We think this post going viral is a true social event,” Liu said in an email.

The other mystery is whether all the attention has translated into actual sales for French’s ketchup. Penner, the president of French’s, claims it has, saying sales to retailers have quadrupled over the last four weeks: “It is humbling what happened. It shows you the power of consumers…. For anyone to think that’s not translating to sales, I don’t know what to say.”

But those numbers are impossible to verify. French’s share of the ketchup market is too small for research firms to track — particularly in Canada, where Heinz ketchup accounted for 84 per cent of sales in 2015, according to data from Euromonitor International. In Loblaw’s statement announcing it would restock French’s ketchup, the company alluded to previous poor performance at the cash register: “We will re-stock French’s ketchup and hope that the enthusiasm we are seeing in the media and on social media translates into sales of the product.”

What’s clear is the power of Leamington’s story, a David and Goliath tale that pits hard-working, blue-collar Canadians against a giant, foreign corporation. And while Penner denies this has anything to do with Heinz at all, the fact Canadians are letting French’s play the hero to Heinz’s villain is great news for the would-be condiment king.

cbrownell@nationalpost.com

Twitter.com/clabrow