I can still remember the three sisters sitting around our kitchen table in Westfort – my mom, my Aunt Mary and my Aunty Lena.
Regardless of what day it was or what time of day they got together, there would always be a pot of tea on the table which they would sip and enjoy to the last drop.
Then, they would add more hot water, maybe a fresh bag, and carry on with their conversation and observations of the day.
I’m sure that same scene was repeated at kitchen tables all over the city back in the day when tea was still a respectable hot beverage.
Canada has been a hotbed of tea drinkers for decades partly due to strong historical ties to Britain where everything stops for tea.
Tea’s popularity peaked in Canada during the Second World War but later as the baby boomers developed a taste for coffee, tea lost some of its cachet as the preferred Canadian cuppa.
By 1991 the consumption of tea in this country reached an all time low but the family teapot was poised to make a comeback.
As those same baby boomers began to age and became more concerned with health and wellness, tea leaves were a welcome alternative to the coffee bean.
Right now tea is the fifth most popular beverage. Canadians enjoy about 10 billion cups of the stuff every year.
The anti oxidants and other health benefits contained in a cup of tea are being marketed as an herbal fountain of youth.
It is being sipped and slurped with gusto by health conscious Canadian boomers in fancy tea bars across the country.
This is one factor driving the projected 40 per cent increase in tea drinkers by 2020. Not to mention the enormous profits that can be generated by the sipping public.
Cosmopolitan consumers are willing to pay $5 or more for a specialty cup of coffee.
There’s no telling what they would shell out for a lovingly steeped cup of Jumpy Monkey or some properly infused Coconut Mango Sakura Allure.
Tea marketers are very aware of this and are pushing the envelope to see exactly how much a pretentious new age tea drinker will pay for hot water and a bag.
Just to clarify, we’re not talking about those plain orange pekoe tea bags that everybody buys – that stuff is for tea grannies with small disposable incomes.
The big coin is in the specialty teas with exotic sounding names like Aloe Serenity or Drum Mountain White Cloud. That’s how you get $5 a cup.
The big tea shops are trying to put a little more pizzazz in the pot. Some mixtures don’t contain any real “tea” at all.
That’s where traditional tea drinkers, especially the British, draw the line.
For them, these exotic blends and special ingredients are adding an unnecessary level of complexity to one of life’s little pleasures. Why over-complicate things?
Anybody can make delicious tea. According to the experts all you need is boiling water, some decent quality tea and a little milk.
That’s the beauty of tea – it’s easy, it’s accessible and it soothes frazzled nerves.
Tea used to be simple. When my mom and aunts got together all they needed was a pot of tea and a kitchen table for hours of comfort and conversation.
They took it unadorned, with neither milk nor sugar. When their gall bladders acted up they only had half a cup and filled the rest with water.
They never gave up their cuppa.
As Dickens so aptly wrote, “Polly put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea.”
