A short Journey in Tea

Living amongst the Inuit

My earliest (and fondest) memories of drinking tea reside with the Inuit in the high arctic of this big and beautiful continent. I was truly a fortunate kid to grow up in the frozen expanse of desert they now call Nunavut here in Canada.

Black, loose, strong, often, sweet,  milky (carnation from a can in that day) all attributes of my roots in tea. Tea was perpetual for the Inuit.  In fact, tea and pilot biscuits and 35 years later, I can still taste the duo on my palate. The pilot biscuit was a large white flour, hard biscuit.  There were two types - softer rounds, and tootth breaking square white ones.  The only way I could eat them as a kid was by snapping pieces off the corners and soaking them in my tea.

Meanwhile,  Dad had has his regular stash of a Murchies assortment on the kitchen counter -  Darjeeling, Imperial Keemun, Lapsang Souchong, Assam and the like - which would arrive via snail mail from Victoria a few times a year. It was his thing – as well as some really bad first generation protein powder.

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My summers in Newfoundland

And then there was Mr. Bown.  He was the father of my aunt’s husband – an authentic fisherman who moved from Change Islands to Victoria Cove, NF to ply his trade in the waters of Gander Bay.  I recall watching in disbelief early one morning just before heading out to check the nets, as Mr. Bown picked up his tetley bag between his thumb and teaspoon, and squeezed every last drop of the tea into his mouth that his exorbitant thumb pressure could yield. Remember, this was a man who hauled nets full of fish out of the frigid Atlantic his entire 68 years. I actually think he could crack a walnut with the snap of his fingers. (He could roll a cigarette with one had standing up in a boat while the other steered the outboard motor - another feat I have yet to see duplicated)

Mr. Bown was also the man who introduced me to sipping tea from the saucer. Who would have thought that the tea cup saucer would make such and efficient and practical cooling device?  Well it did.  I also recall thinking the tea actually tasted better too.

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The Prague Connection

Many years later just by happenstance (it  was actually somewhat  intentional) I found myself strolling down the central square of Prague after spending a week in Vienna attending the wedding of a close climbing buddy. Wolfgang was the guy who suggested I go check out the city.  It was a mere 5 hour train ride from Vienna and he also informed that for a guy who could only speak one language – Prague would be good to me.

I always knew there was hippie blood in me somewhere. Not sure where, but some place, sometime in my past, I had inhaled the aroma of Nag Champa. It was a smell that I had encountered a few times while growing up in the arctic, and it made an visceral connection to the Beatles (the White ep) the Stones (Some Girls ep) and Golden Earring.

So as I strolled down Vaclavske Square in Prague, a timid waft of nag caught my nose. Without hesitation I followed it down a side alley off the famed square.  It landed me in front of a beaded curtain hanging over a dimly lit foyer. I walked into a room that could have been from the 18th century. Fragrant, rustic, wood embalmed and captivating. There were these square black tins filling an entire wall. I saw a card on a tin – it said “Yunnan’.  I knew I had struck gold.  A bearded guy in a long black robe with sandals stepped forth and greeted me in near perfect accented English – “Hello – would you like to drink some tea?”

Right there, right then, I chose my path in tea.  It was all leaf all the time.

Today it is my vocation and one of my many passions.  Professionally, I have pursued nothing else but tea since the opening of Steeps - the urban teahouse in Edmonton in May of 99. 

What an exquisite and tanhtalizing journey it has been thus far.

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