O Canada
The Glengarry Highland Games have been held annually from 1948 to present.
This post is again from my Uncle Brian.
Anne’s mother, Janet MacDonell, hailed from Alexandria, Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada. Janet taught in the one-room school house in Apple Hill for a few years before she came to Syracuse to pursue an RN degree from St. Joseph’s Hospital, later marrying John Treacy and settling in Syracuse. Anne always loved visiting Glengarry County, both to visit her mother’s relatives and to attend the Highland Games held annually in Maxville.
Photo of the caber toss from instagram.com/theghg/
On one such trip in the late 1950s, she and Emmett and several of their children visited the farm of James and Flora McPhee, which was located between Apple Hill and Alexandria. Flora was Janet MacDonell Treacy’s first cousin. Flora’s son Colin, who was about 19 at the time, still lived at home and worked on the farm with his father.
Anne brought with her a “visiting present” of tea (actually a box of tea bags). The McPhees, being gracious hosts, immediately wanted to use this gift to make a pot of tea. Colin offered to do the honors and left for the kitchen. Shortly thereafter he returned with a tea bag in hand and looking very confused. “Auntie Anne,” he said, “Do I put this in the infuser? Do I cut this open? I’m afraid we can’t use this.” Anne realized that, unlike Americans, he had always made tea with loose leaves and an infuser and surmised he had never seen a tea bag before. She explained that the tea bag served as the infuser and he merely needed to suspend it in the tea pot and pour boiling water over it. We’ll never actually know if he thought this method made as good a pot of tea as did the loose-tea-infuser method, which is still far more popular in Canada than it is in the U.S. But we can be sure that the visit was a grand success.
Making tea the way Colin preferred using a small infuser (L) for a cup or a large infuser for a pot. (photo from Brian and Kate Fenlon)
Tea the way many in the US make it, using a teabag.
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