International Tea Day Brings Back So Many Memories

Oh wow.  So many memories.

Sarah posted on the Fox Facebook page earlier today in celebration of today being International Tea Day and asked the question “What is your go to cuppa?”.

My first thought – Red Rose.  With milk and sugar.   Love my cup of tea.   Especially at the end of the day or on a rainy, cold day.  It’s comfort.  But it also brings back so many memories.  Reading all your comments on the Fox Facebook page and seeing all the love for Red Rose I remembered those figurines that used to come in boxes of Red Rose tea.  Anybody else remember them?  I kept them for the longest time and was always excited to see what new figurine we’d get next.  I don’t remember them exactly, but from what I have discovered today there were four different series of them.  They started in Quebec in 1967.  They became so popular they were then distributed all across Canada.  Four different series including animals and nursery rhyme characters.

My gramma got me into drinking tea.   It was always more milk than tea, and more sugar than I probably was allowed, but it was tasty and made me feel like a grown up.

For those other Red Rose drinkers, did you know it goes back over 100 years to Wicklow, New Brunswick, when Theodore Harding Estabrooks opened the doors to his own business on Dock Street in Saint John, blending and packaging teas that was a first of it’s kind.  Customers loved the taste and the business grew across Canada and into the United States as well.

As for those collectable porcelain figurines?  The two Canadian series focused on animal and nursery rhyme themes and remain highly collectable items.

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Carrie Buchanan