Fort Garry Tea and 30/60/90 Years Ago in The Beaver

Tasty tea.

A cold winter day and a hot cup of tea — a comforting combination promoted by Hudson’s Bay Company, importers of tea since 1713. “Guaranteed to be superior in quality to any other packaged tea selling at fifty cents a pound,” reads a 1933 advertisement. HBC’s India and Ceylon orange pekoe tea with the brand name “Fort Garry” was said to be a full-flavoured blend enjoyed by both urban dwellers and those in more remote areas of the country.

In The Beaver...

90 Years Ago

Martian mania

As the game of curling gained popularity across Canada, HBC got caught up in the excitement. Numerous articles on the winter sport enlivened the publication. In a particularly humourous January 1921 article entitled “A Martian at the Rink,” the writer envisions a Martian’s bewilderment upon chancing on a company curling match.

60 Years Ago

Trusty toboggan

“The Eskimos of Canada depend almost entirely for their winter transportation on the wooden sled,” W.F. Joss wrote in March 1951. Before mechanized travel in the North, the typical Inuit family owned three sleds, or komatiks — one for heavy loads, a lighter model for trapping, and a small version for children or for racing. Joss’s article “Eskimo Sleds” describes the production and history of the reliable komatik.

30 Years Ago

Golden rule days

In the Autumn 1981 issue, Evelyn Slater McLeod fondly remembers her days at Willow Brook School near Consort, Alberta. “School Days at Willow Brook” tells of the one-room building constructed in 1910 for eighteen children who arrived with their families from Benson County, North Dakota. You can almost feel the heat radiating from the pot-bellied stove on a cold day, the thrill of sledding down the coulee at break time, and the excitement when the new teacher arrives from the “far horizons” of England.