Tugaske Library’s 50th-anniversary tea party was a feast for the senses for all who attended, while it was also an uplifting post-pandemic activity for area residents who were isolated for three years.
Ten bouquets of colourful and aromatic flowers from Taylor Doerksen’s Red Barn Farm near Eyebrow decorated the tables in the Tugaske Community Hall, while teacups and saucers sat waiting for the 50 participants to sample the three teas that DAVIDsTEA sommelier — and former Eyebrow resident — Kelly Miller had prepared.
There was also a table of mouth-watering fruits, a chocolate fountain, and a display featuring the library’s history and the eight librarians who had served since the venue opened on Oct. 23, 1973. The librarians have been Lillian Laybourne, Nola Rudd, Edith Corby, Kathy Russell, Marion Bueckert, Sarah McKen, Morgan Freeman and Violet (Freeman) Beaudry.
Area resident Leeanne White provided the teacups, including one from Queen Elizabeth II’s June 3, 1953 coronation. Meanwhile, two of Laybourne’s five children attended in her honour.
I'm a little tea pot
Beaudry thought the event was relaxed, fun and successful, and everyone had a good time. She thought Miller’s presentation was interesting, with most people liking the first tea sample — a “light and delicious” white tea called bai hao yin zhen.
The other teas were an oolong called jade tieguanyin and a black tea called david’s breakfast blend.
“And the visitation is just so important. (It’s) healthy mentally for all of us. Because you can live out in isolation here pretty easily,” Beaudry said, noting a healthy community creates healthy people and healthy leaders.
“And after COVID, people are just — in the last seven months — relaxed enough (to come out), even our most uptight people about COVID … . So even that lady came. So that’s the first time she’s been in public for, like, (three) years. So this is important.”
Beaudry said she learned “a lot” about tea during Miller’s presentation. She normally drinks the beverage and has her favourites but didn’t know about all its health benefits.
The librarian encouraged people to visit the library “with the yellow door” since it is an important place that offers inexpensive ways to take a vacation and should be cherished since “you don’t know what you got till you lose it.”
“It’s very busy and it’s very fun. It’s never quiet,” Beaudry added, noting 350 people use the library monthly. “It’s really fun to be the librarian of Tugaske.”
Tea for two and two for tea
Returning to Tugaske was a wonderful experience for Miller, who spent the summers visiting her grandmother in Eyebrow while reading books from the nearby library. This was her first time back in Saskatchewan in four years after moving to Montreal in 2019 to join the research and development (R&D) department with DAVIDsTEA.
Miller was 18 when she fell in love with tea, ironically, after visiting a DAVIDsTEA outlet at the Regina Cornwall Centre looking for a friend’s birthday gift. She had such a pleasant experience and appreciated the informative salesperson that she became a regular customer and bought every flavour the company made.
Her newfound love for tea prompted her to look elsewhere for different flavours, including from different companies and across the world. Around age 22, she realized this passion wasn’t just a hobby, and she wanted to make it a career.
“I ended up working for that DAVIDsTEA (outlet in Regina) that introduced me to (tea). That felt really full circle … ,” Miller said. “But then I got noticed by the head office in Montreal just because I was so passionate; I like talking to people in stores.”
There was only so much room for advancement with the company in Saskatchewan and the industry in general. So, to keep this career, Miller moved to Montreal and joined the R&D department as a lab assistant before becoming its director.
“And I get to now do the thing that introduced me to tea, which is just create really cool teas that don’t exist anywhere else,” she said.
One of Miller’s favourite teas she helped create is “Jelly Doughnut,” a robust and unique blend from South Africa that’s caffeine-free and a dessert-accompany drink. She thought it was great to discover something new after sampling over 10,000 teas during her 10-year career.
“So if not that one, maybe our pumpkin Earl Grey. That one was the very first tea I got to work on,” she continued. “And, just finding a new way to put a stamp on that classic profile, I think, feels just very invigorating as a professional in that space.”
Miller offered three “golden rules” for steeping tea, including time spent sipping, water temperature and the type of tea leaf. For example, boiling water is good for black tea, warm water is good for “a really beautiful” green tea, and increasing or decreasing the amount of tea leaves affects taste.
“My personal opinion is that there’s no such thing as a bad cup of tea,” she added. “There’s bad steeping but no bad tea.”
