My mother served us healthy beverages, a lot of milk at meals and sometimes juice. Parents often drank tea and coffee so to drink that was for teens a rite of passage. My parents did not drink much coffee and my mother went to neighbors’ homes sometimes for morning ‘coffee’ or ‘afternoon ‘tea’ as part of networking and social support. She did not herself drink much coffee or tea but the ladies often did a joke game of reading tea leaves. Some beverages are culturally linked. The British like tea, the Chinese like tea. We learned that in the southern US iced tea is common but where I lived, it was not.
We got our milk via regular household delivery from the ‘millkman’. In Calgary, Union Milk and Palm Dairies were the chief providers and the milk truck went into each neighborhood delivering milk, cream, chocolate milk in glass bottles with cardboard caps. Many of us had a milk chute right in the wall of the back of our house and the milkman would open the little door and pick up the empties there and put in the new bottles. We even inserted the pay in cash or cheque in the little cabinet.
This was not an era of coffee shops per se. There were diners and our parents could get a cup of coffee, but it was not a gourmet item with flavorings. In 1958 (we were 9), the Dell Café offered coffee in a more focused setting and in our teen years folk music coffeehouse appeared. The Java shop in 1950 and the Havana Coffee and Tea Room were established.
However we were adult before the ‘coffee shop ‘ took hold. Higher Ground set up in Kensington in 1982 (we were 22), Tim Hortons in 1989, Good Earth in 1991. Starbucks was not here until 1996 and only later did we have the fancy roasteries. This means that our cohort did not go ‘out for coffee’ as teens.
We did however enjoy pop/ soda pop. In the 1950s our parents had Ginger Ale, Coca Cola, 7Up and we got to sample them. Some of us really enjoyed these and as we became teens also Orange crush, Root Beer, Cherry coke, Vanilla Coke, Cream Soda and Grapefruit soda.
In the 1970s we had A & W root beer, Canada Dry, Lime Rickey, Black Cherry pop, And in 1963 we had Tab, a diet soda.
We did have make-your -own beverages though. I remember hand squeezing lemonade and adding sugar on a hot dayr
We had Fizzies, a product invented in the 1950s by Emerson Drug Company. An effervescent tablet of citric acid, sodium bicarbonate and sweeteners was dropped into a glass of water, fizzed and made its own soft drink. These were hugely popular and came in flavors of grape, orange, cheery, strawberry, lemon-lime and root beer. The FDA in the US banned them however in 1969 due to concern about artificial sweeteners and cyclamates linked to cancer.
We also had Kool Aid. This packaged powder had been invented by Edwin Perkins in the US in 1927 made from a product called Fruit Smack. It sold well even in the Depression and he made it in many flavors including cherry, grape, lemon-lime, orange, raspberry and strawberry. Later flavors included tropical bunch and blackberry. Some sugar free versions were made in watermelon and kiwi.
In 1953 ( we were 4) the KoolAid production was sold to General Foods . The ads now featured a recognizable Kool Aid Man with the slogan “Oh yeah!”
In 1957 (we were 8) we also had Tang. It had been invented by William Mitchell at General Foods and had flavor crystals to make an orange beverage. It contained sugar but some later versions had no sugar but artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose.
We now had access to more fruits because grocery stores carried ones not even grown here, but we still did not have winter access to the huge range of fruits and vegetables in the world. At my house we knew nothing of bok choy, zucchini, asparagus or squash. Some of those were likely around but costly for us. We did enjoy though fruit in beverages and fruit punch was a common drink.
This product could be made combining various flavors – cranberry, lemonade, orange, grape. pineapple We also made our own. In my house it was like a magic show to concoct a mystery juice for fun.
We also had Nesquik, a product made by the Nestle company in 1948, to make ordinary milk taste chocolate by adding a powder.
Some enjoyed Ovaltine, which had been created a lot earlier, in 1904 in the UK by Albert Wander. It blended egg and malt into a powder to add to milk. In Canada a factory in Peterborough Ontario produced it.
My sister and I often got up to make our own breakfast as teens, and we often made Carnation instant Breakfast. It was invented in 1964 (I was 15) and was a powder a person added to liquid to make an easy nutritious meal to start the day.
1952 – No Cal -is diet soda, artificially sweetened
1957 – Tang
1961 – Sprite
1962 – Fizzies
1963 – Sunny D, Tab
1963 – Tab sugar-free drink
1964 – Diet Pepsi
1965 – Gatorade
1966 – Clamato juice, Fresca
Once we were of age, the decision was made about drinking wine and alcohol. Here is how the law worked in Alberta at the time
1916 – Prohibition starts in Alberta
1923 – Prohibition in Alberta ends. The legal drinking age is 21
1957 – Alberta permits men and women to drink at same bar ( we are 8)
1971 – the legal drinking age in Alberta drops to 18 from 21. (we are 22)
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