Thistle Ha’

I used to wonder how this delectable treat – that so many of us have come to associate with Christmastime at Thistle Ha’ – got its name. Then I recalled a bus trip, back in the 1970’s, with some fellow U. of T. students who were from Hong Kong. They were happily gobbling some treats sent to them by relatives and offered me one of the balls to try. I remember being surprised by how intensely salty they were even though they seemed to be made of candied fruit. I now suspect that Chinese Chews are a North American version of these balls, rolled in sugar instead of salt.

Chinese Chews
Makes 2 1/2 to 3 dozen balls.

• 1/4 cup pastry flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of fine granulated sugar
• 3 T. melted butter or shortening
• 1 cup chopped dates
• 2/3 cup of chopped almonds
• 1/4 cup chopped candied orange peel
• 1/4 cup chopped candied pineapple and cherries
• 3 to 5 T. finely chopped candied or preserved ginger

Beat the eggs until light. Gradually add the sugar and beat thoroughly. Add the butter, melted and cooled. Add fruit and nuts, combine thoroughly. Beat in the dry ingredients. Bake in an 8 inch square pan at 350°F. for 40 minutes. Cut while still warm into small squares and roll into tight balls. Roll the balls in fine sugar to coat them.

Hugh Miller often showed Thistle Ha’ visitors a fancy, well-worn cane given to his grandfather, and told its story below. The cane was destroyed in the house fire at Thistle Ha’ in 1985.
As told by: Hugh Miller

A local widow came to Thistle Ha’ and asked John Miller for help. Her son had just been convicted of murder, and was sentenced to hang. She explained that two men and her fifteen-year-old son had broken into a farmer’s house in the middle of the night, looking for liquor. The farmer had come downstairs to investigate the noise, and in the ensuing struggle, the farmer was struck and killed.

She felt her son’s penalty was too severe: he was a youth who had become influenced by bad men since her husband’s death, he was a bystander during the fight at the farmhouse, and the family couldn’t afford to pay for an adequate defense at his trial. John Miller said he would see what he could do.

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William Miller Jr was the youngest brother of John Miller of Thistle Ha’. He came to Canada in 1838 at four years of age with his parents, Helen (Farrish) and William Miller Sr, and his older brothers. Growing up at Atha farm, the family called him “Atha Willie”. Willie possessed an extraordinary talent for selecting and managing pure-bred livestock, and was general manager at several leading American livestock farms (see William Miller Jr/Atha in Pages sidebar). He was also a good writer, contributing numerous letters and feature articles for leading livestock papers such as the The Breeder’s Gazette. In one of the Gazette articles he recalls his arrival in Canada.

Photo: Oil portrait of William Miller Jr, Saddle and Sirloin Club (International Livestock Hall of Fame) Portrait Gallery, Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center, Louisville.
Source: William Miller Jr,”Live Stock on the Atlantic.” excerpt, The Breeder’s Gazette, Dec. 19, 1894, p. 408.

My first experience on the water was along with farm stock. In the summer of 1838 my father left his native Annandale for Canada with my mother and family, my oldest brother John having gone some four years before. With us went ten Leicester sheep, four white swine and two dogs. At Liverpool we were loaded on the barque Mogul for New York – the sheep on the deck in the long boat, swine in a pen, dogs and children at large, but they could go into what by courtesy they called the second cabin. The ship was slow, the winds light and it took forty-nine days to make New York. Thence we took a steamboat to Albany; then through the Erie Canal to Rochester (which took a week), then across Lake Ontario by boat to Toronto, where friends met us and took us in wagons through the woods and into the woods in Pickering some twenty-eight miles, near what is now Brougham, Ont., where my father and brother John hewed out for us a comfortable home and gathered around them fine cattle, horses, sheep and swine, gaining for themselves in those early days a name among the leading breeders of the land. Brave hearts and strong arms like these made Ontario what she is today – deservedly the pride of the New World for sturdy independence, real intelligence and successful agriculture.