Sweet tea has gone mainstream in recent years, appearing on restaurant menus and in grocery stores. Northern or southern, we Americans do like tons of sugar in our foods... Masala chai is fairly popular in urban areas as a comfort drink alternative to hot chocolate and caffe latte, although it's usually made from a concentrated tea-and-spice syrup and is therefore usually sweeter and a bit heavier than the Indian original. British and Irish-style teas are readily available in many parts of the country, but often at a jaw-dropping premium (especially for Irish brands like Barrys). Twinings and Tetley's are two brands that are widely available without being extortionately priced, although Tetley's "British blend" (their flagship product) is a little harder to find, and their American blend is a lighter, more ice-friendly blend.
You might expect that Canada, being where all the Loyalists went after 1776 and priding itself on its continued loyalty to the Crown to this day, would be emphatically British-style tea country, but you'd be wrong. Coffee rules the day in Canada, largely because while identity is one thing, cheap coffee from the US is another, and so Canada is at least as coffee crazy as its southern neighbour. Still, while coffee is king in Canada to the point of being Serious Business, First Nations tend to serve and drink (hot) tea much more than the rest of Canada. This is probably due to the fact that in earlier generations the main supplier of goods to most Reserves was the (then-)British owned and operated Hudson's Bay Company.note
You'd be surprised how, much like the United States (above), tea is becoming increasingly popular in many parts of Canada. This is helped by the fact that, thanks to Tim Hortons (a famous chain of coffee shops and Canada's cultural equivalent to America's McDonald's), you can now get almost any kind of coffee, latte, cappuccino, and... yes... tea under the sun. This includes an entire assortment of bagged teas (such as Black Tea, Green Tea, and any flavour from Earl Grey to English Breakfast to Chai), as well as Steeped Tea. Much like Australians and upper-class Americans, there are a great many "English" Canadians who enjoy their tea almost as much as the First Nations or South Asian immigrants. Coffee, however, is still the single most-bought hot beverage, although Hot Chocolate is somewhat popular (especially in mid-winter). Iced Tea is also present in Canada, although almost exclusively from Nestle and Brisk, and it is almost always sweetened, but not to the extreme of the American South. Diet Iced Tea is also available.
McDonald's McCafe is also in on the tea business in Canada, serving a full array of hot teas (Orange Pekoe black tea, Earl Grey, Peppermint, and Green tea) - which generally isn't the case in the US.
It must also be noted that Canadians drink significantly more coffee than Americans (6.5 kg/person/year vs. 4.2) AND drink more tea (0.4 kg/person/year vs. 0.3 in the US, Britain is 2.7, Ireland is 3.2, and Morocco is 4.3); it gets really cold in Canada.
People who bother to drink tea in North America at all will most likely make it from tea bags, as that's all that's available on most grocery store shelves. There are a number of small companies selling loose-leaf tea by mail order for serious tea aficionados. That said, specialty tea stores, such as David's Tea and Teavana are expanding now so that in any major urban area of Canada and the U.S. you are guaranteed to find around half a dozen stores. There is even one in Toronto's international airport. You can also find loose leaf tea in the better grocery stores with a bulk natural foods section.
Owing to the growing popularity of tea stateside, electric kettles are now easily available at "big box" stores in the U.S., but, as previously mentioned, they're nowhere near as powerful as their British counterparts. They're still handy, as they don't tie up the stove and they shut off automatically when they're done boiling for safety.
Green tea is becoming popular in the U.S. as a health food, particularly among women. Coffee shops also have green tea lattes available. Matcha is also popular among urban hipsters.
Russia
The Mongols' conquest of the Kievan Rus and annexation of its former territories in the middle ages brought Steppe and, by extension, other Asian cultures to Ukraine and Russia in a very direct and incredibly bloody way. However, tea was not part of this as the Mongols themselves had no regard for it at the time. Although the Mongol-dominated Empire of the Yuan (based in China but possessing a majority non-Mongol population) came to favour tea as the Mongols there assimilated into Chinese culture, the European Mongol tribes remained very distinct from and in fact warred against the Yuan-Mongols. After the unified Russian Kingdom's eventual conquest of the remaining Mongol realms in Europe in the 16th century, Russian fur-trappers and traders went on to establish a series of forts and trade-outposts across the length and breadth of Siberia.note These brought the Russians into conflict with the (also Mongol-dominated, China-based, and with a majority non-Mongol population) Empire of the Qing in the 17th century as fur-trappers and raiding parties from both countries fought a long series of mini-skirmishes before settling on a vague border and trade agreements. Given all this it was probably inevitable that the Russians took to tea in a big way. By the 1800s it was an institution; by 1915 Russia accounted for 65% of China's tea exports. It actually outstrips vodka as the de facto national beverage. But, despite Russia being the third European country by per-capita tea consumption after the UK (the first is actually Ireland), the tea's road to the Russian table was quite rocky.
Tea first appeared in Russia in the early 17th century, given as a gift to the embassy of the Tsar Mikhail I. The ambassador didn't like it, and actually didn't even present it to the Tsar for fear of angering him. The second attempt, now by the Qing embassy to Mikhail's son Alexei I, was more successful, and the court loved the drink. Still, for much of the 17th century it remained an expensive import affordable only to nobility. The fact that Peter The Great, Alexei's son, didn't care for the drink (associating it with Moscow, which he hated) and was an avid coffee fan (coffee was all the rage in 17th-century Western Europe, and Peter wanted Russia to be more Western), didn't help, nor did competition from Russia's traditional warm drink — sbiten', * a hot herbal brew sweetened with honey and/or jam.note
Nevertheless, tea persevered, and with increasing trade with the Qing, it became progressively cheaper and more affordable. Urban merchants and artisans noticed its stimulating properties, and it soon started to outcompete sbiten', though in the process tea acquired one of sbiten's defining characteristics: it became customary to heavily sweeten the tea (possibly with honey and/or jam). By the 19th century tea was the drink of choice of Russia's urban classes: artisans, merchants, soldiers, officials, students, minor nobility, etc. Coffee became the province of the the most elevated classes only, being much more expensive and time-consuming to prepare.
During Romanovs And Revolutions, tea even contributed to the Reds' victory: having acquired the previous regime's huge tea stores, the Reds instituted a strict dry law and widely distributed that tea. It led to much better discipline, and more importantly, improved health in the Red Army, as making tea involved boiling the water, thus lowering the risk of typhoid (which devastated the land in those days). It also helped that the materials necessary to make vodka—grain and/or potatoes, plus distilling equipment—were in areas predominantly concentrated in the areas controlled by the Whites: it's rather easy to ban alcohol when there isn't much of the stuff to be found, plus the abundance of booze in White territory badly affected their morale. During World War II the Soviet Government treated the drink with a reverence rivaling that of the British, similarly considering it a strategic material on-par with vodka and diesel. The Sino-Soviet split shifted the focus of Russian tea imports from China, with which relations had soured, to India, which became a strategic Russian ally, but it didn't change the nation's obsession with the drink. Nowadays Chinese imports have resumed, and appreciation of tea's finer points soared to unseen heights. It is therefore safe to say that it will continue to be a staple drink in the years to come.
How They Drink It: Hot and and often sweet, usually black but sometimes oolong. Old Russian teas often had a smoky taste because the teas exported to the central Asian 'barbarian' countries were invariably of very low quality (because such uncivilized louts couldn't appreciate 'proper tea'), making 'smoking' it a necessary expedient to increase its drinkability. The quality of tea exported to central Asia improved over time but the great bulk of it was still smoked because that's what they were used to and preferred (or because it blended with a smoked tea such as lapsang souchong). But perhaps thanks to the disruption caused by the Sino-Soviet split such blends are now rare, with most modern Russian teas coming from Assam, Darjeeling or Ceylon. There is small local production in the south parts of the country, and Krasnodar's tea plantations are the northernmost in the world.