And these are the latest:
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"I scowled. We were almost at the main road, Lawrence Avenue, a busy street for traffic but a lonely one for walking -- all of civilization was at the strip mall with the Tim Hortons and the big-box Walmart, or else inside the grey apartment buildings that stood, washed-out and faded, beside the sidewalk."
- from Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta, p 182
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I was standing in line at the Tim Hortons on campus when I saw Jonas. He was ordering, leaning forward over the counter and whispering his order to the cashier. She blushed, covered her mouth with her free hand. Her hat was red. If Patty were here, she would have said, "Women dressed in red are more sexually attractive to men."
- from Shut Up You're Pretty by Tea Mutonji, p 97
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He holds up a paper bag.
"What's this?"
"Milestones," he says. "Want one?" He shakes the bag of doughnut holes.
"I don't know. Is your own little poison stone crouched in there somewhere?"
"Don't make fun of my mental illness," he says bluntly. "And I'm not telling you if it's in there. You'll never know unless you reach inside."
I take the bait, pull out a Milestone, take a bite. Dark chocolate with pomegranate jelly.
"Yum. So you work at West Edmonton Mall now?"
"Ugh I know, rub it in. I hate this place."
[...]
"If you promise to stick around and chat until my shift is done I'll make you The Great One for free."
"What's The Great One?"
"It's our legendary, off-the-menu Miles Hortons drink. It's like a double-double but it's nine creams-nine sugars. Get it? After Wayne Gretzky. Number 99."
"That sounds horrifying. I think I'll pass."
"Your loss. I drink one every day."
-from Melting Queen by Bruce Cinnamon, p 106-108
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But the road also made her long even harder for Victor. Over the years, road trips were an excuse for them to be neither here nor there, free from their daily lives. Fucking in the back seat behind a Tim Hortons; tipping lamps off desks in motels that still had smoking rooms; enjoying the smell of themselves on each other's hands and faces while ordering breakfast at four o'clock in the afternoon at Denny's.
-from Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline, p 89
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The Labrador Sea appeared in early 2015. It was at first only a modest success. There was an approving review in the New York Times Book Review, something more equivocal in the Telegraph. The Labrador Sea was overlooked by the London Review of Books. In Merrett Leys's home country, the National Post profiled the author as a "global literary phenomenon," emphasizing his "nearly-million-dollar advance." Merrett Leys told the interviewer, "I consider myself very fortunate that anyone would be interested in this story of longing and sea foam."
The Labrador Sea went on to receive Canada's lucrative Tim Hortons Prize. More surprisingly, it was named as a finalist for the US National Book Award and for the Man Booker. It won the latter, to widespread astonishment -- bookies put Merrett Leys's odds at 100-1. This recognition opened the floodgates.
-from The Wagers by Sean Michaels, p 210-211
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Without being asked, Al-Karim takes orders for tea. "Tim Hortons! Shabash. Would have brought a thermos of chai from home if we'd known," a senior says, shaking her head. All the seniors request double doubles.
-from Night of Power by Anar Ali, Chapter 14
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After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, writing felt pointless, let alone writing arts criticism. Finally, at a Tim Hortons during a christmas visit to Canada, I managed to hammer out the section of this essay about Trump as a stand-up comic. The one section that I wish I could expand is the relationship between TV news and TV comedy.
-from 'How Jokes Won the Election' in I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum
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...And this one is thanks to my Litsy friend Memory Scarlett:
It took us about fifteen minutes to get to the Tim Hortons on Bloor where Colin was hiding out. Parking was nonexistent -- no surprise there -- so Hudson pulled over and put on his four-ways.
-from Graveyard Shift by Jenn Burke
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To top it off, there was a bit of a twitter storm in October 2019 when a Hong Kong student shared his perspective on the place Tim Hortons holds in Canadian culture:
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