This entry is part of my continuing collection of Tim Hortons references as I come across them in my reading. I hope these excerpts will prompt you to pick up and read the books in their entirety. All of the titles in this post were published between October 2020 and September 2021, making them eligible for Canada's Giller prize in 2021.
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The road is an intermittent companion. It was made to wrap around natural features, whereas I am compelled to push straight through. I'm heading more or less west from home. If I walk long enough, I'll fall into the ocean. Wouldn't that be poetical?
My ambition is too blunted to contemplate such a lofty goal. I'll come across a derelict Tim Hortons before too long--maybe that's good enough.
Emily Brewes, The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales, p 272
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But—and there is a but, and not a minor one—the two women's children couldn't stand each other. As soon as they were in the same room, they would turn their backs on one another. "As if they were like poles of two magnets," Suzan sighed when the conversation got to that point. (Desmond, whom I met at a Tim Hortons in Sudbury, had another explanation: "I couldn't stand the way she looked at me. There was something in her that struck a nerve. I couldn't tell you what it was. A huge void, or a vortex. It would take me days and a lot of work to extract myself from it.")
Jocelyne Saucier, And Miles to Go Before I Sleep (translated by Rhonda Mullins), p 56
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Up ahead, someone has taken three of the brownies. Now there are only five left.
"I'm going to make you an offer," says Loomis, trying to channel Vito Corleone, "that you can't refuse."
"Make sure he doesn't cheat you," says Paula.
I check the display case. Now there are only three.
The mayor puts his arm around his wife. "Don't know why you insist we come here," he whispers. "Timmy's has a better selection and better prices."
In addition to the real estate company, Mayor Bob also owns the two Tim Hortons in town.
"Sure," says Paula. "If you want frozen lumps of lard."
"Canadian company," says Bob. "Buy local."
"Company hasn't been Canadian since 1995," says Paula.
Thomas King, Sufferance, p 47
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The hardware store sat at the centre of Main Street in a town of three thousand and thirty-nine people. There was one Tim Hortons (facing impending closure), two pizzerias, a hospital, one public school, one Catholic school, a liquor store, a cafe, a pharmacy, a bookstore, the corner store, five churches, and Lou's hardware store. Indigo Higgins owned the local bookstore. She stocked poetry from Western Canada, Bart Hastings' murder mysteries, and books about birds. It was a well-known fact that Indigo could name collective nouns for birds in any situation, and she often created opportunities to mention an asylum of cuckoos, a museum of waxwings, a charm of goldfinches, or a pretense of bitterns. Each Christmas since Lou had married Edward, she had bought him a book from Indigo's store -- usually one of the select few that wasn't about birds and wasn't authored by Bart Hastings. Lou never knew what else to get him. This year, they hadn't exchanged gifts at all.
Amy LeBlanc, Unlocking, p 11
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"What's for breakfast?" I ask Amina, watching her fold my quilt into a perfect rectangle. Particles of dust fly up as she beats my mattress with a coconut broom and smooths out the creases in the bedsheet.
Aunty, my mother's sister, says Amina is a couple of years younger than me, which means she is about seventeen. Yet a solemn maturity lurks behind her youthful olive skin, beneath the surface of the innocent wonder in her large chocolate-coloured eyes.
"Porota, omelette, potato fry, tea," she says with a smile, exposing her rust-coloured, betel-stained teeth.
Instantly, my mouth moistens. Over the past year in Toronto, I've only come to know cereal and Tim Hortons muffins for breakfast. The few times I tried the store-bought porota from No Frills supermarket, it felt as though I was eating rubber.
Silmy Abdullah, Home of the Floating Lily: Stories, 'Across the Ocean,' pp 50-51
Note: Two other stories in Abdullah's collection also have Tim Hortons references. I will let you discover them for yourself.
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We reject the crumbling donuts and thin coffee offered in the hotel lobby, the elegant sounding "Continental Breakfast." We stop at a Tim Hortons on the outskirts of town. Next stop, the mountains and the new monument that is the reason for our visit.
We avoid the drive-through, several cars making a figure eight in the parking lot, and join the line on the inside. I tell Dad he can find us seats while I wait to get our English muffins, but he doesn't. He's perturbed by the long line, so needs to exercise his annoyance, to take it for a walk like a small dog. He's mostly perturbed, I soon see, by the sight of the only person taking orders, an older South Asian lady. She's clearly distressed and requires help, but her colleagues are all occupied: two giraffe-like blonde teenage boys bobbing and weaving behind the soup/sandwich counter, and a gaggle of girls administering to the drive-through traffic, radio headsets fastened to their ears. I suggest to Dad that we'd be better off going through the drive-through, but he gives me a look as if I've asked hime to cut off his right hand.
We wait. [...] Once or twice, the poor woman, confused by the onslaught of requests, Double-cream no sugar, one cream three sugar, double-double, double-milk one sugar, one decaf black, a maple dip not maple cream donut, an old-fashioned plain donut, not a glazed old-fashioned plain donut with vanilla sprinkles, sets both her hands on the counter and closes her eyes. The lineup of customers grows and surges.
Dad makes a nocturnal sound and steps, figuratively and literally, out of line. I shrink. He shouts, "Can't anyone help this poor woman? What kind of place you running here?" The whole place pauses. Heads pivot, patrons at tables in mid-sentence mid-bite and mid-sip, coffee cups or iPhones at the ends of their arms. Things resume. The coffee machine begins again. I see a commotion through the door behind the counter, and a young woman, not in the standard Tim Hortons uniform, but in a black halter top, with a bracelet-of-thorns tattoo circling her right arm--she looks vaguely Goth, wholly angry--comes out and punches open a second cash register, narrows her crow eyes as if daring anyone to approach.
[...]
Once we're sitting, he starts in.
"Disgraceful. Immigrants forced to take these jobs. Part-time, you can bet, then they don't have to pay benefits. We shouldn't patronize these people."
"She seems to be handling it all right."
"It's in the job description. You can't frown at Timmy Hortons."
[...]
Before we leave, a middle-aged man, around my age, in crisp new jeans and scuffed silver cowboy boots, long greying hair in a ponytail, stops by our table and says to my dad, "Thanks for saying something. Place makes money hand over fist. Canada's Goldman Sachs."
Dad barely responds, just whispers, "You bet," without looking up. The man waits for a more meaningful interaction. I say, "Thanks," He nods and moves off. His cowboy boots snap along the sticky floor.
John O'Neill, Goth Girls of Banff, 'From Castle Mountain,' pp 124-127
Note: As with Abdullah's book (see previous entry) two other stories in O'Neill's collection have Tim Hortons references.
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Surely there's a washroom in this building that I could use, said Grandma.
I'm afraid not, he said, they're not designated for public use.
She really has to go! I told him.
You don't have to yell at me, miss, I can hear you. I told you they're not designated for public use.
Her diuretic kicked in on the streetcar and she'll spring a leak if you don't let her use the fucking washroom, you fascist prick! I said.
Swiv, said Grandma. She pretended to slice her throat with her finger. The guy finally looked at us and got up and came around to the front of the desk with his hand on his gun. Grandma asked him if it was all right with him if she peed in one of those giant planters by the window. He said no, he couldn't authorize her to do that. Do it! I told Grandma. I'm authorizing it! She said no, no, we'll find a place. She told the security guy she was very tempted to let 'er rip right there in the lobby on that shiny floor and he said ma'am, you do not have a constitutional right to use fighting words with me. Then grandma started talking about constitutional rights but she was huffing and puffing and also dizzy still, and sort of teetering around and it was hard for her to talk. You're gonna have a goddamn cardiac event, Grandma, I told her. I'm telling De Sica. De Sica! said Grandma. Did he call? Don't let this be the hill you die on! I said. Hoooooooooo, said Grandma. You're right. What a ridiculous last stand. I took Grandma's hand and we went to the Tim Hortons next door and bought two Boston cream doughnuts so they would give us the code to the washroom.
- - - - - - - - - - -
The cab driver fell in love with Grandma instantly and took her arm and helped her down the stairs and along the little path to the curb, like they were a bride and groom. Shotgun! yelled Grandma. She always had to sit in the front of cars. Normal people sit in the backs of cabs, but not Grandma. She wants to see everything and navigate everything and talk with the driver. The cab driver had to move all his stuff off the front seat. He wiped off the crumbs and chucked some garbage into the back seat next to me. A Tim Hortons cup landed on my leg. Sorry, sorry he said.
Miriam Toews, Fight Night, pp 32-33; 128-129
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A man passed them on the sidewalk, the late thirties overgrown-child type, baggy shorts and hockey-player hair, sandals. He was just walking along, eating a donut, sipping from a big Tim Hortons cup. Marthe wondered shat it felt like to live in the world like that guy did.
Aimee Wall, We, Jane: A Novel, p 65
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Aisla hasn't slept for more than forty-five minutes in a row for over a year. She looks at her list again sitting on the toilet, the baby sleeping in that bucket seat on the floor, one of her feet rocking as she tries to pee without splashing all over the toilet and her pants. Have to keep rocking or he'll wake up and getting him to sleep takes up so much of her life that any respite when he is actually sleeping is heavily and anxiously guarded. She has to look at her list again because she forgets something every time. She knows she's forgotten to write things on her list, but the most important things are probably on there. Probably. It's a fifty-two-minute drive into town, and if she's lucky he'll fall asleep halfway and stay asleep for twenty minutes after—enough time for her to grab a coffee at the Tim Hortons drive-thru and take a pee in the mall bathroom before she starts her errands.
Angelique Lalonde, Glorious Frazzled Beings, 'The Pregnancy Test,' pp 157-158
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Sometimes I watch TV and I want to throw it against the wall. Sometimes I read a book and I want to rip out every page. Sometimes I am in a restaurant, patiently waiting for my takeout, and I see a straight couple my age laughing as they get their bags and go home and I want to block the entrance right in front of them and claw my eyes out and say, "Tell me—how did it happen? Did you meet at a fucking art opening? After a whole dramatic year on Tinder? DID YOU MEET AT FUCKING TIM HORTONS?! Are you going home to your fucking cat or your fish or your ADORABLE CHILD?!
I have never been an aggressive person, as you know. And I would like to say I don't know where this urge to rage comes from. Except. Of course. I know exactly where it comes from. It shouldn't be so simple.
Casey Plett, A Dream of a Woman: Stories, 'Rose City, City of Roses,' pp 171-172
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"It's a nice day out today. Feels like spring. Never used to melt this much when I was a kid. When I was a kid we had snow up to our armpits and froze all the way through all winter. Not like you kids, always warm and inside. You guys got it easy."
Phoenix scoffs at this, but only a bit.
"Oliver had a hockey tournament this weekend so we went up to Sagkeeng and was in that arena all weekend. Was colder in there than outside. Good thing they have a Tim's out there. I never asked you, are you a tea girl, Phoenix, or coffee? Which do you like better?"
Katherena Vermette, The Strangers, pp 142-143
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