One of my ongoing reading projects is to take note every time I come across a reference to Canada's iconic coffee shop, even though I don't drink coffee and I don't even like doughnuts all that much. (I have a hard time saying no to cake, however.) Here's a link to collections from previous years.
Tim Hortons retains the name of the Canadian National Hockey League player who opened his first doughnut shop in Hamilton Ontario in 1964. As far as I can tell, the Tim Hortons franchise is currently owned by Restaurant Brands International (RBI), which is a multinational fast food holding company based in Canada.
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Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb
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Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
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It is, for instance, what had led me to the Tim's at King and Bathurst where I agreed to have coffee with Furaha.
[...]
She spoke these words in the most reasonable tone imaginable, daintily sipping on her double-double and hiding her mouth each time she bit her plain old-fashioned. I remember there was a moment when I was struck by the thought that she was making sense. But, of course, the situation was absurd.
Winter, or a Town Near Palgrave by Andre Alexis; published by Coach House
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It seemed that driving the speed limit was some kind of unforgivable offence in the city. I kept my hands gripped tightly on the wheel, face forward, each time a monstrous truck veered around us, the driver's steely eyes trying to bore a hole through my window as he passed.
So that I would not lose focus, I set Jez to counting all the red and white signs of the Tim Hortonses along the highway. Six.
Bad Land by Corinna Chong; published by Arsenal Pulp
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The 1971-72 season draws to a close and the team fails to reach the playoffs again. To raise spirits, Punch wants to land the veteran Tim Horton, who at 43, is nearly twice as old as anyone on the French Connection. A former star from Imlach's Toronto days, Horton has been playing here and there, periodically retiring and then driving up his price. In truth, the towering defenceman doesn't need hockey. He's got a head for business. "Tim est proprietaire de plusieurs magazins de beignets," according to the back of his bubblegum card. Tim owns a chain of donut shops bearing his name.
Punch meets Tim Horton at a Tim Hortons over the border. People will see them there. People will talk. The papers love both of them. The articles practically write themselves.
Same Bed, Different Dreams by Ed Park: published by Random House
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At 7 o'clock in the evening, we drove over to the parking lot with Persian music blaring in the car. Both of us immediately felt more life in our bodies, excited to see Khaleh Sima, who would inevitably make us laugh amidst our despair.
Khaleh Sima was the only friend my mother still held onto and the only one she could be her full, unfiltered self with. She was what Persians would call ham-dard, meaning 'one's companion in pain.' Mom's other friends had slowly disappeared. At first, there was empathy. A couple even shared that they knew of my father's infidelities, spotting him with other women, or thinking they had, or they had heard he had been calling other women in our circle. But the phone calls from these friends stopped and I wasn't sure if it was her distancing or theirs.
Outside the Tim Hortons, teenaged lovers leaned against car doors, canoodling, and I just hoped no one from my school would spot me. Though no one would have said much about it anyway, given that I was rarely, if ever, invited to parties.
By the cash register, Mom and Khaleh Sima argued over who would pay this time. Each of them pulling out their debit cards like swords and jousting with their hands. The two went back and forth, swearing they wouldn't let the other person pay or promising that they'd never go out with them again, until one of them eventually gave up and let the other pay.
All the Parts We Exile by Roza Nozari, published by Penguin Random House Canada
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On weekends, [Dad] drove me to the Tim Hortons down the street from the Food Fair. I had to grab three racks of doughnuts and drive them over to our own store, where we put them on the shelves in the bakery and sold them for 14 cents more than the Tim Hortons sticker price.
I got along well with my boss, the head baker, because for a while he saw me as something I was not: the peacock version of myself as I strutted around in front of other men to try and show them that I might be counted in their number. A survival tactic. But when he made comments about women to me, I could never follow his logic or play his game and eventually he came to realize I wasn't like him.
One morning while proofing bread before the store opened, he asked me if I was some kind of fag, a word spit with malice and bitterness. I protested half-heartedly. I liked women, after all, but I also understood myself as a body constrained by a gender I did not connect with. He laughed and pointed out my flaws and failures. There was no way a little thing like me could ever satisfy a woman. I was close to being one myself, he said. Weak and timid and easily broken.
Then his wife called to chat and he belittled her in cowardly ways and I finally saw him as a sad and broken machine playing at some former glory he only ever imagined was real. He loved the worst music, The Kiss, which is always and internally now a red flag. Any song that came on the radio was never as good as Kiss.
I've always known that men who are a little too into Kiss are often a little too obsessed with their perception of women and other men. Tend to be a type to spit words like fag at people they see as other than themselves.
The Dad Rock that Made Me a Woman by Niko Stratis, published by University of Texas Press
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Hurtling through the pale darkness towards Hinton, on an almost-deserted highway, I was already planning what not to tell my father. The truth was, I'd spent much of the past few years planning what not to tell him. My lack of interest in engineering, for example. My increasing disinterest in religion. My longing to escape from what felt like a narrow and judgmental world where ritual wasn't so much a way to celebrate life's beauty as a way to shut it out. We had been close when closeness was easy: stopping at Tim Hortons after my hockey games, or hiking and camping in the Rockies. But now, it already seemed obvious that my uncle and his friend would be more receptive to my doubts and my longing to travel a different path. Somehow the pandemic made everything in my life smaller and more hopeful at the same time, even if I didn't know exactly how that hope would play out.
Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand by Tim Bowling, published by Freehand Books
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In that beige train car
in Southern Ontario I realized
I would never be Sally Rooney,
never be very young
and very famous.
That station passed ages ago.
With a plastic ham sandwich
I watched the last
of my youth vanish
behind working-class hills.
The last of my youth
looked just like another Tim Hortons,
which serves burgers now,
as well as the same people
it has always served,
my father and me.
(from: The Power of Love)
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One summer, my father and I ate our way
through dozens of boxes of popsicles
so that he could construct a catapult
for a town competition. Our mouths went blue,
orange, purple, red with his hunger to win.
He loved that brief epoch when you could peel
the plastic out of bottle caps and win something
instantly. Packing our pantry with flats of pop
he didn't like, he often had Better Luck
Next Time. On holidays, he booked hotels
attached to casinos, disappeared for so long
after dinner I fell asleep with the TV.
When I woke up, he'd be on the second bed
watching Sportsnet. He rolled up the rims,
filled out entry forms at grocery stores
for everyone in the family. A magician
at hockey games--from his pockets he pulled
endless handkerchiefs of fifty-fifty tickets.
(from: Winning)
Midway: Poems by Kayla Czaga, published by House of Anansi
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