Tim’s is not our home-and-native brand
This week we learned that Tim Hortons is set to expand into China, a country with an apparently budding coffee culture, where the chain will open more than 1,500 stores over the next 10 years.
This news is likely to please Canadian Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan, a man who appears to enjoy visiting the coffee restaurant in exotic locales. Sajjan, who is currently touring Latvia with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on official business, posted a photo to his Twitter page this week in which he appears standing inside a Latvian Tim Hortons, smiling beside Latvian Minister of Defence Raimonds Bergmanis. Bergmanis is holding a Tim’s coffee cup in one hand. His other arm is around Sajjan. The Canadian defence minister captioned the photo like this: “Few things are more Canadian than sharing a cup of Tim Hortons coffee with friends.”
Correction: Few things are more annoying to Canadians than citing Tim Hortons coffee as a defining symbol of our national identity. Many were quick to counter Sajjan’s tweet with salty remarks online. Some objected to Sajjan’s cheerleading for the chain on practical grounds. “I hate timmies coffee it tastes bitter it causes heart burn,” tweeted Meaghan Lenning. (She prefers McDonald’s for a “smooth taste” and better “consistency.”) Others objected to the photo on moral grounds. “Exactly how much is Tim Hortons paying you for your endorsement?” tweeted Charlie Plante. “Personally I find it utterly ridiculous to have someone in a government office to be endorsing one private company over another. Mostly I find it condescending that you feel the need to tell me what Canadiana is.”
Poor Minister Sajjan. The guy probably thought a Timmies photo op was a safe bet. Who doesn’t like Sour Cream Glazed? But a box of Timbits is a fraught thing these days. For starters, despite all those donation boxes at the cash register, Tim Hortons doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being a particularly charitable employer. This is thanks to the recent slashing of employee benefits at two Ontario Tim’s franchises owned by the children of one of the brand’s founders. And despite its unshakable status as the Official Brand of Canada (and the fact that its name belonged to a Canadian hockey legend) Tim Hortons isn’t even all that Canadian anymore. Yes, its headquarters are in Oakville, but the chain was bought out by Burger King in 2014, a subsidiary majority owned by Brazilian Investment firm 3G Capital.
And yet, even if Tim’s were the most generous, authentically Canadian brand in the world — even if the company was co-owned by Margaret Atwood and Don Cherry — we would still balk at the idea that a fast food coffee chain defines us. This is because we tend to balk at the idea that anything defines us, from Molson Beer, to civility, to hockey, to the Tragically Hip. Frontman Gord Downie’s tragic death from cancer brought a lot of people together, but it also drove them apart. Remember the mediamanufactured assertion — and the backlash it spawned — that the Hip is “Canada’s official band”?
In the United States, an enormous country with a gazillion derivative chains, politicians may invoke broad themes such as burgers, milkshakes and apple pie to sell nationalism. But here in Canada, probably because we are smaller and more insecure, we get weirdly specific about what makes us, us. Which is why our leaders invoke not hot chocolate and hockey to show their pride — but Tim Hortons.
It’s also why they pretend that the only songs they’ve ever listened to are those that appear on the latest official soundtrack from the Juno Awards. It’s time someone in their ranks let them know that it is OK to consume media and beverages from outside the country. It won’t kill them. And it may even help them convince the voting public that they are human after all.