CNE visits made sweeter by Tiny Tom
Mini-doughnuts are a summer staple highly anticipated every year
Thomas (Tom) Peter Brazier, better known as the man behind the Tiny Tom Donuts company that has been a staple at the CNE for decades, died Tuesday at 73.
“The amount of love we’ve been given in the past 48 hours is overwhelming,” says his son Derek Brazier, 48, who now runs the business with his wife, Melanie. “Everyone was proud to say they worked for him.”
Tom started working in the doughnut business at the age of 12 when his father, Ron, and uncle Sid Brazier started selling regular-sized doughnuts at the CNE from the 1940s to the 1980s. Back then, the stall was called Margaret’s Donuts, named after Tom’s aunt.
According to company history, during the 1959 CNE, Ron saw a food vendor from New York at the food building sell mini-doughnuts that were made on premises with the now-famous mini doughnutmaking machine. When the fair was over that year, Ron bought all the doughnut-making equipment from that vendor and thus, Tiny Tom Donuts made its debut at the1960 CNE. In 1994, Tiny Tom Donuts opened at Canada’s Wonderland. A year-round storefront then opened in Markham in 2009. The store is currently closed due to COVID-19, but Derek says they plan on reopening for takeout soon. The Tiny Tom food truck could also be seen roaming around the city and at food festivals in recent years.
Still, it’s the annual CNE that most associate Tiny Tom Donuts with: the sight and aroma of freshly fried doughnut holes coming off the conveyor belt and tossed with flavours such as cinnamon sugar, chocolate, apple-cinnamon and plain icing sugar.
“It was called Tiny Tom, but Tom had such a big personality,” says Brian Ashton, former Scarborough councillor and president of the CNE from 2012 to 2016. “The doughnuts are part of the CNE brand and are as iconic as the grandstand, so he was part of our family. The thing that always made me laugh is that he created an entire life out of something as simple as the hole of a doughnut. It’s extraordinary.”
Derek spent his teenage years working for his father at the CNE, where his childhood memories were formed. “There was a moment when I was 11 or 12 and we had a particularly good day so dad gave me $50 to go have some fun,” he says. “The beauty is that no one ever charged me for anything because he was so loved there.”
The business stayed within the family over the decades, with Tom taking over the business in the mid-’70s before Derek started working there fulltime 20 years ago. Tom retired in the last decade but still occasionally worked at the CNE booths.
People who reached a 10-year milestone working for the company would receive a golden doughnut necklace to mark the occasion. Derek says they’ve given out 30 to 40 of them over the years.
As for why despite its cult following the Tiny Tom Donut brand never really expanded beyond summertime festivals, Derek says they have a limited number of doughnut-making machines that aren’t in production anymore. His father purchased all the machines in Minnesota in1985 when the company that made them was going out of business.
“They’re all in use during the summer so even if we wanted to franchise, we couldn’t give them a machine,” Derek says. “If a doughnut machine goes down, I’m fixing them because they don’t make them anymore.”
But scarcity is part of the allure of Tiny Tom Donuts, and anyway, they are much tastier when eaten against a backdrop of screams and flickering lights from the midway.
“You can’t get them everywhere. It’s something you wait for every year, something you anticipate,” Tom told the Star in 2009 when Tiny Tom Donuts was celebrating its 50th year at the CNE. “We figure if we keep it like that and don’t over-expose the product, we could be good for another 50 years.”