May 17, 2024 • 10 mins
On this day in 1964, the first Tim Horton Donuts shop opened in Hamilton, Ontario.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gabe Lucier and in this episode, we're celebrating the
birth of a quintessential Canadian brand, one that's still baking
(00:22):
and brewing after sixty years in County. The day was
May seventeenth, nineteen sixty four, the first Tim Horton Donuts
shop opened in Hamilton, Ontario. The brainchild of entrepreneur Jim
(00:44):
Sharad and the store's namesake professional hockey player Tim Horton,
the brand has gone on to become a ubiquitous part
of Canadian culture. It represents roughly seventy percent of the
pastries and coffee market in the country today, and although
tim Horton's This is now an international chain with more
than fifty six hundred locations in sixteen different countries, it
(01:06):
is and will always be a Canadian original. Miles Gilbert
tim Horton was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman who played
professionally for several teams, including a twenty season run with
the Toronto Maple Leafs in the early nineteen sixties. He
also sold cars during the off season to make some
(01:26):
extra money, and one of his customers was independent businessman
Jim Sharad. After leaving his job as manager of a
Scarborough donut plant, Sharad spent several years trying to get
his own coffee and donut shop off the ground. He
hadn't had much luck, though, so after running into Tim
Horton and buying a Pontiac from him, Sharrod tried to
(01:48):
convince the hockey star to go into the restaurant business
with him. Sharrod figured that Horton's famous name would give
him a leg up on the competition, and from the
athlete's perspective, owning a business was a lot more appealing
than working on commission. The only thing was Tim Horton
didn't want to sell donuts. He wanted to sell Hamburgers.
(02:10):
Sharad agreed to make the switch, but he also worked
out a separate deal to license Horton's name for use
at his existing donut shop. That location, known as the
Tim Horton Donut with a hyphen, became the first doughnut
store to bear the athlete's name, but the first official
Tim Horton's franchise was still a year and a half away.
(02:32):
In the spring of nineteen sixty three, Charad and Horton
formed Tim and Jim Limited and quickly opened a string
of burger and hot dog joints called Tim Horton drive Ins. Unfortunately,
burgers weren't as big a draw as Horton had hoped,
and after a year of struggling sales, the pair circled
back to donuts. By that point, Sharad had lost a
(02:56):
lot of money opening failed restaurants, so for his next
doughnut van vure, he wanted to give franchising a shot.
That way, he could sell the franchise rights, equipment and
supplies to an owner operator and then show them how
to run it in exchange for a cut of the profits.
Franchising made no difference to Tim Horton, as at the
(03:16):
time he was still just licensing his name for the
doughnut business and didn't have a stake in it like
he did for the drive ins. The franchiseee of the
first Tim Horton's location was a twenty one year old
Toronto bank clerk named Spencer Brown. His location opened on
May seventeenth, nineteen sixty four, on the site of an
(03:36):
old gas station in Hamilton, Ontario. The shop sold cups
of coffee for ten cents and doughnuts for sixty nine cents,
although at first there were only two varieties to choose from,
apple fritters and Duchies, which are square yeast donuts with
raisins and a sugary glaze. Located in Hamilton's industrial East End,
(03:58):
the first Tim Hortons was an immediate hit with the
workers at nearby steel plants, but behind the scenes, Spencer
Brown and Jim Sharad were constantly butting heads. The relationship
grew so hostile that Brown walked away from the business,
and while Sharad was able to find a new franchisee,
they didn't last long either. Around the same time, in
(04:20):
early nineteen sixty five, Tim Horton became an equal partner
in Charad's donut business, which was then incorporated as Tim
Donut Limited. Now working together, the pair found a third
franchise ee for the Hamilton store, Ron Joyce, a former
police officer turned successful dairy queen operator. Joyce proved such
(04:42):
a good fit with the company that he eventually replaced
Charad in the donut chain of command. Becoming a full
partner with Horton in nineteen sixty seven. By the end
of that year, the new partners had grown the franchise
chain to include three locations in Hamilton and a fourth
in w Waterloop. In the years ahead, Horton would take
(05:03):
an increasingly active role in the business, especially in scouting
and choosing new locations. Sadly, Horton's role in the company
wouldn't last long. On the morning of February twenty first,
nineteen seventy four, he died in a tragic car crash
at the age of forty four. One year later, Ron
Joyce paid Horton's family one million dollars for their share
(05:26):
of the company, which by then was the third largest
fast food chain in Canada. Joyce continued opening new franchises
throughout the country and made sure to keep Hockey at
the center of the company's marketing, as it still is today.
Joyce also expanded the store's menu beyond the standard coffee
and donuts. One of the most famous editions came in
(05:48):
nineteen seventy six, when the company introduced its take on
doughnut holes, which it called timbits, a play on the
word tidbit. By that point, the roughly one hundred locuts
had all adopted the uniform branding of tim Horton's rather
than tim Horton Donuts. The familiar signs became a fixture
(06:08):
of the Canadian landscape, and a trip to Timmy's became
a weekly treat or a daily ritual for coffee drinkers
and doughnut munchers all over the country. This connection was
so strong that the company and its customers began to
develop their own secret shorthand. For instance, you wouldn't find
the words double double on the official menu, but if
(06:30):
you ordered one, you'd invariably get a coffee with two
creams and two sugars. The phrase eventually became so commonplace
that it was even added to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary
in two thousand and four. While that's an impressive claim
to fame, the most interesting terminology connected to the brand
might just be the name itself. It started out as
(06:52):
tim Horton's, with a possessive apostrophe before the s. That
makes the most grammatical sense, as the name refers to
a business that was at one time owned by Tim Horton,
but starting in nineteen ninety three, the apostrophe was removed,
making the name plural rather than possessive. The company wasn't
(07:12):
rebranding itself as a gathering place for people named tim Horton,
So what prompted the change. The answer, as it turns out,
is Canadian law. Quebec's language laws in particular, passed in
nineteen seventy seven, Bill one oh one made French the
sole official language of the Quebec Province. As a result,
(07:35):
all product labels, restaurant menus, and storefront signs were required
to be written in French. That's where tim Horton's ran
into trouble, as the possessive apostrophe is a uniquely English
punctuation mark. The company was able to fly under the
radar for a while, but pro French advocates eventually began
to cry foul. This left the company with two options
(07:58):
adopt separate branding for its Quebec locations or drop the
apostrophe in all markets. And since it costs a lot
more to print two kinds of napkins, tim Horton's ditched
the possessive and has been inexplicably plural ever since. The
move proved to be the right one in the coming
years as the company expanded both to the United States
(08:20):
and to other foreign markets where the possessive apostrophe also
wouldn't have made sense. In a strange twist, the Tim
Hortons brand has since been sold not once but twice
to fast food burger chains. The first time was to
Wendy's in nineteen ninety five, and the second was to
the Brazilian firm three G Capital, the parent company of
(08:41):
Burger King, in twenty fourteen. As an American, I find
it oddly fitting that the Tim Horton name should once
again have an unexpected link to Hamburgers, but understandably, many
Canadians have mixed feelings about their home grown fast food
chain being sold to a foreign investment and firm. The
good news is that so far the company seems committed
(09:04):
to remembering where it came from. For example, the original
Tim Horton shop in Hamilton is still going strong today,
and in twenty fourteen a second floor was added to
house a museum dedicated to the history of the chain
and its founder. It features memorabilia from all six decades
of the restaurant's history, and right out front there's a
(09:26):
bronze statue of Tim Horton in full hockey gear. It's
a nice reminder that no matter who owns the brand,
it's still a coffee and doughnut chain named after a
hockey player, and that sounds pretty Canadian to me. I'm
Gabe Bluesyay, and hopefully you now know a little more
(09:48):
about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like
to keep up with the show, you can follow us
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and
if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to
send them my way by writing to This Day at
iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Cas B. Bias for producing
(10:09):
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class.
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gabe Lucier and in this episode, we're celebrating the
birth of a quintessential Canadian brand, one that's still baking
(00:22):
and brewing after sixty years in County. The day was
May seventeenth, nineteen sixty four, the first Tim Horton Donuts
shop opened in Hamilton, Ontario. The brainchild of entrepreneur Jim
(00:44):
Sharad and the store's namesake professional hockey player Tim Horton,
the brand has gone on to become a ubiquitous part
of Canadian culture. It represents roughly seventy percent of the
pastries and coffee market in the country today, and although
tim Horton's This is now an international chain with more
than fifty six hundred locations in sixteen different countries, it
(01:06):
is and will always be a Canadian original. Miles Gilbert
tim Horton was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman who played
professionally for several teams, including a twenty season run with
the Toronto Maple Leafs in the early nineteen sixties. He
also sold cars during the off season to make some
(01:26):
extra money, and one of his customers was independent businessman
Jim Sharad. After leaving his job as manager of a
Scarborough donut plant, Sharad spent several years trying to get
his own coffee and donut shop off the ground. He
hadn't had much luck, though, so after running into Tim
Horton and buying a Pontiac from him, Sharrod tried to
(01:48):
convince the hockey star to go into the restaurant business
with him. Sharrod figured that Horton's famous name would give
him a leg up on the competition, and from the
athlete's perspective, owning a business was a lot more appealing
than working on commission. The only thing was Tim Horton
didn't want to sell donuts. He wanted to sell Hamburgers.
(02:10):
Sharad agreed to make the switch, but he also worked
out a separate deal to license Horton's name for use
at his existing donut shop. That location, known as the
Tim Horton Donut with a hyphen, became the first doughnut
store to bear the athlete's name, but the first official
Tim Horton's franchise was still a year and a half away.
(02:32):
In the spring of nineteen sixty three, Charad and Horton
formed Tim and Jim Limited and quickly opened a string
of burger and hot dog joints called Tim Horton drive Ins. Unfortunately,
burgers weren't as big a draw as Horton had hoped,
and after a year of struggling sales, the pair circled
back to donuts. By that point, Sharad had lost a
(02:56):
lot of money opening failed restaurants, so for his next
doughnut van vure, he wanted to give franchising a shot.
That way, he could sell the franchise rights, equipment and
supplies to an owner operator and then show them how
to run it in exchange for a cut of the profits.
Franchising made no difference to Tim Horton, as at the
(03:16):
time he was still just licensing his name for the
doughnut business and didn't have a stake in it like
he did for the drive ins. The franchiseee of the
first Tim Horton's location was a twenty one year old
Toronto bank clerk named Spencer Brown. His location opened on
May seventeenth, nineteen sixty four, on the site of an
(03:36):
old gas station in Hamilton, Ontario. The shop sold cups
of coffee for ten cents and doughnuts for sixty nine cents,
although at first there were only two varieties to choose from,
apple fritters and Duchies, which are square yeast donuts with
raisins and a sugary glaze. Located in Hamilton's industrial East End,
(03:58):
the first Tim Hortons was an immediate hit with the
workers at nearby steel plants, but behind the scenes, Spencer
Brown and Jim Sharad were constantly butting heads. The relationship
grew so hostile that Brown walked away from the business,
and while Sharad was able to find a new franchisee,
they didn't last long either. Around the same time, in
(04:20):
early nineteen sixty five, Tim Horton became an equal partner
in Charad's donut business, which was then incorporated as Tim
Donut Limited. Now working together, the pair found a third
franchise ee for the Hamilton store, Ron Joyce, a former
police officer turned successful dairy queen operator. Joyce proved such
(04:42):
a good fit with the company that he eventually replaced
Charad in the donut chain of command. Becoming a full
partner with Horton in nineteen sixty seven. By the end
of that year, the new partners had grown the franchise
chain to include three locations in Hamilton and a fourth
in w Waterloop. In the years ahead, Horton would take
(05:03):
an increasingly active role in the business, especially in scouting
and choosing new locations. Sadly, Horton's role in the company
wouldn't last long. On the morning of February twenty first,
nineteen seventy four, he died in a tragic car crash
at the age of forty four. One year later, Ron
Joyce paid Horton's family one million dollars for their share
(05:26):
of the company, which by then was the third largest
fast food chain in Canada. Joyce continued opening new franchises
throughout the country and made sure to keep Hockey at
the center of the company's marketing, as it still is today.
Joyce also expanded the store's menu beyond the standard coffee
and donuts. One of the most famous editions came in
(05:48):
nineteen seventy six, when the company introduced its take on
doughnut holes, which it called timbits, a play on the
word tidbit. By that point, the roughly one hundred locuts
had all adopted the uniform branding of tim Horton's rather
than tim Horton Donuts. The familiar signs became a fixture
(06:08):
of the Canadian landscape, and a trip to Timmy's became
a weekly treat or a daily ritual for coffee drinkers
and doughnut munchers all over the country. This connection was
so strong that the company and its customers began to
develop their own secret shorthand. For instance, you wouldn't find
the words double double on the official menu, but if
(06:30):
you ordered one, you'd invariably get a coffee with two
creams and two sugars. The phrase eventually became so commonplace
that it was even added to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary
in two thousand and four. While that's an impressive claim
to fame, the most interesting terminology connected to the brand
might just be the name itself. It started out as
(06:52):
tim Horton's, with a possessive apostrophe before the s. That
makes the most grammatical sense, as the name refers to
a business that was at one time owned by Tim Horton,
but starting in nineteen ninety three, the apostrophe was removed,
making the name plural rather than possessive. The company wasn't
(07:12):
rebranding itself as a gathering place for people named tim Horton,
So what prompted the change. The answer, as it turns out,
is Canadian law. Quebec's language laws in particular, passed in
nineteen seventy seven, Bill one oh one made French the
sole official language of the Quebec Province. As a result,
(07:35):
all product labels, restaurant menus, and storefront signs were required
to be written in French. That's where tim Horton's ran
into trouble, as the possessive apostrophe is a uniquely English
punctuation mark. The company was able to fly under the
radar for a while, but pro French advocates eventually began
to cry foul. This left the company with two options
(07:58):
adopt separate branding for its Quebec locations or drop the
apostrophe in all markets. And since it costs a lot
more to print two kinds of napkins, tim Horton's ditched
the possessive and has been inexplicably plural ever since. The
move proved to be the right one in the coming
years as the company expanded both to the United States
(08:20):
and to other foreign markets where the possessive apostrophe also
wouldn't have made sense. In a strange twist, the Tim
Hortons brand has since been sold not once but twice
to fast food burger chains. The first time was to
Wendy's in nineteen ninety five, and the second was to
the Brazilian firm three G Capital, the parent company of
(08:41):
Burger King, in twenty fourteen. As an American, I find
it oddly fitting that the Tim Horton name should once
again have an unexpected link to Hamburgers, but understandably, many
Canadians have mixed feelings about their home grown fast food
chain being sold to a foreign investment and firm. The
good news is that so far the company seems committed
(09:04):
to remembering where it came from. For example, the original
Tim Horton shop in Hamilton is still going strong today,
and in twenty fourteen a second floor was added to
house a museum dedicated to the history of the chain
and its founder. It features memorabilia from all six decades
of the restaurant's history, and right out front there's a
(09:26):
bronze statue of Tim Horton in full hockey gear. It's
a nice reminder that no matter who owns the brand,
it's still a coffee and doughnut chain named after a
hockey player, and that sounds pretty Canadian to me. I'm
Gabe Bluesyay, and hopefully you now know a little more
(09:48):
about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like
to keep up with the show, you can follow us
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and
if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to
send them my way by writing to This Day at
iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Cas B. Bias for producing
(10:09):
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class.
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