Tim Hortons and the Canadian Cultural Imagination: Why is it so Hard to Communicate Canadian Identity?
Stephanie Thompson, 20 February 2020
If you walk down Sparks Street in Ottawa right now, you’ll see the usual sights of Winterlude – installations from local artists, a man showing children how to pour maple syrup over snow to create a lollipop, and plenty of ice sculptures. Among the sculptures of a Woolly Mammoth, a ballerina, and multiple ice couches, there’s a large ice sculpture of a Tim Hortons coffee cup. Yes, I’m aware that Winterlude is sponsored by Tim Hortons this year, but the particular love for Tim Hortons many Canadians hold in their hearts has always eluded and fascinated me. Tim Hortons has become a piece of Canadiana and of Canadian identity both through aggressive marketing and ubiquity, and because of the difficulty Canadians have expressing exactly what ‘Canadian identity’ is to them.
The Tim Hortons’ ‘True Stories’ marketing campaign in the 1990s is probably the most famous Tim Hortons marketing – it featured fictionalized stories of ordinary Canadians recounting how important Tim Hortons is in their everyday lives. The campaign cemented the brand as a cornerstone of our understanding of the fabric of Canadian life – that the ritual of going to Tim Hortons was more about partaking in a eucharist of Canadiana than actually enjoying your Double Double with a side of Chili & Cheese Potato Wedges (yes, that’s a real menu item at a real Tim Hortons.) This marketing took place when Baby Boomers were raising young children – schlepping us Millennials to hockey practice and dance competitions offered a great deal of opportunity to associate daily life with a stop at Tim Hortons for a dose of caffeine and a 20 pack of Timbits for the kids. Perhaps this is part of why the love of Tim Hortons is more salient in older generations, and younger Canadians see the coffee chain as a piece of Canadian culture that is stalwart, but deeply uncool. CBC/Angus Reid polls show Millennials and Gen Z are less traditionally patriotic than older generations, for a wide variety of interconnected reasons, and are more inclined to engage in conversation about Canadian identity that is more critical of our country’s failings than celebratory of its greatness. As time passes, generations shift, and we still struggle to articulate what exactly we mean by ‘Canadian’ aside from just where one was born or lives – why is it so hard to communicate Canadian identity?
In asking people to articulate what exactly the national character and identity of Canada is, many struggle to express a meaningful identity beyond a few ‘greatest hits’ that people consistently repeat. We’re polite. We’re nice. We’re multicultural. We’re peacekeepers. We are a country full of nature’s majesty. We’re not like those rude, uncouth Americans. And we love hockey and Tim Hortons.
But do any of these things really define us? Are we actually nice, or are we simply trying to perform inoffensiveness? Are we actually multicultural, or do we hide our racism beneath a veneer of tolerance? Are we actually a peace-loving nation if we sell military equipment to brutal dictatorships who murder journalists? Do we really love the majesty of nature beyond drinking beer on the cottage dock when we force pipelines through ancestral Indigenous lands, polluting and poisoning them?
I am far from the first person to contemplate Canada’s shell of a national identity. Marshall McLuhan famously stated that “Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.” Justin Trudeau himself also stated that there is “no core identity” to Canada and that Canada is the world’s “first postnational state.” This is a deeply troubled statement, as Trudeau and many Canadians do argue that there is an essential Canadian character – politeness, niceness, multiculturalism, and the like. This conceptual framework is similar to how we think about whiteness in North America and in other places around the world. Often, individuals insist that whiteness as a cultural category does not exist, that there is no shared history of whiteness, and that the Western world is ‘post-racial.’ But, of course, whiteness does exist, most people can articulate what they mean by a ‘white person,’ and whiteness actively does harm to those not included in its boundaries. So, Canadianness – like whiteness – is formless and shapeless, both intangible and casually easy to identify, lacking a cogent history and meaning and yet deeply historical and meaningful, able to fill the role that we need it to in any given moment and disavow it when it suits us. We can be proud of being Canadian without reckoning with the harm that Canada does to its citizens, the global community, and the environment. Commodities, like a Double Double, are easier to consume and assimilate into our personal and national identities by aligning ourselves with what Tim Hortons’ marketing messages would like us to believe about ourselves. We’re unfussy and unglamourous, and Canadian identity is democratic and available to all for the low, low price of $2.25 (plus HST.)
So then it’s Tim Hortons that defines us – a wholly mediocre restaurant, owned by foreign interests, staunchly unfriendly with signs warning of a ‘20 minute time limit’ everywhere, more a ritual to partake in and then talk about how great it is with others than something enjoyable on its own. If that’s not Canadian, what is?
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