Tim Hortons and the Branding of National Identity

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2008 2: 369Cultural SociologyPatricia Cormack

`True Stories' of Canada : Tim Hortons and the Branding of National Identity

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‘True Stories’ of Canada:Tim Hortons and the Branding ofNational Identity

�� Patricia CormackSt. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the connection between brands, national identity and thesocial and historic practices of the Canadian nation-state. Specifically, it examinesthe long-running ‘True Stories’ ad campaign of Tim Hortons coffee shops, Canada’smost successful quick-service restaurant chain. These ads insert Tim Hortons intocustomers’ stories about travel, endurance and adventure, and authorize TimHortons itself as both the site and source of Canada’s self-image. This authorizationoccurs in three ways: 1) by taking advantage of a space generated by overt, statist,bureaucratic management of Canadian identity and culture, 2) by locating nationalidentity within mundane, sensual consumptive desire, and 3) by capitalizing on theambiguities of articulating Canadian national culture, especially within the contextof an officially multi-cultural project.

KEY WORDS

branding / brands / Canada / coffee / consumerism / consumption nation / nationalidentity / nationalism

Introduction

By every measure, Tim Hortons is a Canadian success story. Tim Hortonsis Canada’s largest quick-service restaurant chain, controlling 22% ofthis sector. It has over 2800 coffee shops nationwide and revenues of

over $5 million a day. (Its two biggest competitors are American-based

369

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BSA Publications Ltd®Volume 2(3): 369–384

[DOI: 10.1177/1749975508095617]SAGE Publications

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Starbucks with approximately 500 shops, and Canadian-owned Second Cupwith approximately 360.) For three consecutive years, it was deemed Canada’sbest managed brand by Canadian consumers (Gray, 2004, 2005, 2006). TimHortons’ longstanding slogan – ‘Always Fresh. Always There.’ – suggests thatTim Hortons has, since its inception in 1964, become famous for its ‘alwaysfresh’ coffee and baked goods. ‘Always there’ also resonates with its claim to bean integral, indispensable, and dependable part of ordinary Canadian life.1

In this article I will examine how Tim Hortons inserts itself into theCanadian national identity as both ‘always fresh’ and ‘always there’. I willargue that the Tim Hortons brand does far more than recycle well-worn,clichéd ideas of Canadianness in an effort to appeal to the Canadian consumer.Rather, Tim Hortons constantly works to authorize and legitimate itself as botha site and source of Canada’s self-image by exploiting the ambiguities and con-tradictions within the project of Canadian identity.2 These ambiguities and con-tradictions involve the role of the state and the everyday in the articulation ofCanadian identity. As part of this discussion I will provide a narrative analysisof the decade-long ‘True Stories’ campaign of advertisements.

If it seems extreme to suggest that a coffee chain could become a site andsource of Canadian identity, note the following observations about the culturallandscape occupied by Tim Hortons. First, Tim Hortons’ 40th anniversarycampaign was brought to a close at the end of 2004 with the sale of ‘com-memorative 40th anniversary mugs’ promoted as Christmas presents. Thesemugs ‘commemorated’ nothing more (or less) than 40 years of the existence ofTim Hortons coffee shops, and read ‘Thank you for 40 years of friendship.Always fresh. Always there. Since 1964.’ That Tim Hortons could both inter-pellate its customer as ‘friend’ and imagine that the commemoration of itselfwould be a meaningful and attractive gift for Canadians to exchange atChristmas attests to its own confidence as an integral part of Canadian ritualand memory.

Or take, for example, the commission granted to Tim Hortons to be theexclusive distributor of the Royal Canadian Mint’s 2004 Remembrance Day25-cent poppy coin. At that time, the Royal Canadian Mint website explainedthat Tim Hortons was chosen as ‘exclusive distribution partner’ because it is ‘adistinctive Canadian enterprise’. It also explained that the Royal CanadianLegion had approved this distribution plan. That a government mint, thenational veterans’ association, and a commercial enterprise would become‘partners’ of war commemoration speaks to the power, legitimacy, and appar-ent naturalness of locating collective identity at Tim Hortons. In a similar vein,Tim Hortons announced in 2006 that it would be opening an outlet inAfghanistan to serve Canadian troops. The Chief of the Defence Staff wasquoted on the Tim Hortons website saying ‘Opening a Tim Hortons to serveour troops in Afghanistan strengthens an already superb relationship betweentwo great Canadian institutions.’ Later that year, when US Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice visited Canada, she was taken to a Tim Hortons by Foreign

370 Cultural Sociology Volume 2 � Number 3 � November 2008



Minister, Peter MacKay, where the international press eagerly documentedthe two drinking Tim’s coffee.

And finally, as many Canadians know, Tim Hortons’ own origin and his-tory are steeped in themes that lend nationalistic meaning to the coffee chain.The first Tim Hortons was opened in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario, by rough-and-tumble Canadian National Hockey League (NHL) defenceman, MilesGilbert (Tim) Horton – who ‘had all the trappings of the classic myth of whiteCanadian manhood’ (Penfold, 2002: 48) – along with his friend Roy Joyce, anex-police officer. In 1974, after losing a game in Toronto, Horton was drivinghis sports car back to Buffalo at high speed, and was killed in a violent single-vehicle crash. As will be discussed, Tim’s image was removed from shop interi-ors and advertising after his death, but Tim Hortons actively and conspicuouslysupports sports, especially ice-related sports like hockey and curling. This sup-port extends from running camps for thousands of under-privileged children,financing local children’s sports (‘Timbits’ hockey, baseball), renting expensiveice-time at arenas for free holiday family skating, to sponsoring CanadianOlympic athletes and teams. One television ad called ‘Change the Rules’ eventakes responsibility for rehabilitating hockey culture itself by socializing a newgeneration of players away from violence, sexism, and competitiveness.Another recent ad shows a young NHL star in his Timbits uniform from adecade earlier. At this point in Canadian history it is almost impossible for aCanadian to become a hockey star – or even participate in mainstream chil-dren’s sports – without going through the Timbits system.

Taken together, these examples indicate a keen sense on the part of TimHortons’ advertisers and executives that consumers can find collective meaningin such an unlikely place as a coffee chain. This confidence is most elegantlycaptured in the print advertisement which juxtaposes the iconic steaming-black-Tim-Hortons-coffee-in-brown-paper-cup with a line from the Canadiannational anthem. It reads simply: ‘True Patriot Love’. Moreover, this claim onnational identity is buttressed by journalistic writing, where Tim Hortons isincessantly referred to as an ‘icon’ of all things Canadian. In fact, it is often usedas a narrative device to set up the context for a story to be told. For example,a newspaper story in the Chronicle Herald explained incredulously that fouryoung Cree women visiting Nova Scotia were from such a remote area ofCanada that they had not even seen a Tim Hortons (Delaney, 2005). Within thestory, their ritualistic tasting of the coffee initiated them into the community,converting them from strangers to friends. In another set of articles from thissame period, a notorious woman implicated in Canadian sex-murders wasreleased from prison and commented to reporters that the first thing she wantedto do with her new-found freedom was to go to Tim Hortons for an iced-cof-fee. Again, this became headline news (Mahoney, 2005) because Canadiansseemed to want to protect their icon from desecration at the hands of such aperson. Somehow, she should be prevented from enjoying this pleasure alongwith other Canadians.

371‘True Stories’ of Canada Cormack



Evidently, Tim Hortons is able to appropriate seemingly any and all ideasand images of Canada. It is even able to appropriate the grounds of collectivenarrative and membership, commemoration, ritual, history, heroism, foreigndiplomacy, and sport. This raises the pertinent question: what consumptive andimaginative nationalist desire is Tim Hortons serving so well? If Canadians areseeking to consume some version of themselves in order to bring themselvesinto existence as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983), what version ofCanada is ‘served up’ and why is it so successful? As suggested, I will argue thatTim Hortons is able to benefit from the Canadian search for identity by:

1) taking advantage of a space generated by overt, statist, bureaucratic man-agement of Canadian identity and culture,

2) locating national identity within mundane, sensual consumptive desire, and3) capitalizing on the ambiguities of articulating Canadian national culture,

especially within the context of an officially multi-cultural project.

Coffee and Branded National Identity

When the history of coffee consumption is considered broadly, it appears to beone of the most over-determined and contested sites of meaning within con-sumer culture. As unique types of public space, early coffee houses and cafes arecredited with having nurtured the intellectual, artistic, and political spirit ofinnovation that characterized the modern city, and are even linked to the riseof the modern British banking system, that is, capitalism itself, in 17th and 18thcentury London (Laurier and Philo, 2004). Indeed, the coffee house or cafe isalso conceptually linked to the rise of the flâneur, Baudelaire’s supreme mod-ern character who treats the urban scene as something to observe, or consume,in itself (Benjamin, 1973).

Today, public coffee consumption is still laden with contested meaningsand both personal and political posturing. Roseberry (1996) even suggests thatcoffee may be the commodity par excellence of postmodern capitalism.Alongside the traditional mass-produced coffees, the ‘specialty’ coffee industrynow offers exotic tastes and aromas from all over the world in what he calls an‘emporium of styles’ (1996: 771). The speciality coffee drinker demonstratesthe ‘stylish’ consumption of worldliness and cosmopolitanism, and, ultimately,demonstrates her or his own social standing and worthiness. But as Eliot (2002)notes, the signifiers of exotic places and cultures found in the large specialitychains need not be literally true – they are not labels that tell us where the prod-uct is from or how it was produced; they are instead signifiers of style. In herstudy of Starbucks packaging and marketing, Eliot argues that at first glanceStarbucks appears to reveal its products’ history and politics through theplethora of geographic references found in the names of the coffee flavours,blends, and roasts. But, according to Eliot, this ‘caffeinated cartography’ (2002:111) involves ‘playing with the map’ (2002: 113) to give the consumer the sense




of cosmopolitan sophistication without revealing the commodity form in itsreality. As proof of this position, Eliot notes that Starbucks’ coffees are groupedunder exotic geographic flavour categories, rather than places of origin. In theend, Eliot’s Starbucks consumer is only a pseudo-sophisticate consumingnotions of self-importance along with a suspect racialized and sexualized ‘other’subsumed in the coffee experience.

Even the coffee consumer who acts blatantly against the large chains likeStarbucks is still doing the work of personal identity and consumer politics inand around coffee drinking. As a consumer, the fair trade coffee drinker, forexample, ‘conspicuously’ (Veblen, 1953) displays his or her political and socialconsciousness and action in the practice of drinking coffee, and implicitly invitesothers to do the same. In their study of American anti-Starbucks coffee drinkers,Thompson and Zeynep (2004) grouped their interviewees into two categories:the ‘café flâneur’ and the ‘oppositional localist’. The former opposed Starbuckson mostly aesthetic and apolitical grounds. As one such ‘café flâneur’ put it,Starbucks ‘has nothing special or charming about it’ (Thompson and Zeynep,2004: 636), that is to say, it is too mainstream and ordinary. The ‘oppositionallocalists’, in contrast, were more political in their opposition to Starbucks, sup-porting small community coffee businesses as a matter of principle (Thompsonand Zeynep, 2004: 637). Thompson and Zeynep note that in both cases, how-ever, these anti-Starbucks coffee consumers were generating personal identitiesand meaningful autobiographical narratives through their consuming practices.

Clearly, coffee drinking is now an important part of our everyday attemptsto make sense of ourselves and our worlds. But at first glance it seems thatdrinking coffee has no connection with national identity, except for nationsassociated with the growth, export and preparation of coffee. As discussed, cof-fee shops encourage an individuated, urban identity or a trans-national geo-political identity, but little in between these extremes. Certainly, as a majorworld commodity, the geo-politics of the coffee trade has generated nationalistsentiments and actions involving cartels, invasions, nationalization of coffeecrops, etc. Of course, as discussed, coffee is also often marketed by way of var-ious national signifiers designed to evoke ideas of quality, particular flavours,even the exotic. For some nations, coffee preparation and consumption can beconsidered part of the national cuisine. But in Canada? How could TimHortons generate a home-grown version of national identity around a coffeebrand when Canadians have little connection with the history and developmentof coffee other than as (historically late, yet enthusiastic) consumers of it?

Canadian marketing expert James Barnes (2003) has studied how, in thewelter of competing brands, some brands and companies come to mean moreto their customers than others. He argues that a successful brand holds a spe-cial place in the everyday life of a customer. Ultimately, argues Barnes, ‘thebrand or company “borrows” or trades on the meaning in the relationships thatcustomers have with others’ (Barnes, 2003: 184). The brand is dependent upona notion of reciprocity, respect, and sharing: ‘those with whom we share acommon history, values, interests, culture and beliefs’ (Barnes, 2003: 182).




Recent formulations of the social practice of branding emphasize the agency ofconsumers who create their own ‘brand communities’ (Muniz and O’Guinn,2001) and use brands to ‘produce a common social world’ (Arvidsson, 2005).As will be shown, in the context of Tim Hortons’ advertising, it is essential toexamine precisely how this brand trades on shared values, the everyday, andconsumer agency.

Holt (2006) criticizes much of the academic work on brands and brandingas either too narrowly focused on the internal semiotic and narrative workingsof advertisements or making broad and obvious observations about the politi-cal and social context that brands exploit. The following discussion on his callfor a ‘hermeneutic’ approach to the study of brands, especially the powerful‘iconic’ brands, by placing them in their cultural, social and political context. Inhis study of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, Holt argues that iconic brands both piggy-back on and revise national ideologies, in this case ideologies of Americanness.While Holt is surely right to assume that brands piggyback on national identityin a self-consciously republican state like the USA, confident as it is of its ownmanifest destiny, his recommendation requires modification in the context ofthe branding of Canadian identity. As I will demonstrate below, in theCanadian context – in which national identity is perennially formulated as incrisis and suspension – it is more appropriate to study how iconic brands arecalled on to authorize, and to a lesser extent piggyback on, much of the histor-ical, cultural and social context on which they depend. A close look at the TimHortons ‘True Stories’ campaign will demonstrate this strategy.

‘True Stories’

In stark contrast to Starbucks and other popular coffee chains in Canada, TimHortons is the humble, Plain Jane of the coffee scene. Its iconic cup of coffee isalways shown in a plain brown take-out or beige ceramic cup without adulter-ation of any kind (milk, cream, foam, toppings). Similarly, Tim Hortons exte-riors have been since their inception dark brown, with yellow and brownsignage. Interiors are dominated by unfashionable beiges, browns, plastic plantsand hard plastic and metal tables. Servers have always worn beige and brownuniforms. Although cinnamon sticks and coffee mills accompany the donuts inhuge photos, there are no linguistic or visual references to the southern localesor exotic cultures associated with coffee production and consumption. In short,there is little to intimidate the customer, as Tim Hortons, even when located inthe heart of large cities, lacks any urban pretension, or what Simmel classicallydescribed as ‘the specifically metropolitan extravagances of mannerism, caprice,and preciousness’ (Simmel, 1950: 421).

Early Tim Hortons advertising traded on the fame of its co-founder. Imagesof Tim Horton graced the interior of shops, even packaging. In the mid-1960sthe take-out donut bag was illustrated with a cartoon image of Tim in a hockeyuniform shooting donut pucks toward the viewer. After his death in 1974, his




widow (who inherited half of the business) insisted that images of Tim beremoved from all shops and advertising. According to former Tim Hortonsmarketing director Ron Buist, by the early 1980s the ‘hockey mystique’ sur-rounding Horton’s celebrity seemed to be fading quickly, with some new fran-chise operators even being mistaken for the dead hero and addressed as ‘Tim’(Buist, 2003: 58). Nevertheless, the emphasis on ruggedness, sport, andendurance has been maintained as a general theme. Recently, the Tim Hortonbiography at the company website has been revised to emphasize his hockeycareer once again and his image is re-appearing in shops, along with ‘Timfact’quizzes (possibly because his widow is now dead).

In the mid-1990s, under Buist’s stewardship, Enterprise Advertising ofToronto began their ‘True Stories’ television advertisements, which are stillbeing made. These stories are generated by Tim Hortons customers and storeowners and feature these customers. The first ‘True Story’ was about a petitewoman in her late 80s, ‘Lillian’, whose story was simply that she walked up asteep hill each day in the rural town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, to have hercup of Tim Hortons coffee. According to Buist, one essential part of these com-mercials is that ‘the lead character would be a genuine customer, not an actor’(Buist, 2003: 141). These campaigns are ‘genuine’ in the sense that their originand narrative are attributed to the customers themselves. Subsequent ‘TrueStories’ have involved a New Brunswick dog fetching its owner a Tim Hortonscoffee each morning; Canadian fiddler, Natalie MacMaster, and her crew stop-ping at Tim Hortons on their cross-country tours; a train engineer halting histrain each day and running into a Tim Hortons for a take-out coffee; and aseries of people associated with ruggedness and cold temperatures: ice-surfacemakers, Zamboni (ice-cleaning machine) drivers, skaters, hockey and figure-skating coaches, fishers and explorers. In 1998, the ‘True Story’ entitled Kuwaitdeveloped the ongoing theme of Canadian soldiers being sent Tim Hortons cof-fee while stationed abroad.

Not all ‘True Stories’ are developed into full-blown television ads, butinstead are reproduced in the flyer Tim’s Times distributed at Tim Hortons out-lets. Some of these stories feature postcard mock-ups that include a photo of theauthor. One such postcard is addressed from a soldier serving in Afghanistan;another is from a retired navy lieutenant with the Franklin Search Expedition.The latter is pictured out-of-doors, wearing a parka and holding a tin of TimHortons coffee. The postcard reads: ‘I drink Tim Hortons coffee, so when Itraveled North on an exciting shipwreck expedition, packing Tim Hortons cof-fee with me was essential’ (Tim’s Times, 2005). As will be discussed, the com-mon themes that connect these ‘True Stories’ are endurance, distance, ritual,and even quest. Beginning from Lillian, the stories involve rugged people, whooften endure hardship (self-imposed or otherwise) and find psychological com-fort in their rituals involving Tim Hortons.

According to Goldman and Papson (1995), advertising and marketing nowtake place in a cultural landscape of ‘accelerated meaning’ where commoditysigns vie for the attention of audiences through notions like style, re-invention,




disruption: ‘a frenzy of images thrown at us at ever-accelerating speeds until thespeed itself is the primary signifier’(Goldman and Papson, 1995: 85). This leadsone to ask, what is ‘accelerated’ about a very old woman walking up a hill fora cup of coffee? In this ad Lillian walks slowly, with her purse and cane, up asteep hill in order to enjoy her Tim Hortons coffee. ‘Nothing’ happens in thisad. In stark contrast to the trope of the aged woman so often used in advertise-ments, Lillian does not ‘magically’ (Williams, 1980) become younger as sheclimbs the hill, she does not single-handedly beat up a gang of young men, nordoes she break into a run. Since ‘nothing’ happens, why is it interesting? Whydoes it become the model for all subsequent ads in this campaign? The only wayto consume this ad is to think about the woman’s character and motivations.That is, we are invited to ask: ‘What kind of person is Lillian?’ As it would beeasier to stay home, or call a taxi, clearly it is part of Lillian’s enjoyment to takeher daily walk. As part of a truly ascetic mentality, the endurance, distance andhardship are part of the enjoyment. Sitting down with a hot coffee is Lillian’sreward for getting up the hill, but this commodity does not overshadow thestory. The story is about Lillian, and the coffee is fitted into her life, and sup-ports her tenacity and endurance.

In his book on contemporary Canadian culture Keohane (1997: 35) helpsmake sense of this theme of endurance, noting:

Throughout Canadian popular culture there are discourses that celebrate an enjoy-ment of endurance ... Take, for example, our shared enjoyment of enduringCanadian winter. What do we mean by the casual greeting ‘Cold enough for you,eh?’ ... The friendliness of the remark depends on the interlocutors sharing the valueof tolerance, of presuming the equivalence enjoyment/endurance. What aboutendurance recreation – skating, cross-country skiing, canoeing, camping, trekking?The heroic endurance/enjoyment of the voyageurs is recreated in the contemporarypractice of endurance driving.

No example could better support Keohane’s thesis about the Canadianidentity than the following ‘True Story’ of Jean and Doug Thornton (fromTim’s Times, 17 May 2004):

We left Grande Prairie, Alberta on September 22, 2001 on a motor trip acrossCanada – a dream of a lifetime for us. Tim Hortons coffee became an integral partof our exciting trip. We watched for your signs along every highway and asked atshops, ‘Where is the next Tim Hortons?’ From Grande Prairie, Alberta to St. John’s,Newfoundland we enjoyed that fresh flavoured coffee and other treats. When it wasrainy we warmed up at “Tim’s”. When we were lost we studied our maps at“Tim’s” and after the fun, excitement and sometimes stress of all these new experi-ences we would relax with a cup of “Tim’s”. We were on the road for seven weeksand traveled 17,890 kilometres. Thank you so much for enhancing our enjoymentof a trip we will always remember.

This story is accompanied by a snapshot photo of the (apparently sexa-genarian) Thorntons standing side-by-side. Jean Thornton smiles at the cam-era and is wearing a brimmed straw hat, large glasses and a plain white




t-shirt. Doug Thornton is wearing a baseball cap, a colourful patterned shirt,and has a camera around his neck. Together they hold a hand-written signthat reads ‘17890 km’. Again, the reader is immediately struck by this storyof sheer endurance, celebrated by the sign announcing how far this couple hasdriven. Like Lillian, part of what makes this journey important is the chal-lenge it presented in overcoming distance. Like Lillian, these characters pos-sess ‘character’.

It is important also to note how the Thorntons’ coffee breaks at ‘Tim’s’both punctuate and give meaning to this story. This is brought out by attend-ing to the action attached to the subject ‘we’: ‘We left... we watched... weasked... we enjoyed... we warmed... we were lost... we studied our maps... wewould relax... we were on the road for seven weeks... we will always remem-ber.’ The Thortons leave home and are immediately thrust into the unfamiliarspace of the traveller. Hence, they watch and ‘ask for signs’ that will lead themback to the familiar and comforting – ‘Tim’s’, where they are ‘warmed’ and‘enjoy’. Returning to the road they become lost, but reorient themselves andgain assurance and safety at the next Tim Hortons. Finally, once home they cal-culate the time and distance covered in their trip and write to Tim Hortons withtheir story. This story generates tension, and hence narrative interest, in thehigh contrast between the spatial and temporal experiences of the Tim Hortonsand the road. The road is ‘placeless’, a site of sheer movement and unfamiliar-ity: ‘the stress of all these new experiences’. The Tim Hortons is, by contrast,the fixed, stable, predictable home-away-from-home. It promises a safe, know-able sanctuary that is pre-figured and anticipated in the mind of the travellersbefore they arrive at the next Tim Hortons. It both structures and punctuatesthe movement through space, the hinterland. It inserts civility and order in themidst of endless wildness and novelty. In short, it allows them to locate and rec-ognize themselves in a familiar context and give meaning to their movement.They are moving across Canada, searching for its diversity of landscape andculture, but also searching for a unifying thread that would make the nation-state of Canada (one of the largest and youngest nation-states in the world) rec-ognizable at any point.

Many of the ‘True Stories’ advertisements are rooted in this anxiety and joyof travel and of negotiating the line between friends and strangers while awayfrom home. One group of ‘True Stories’ ads features Canadians who mustreluctantly go abroad (a student or soldier, for example) and who request, andare sent, Tim Hortons coffee in order to mitigate their homesickness. Anotherad features a young Canadian travelling through Europe, whose anxious par-ents are reassured by his postcards home that he has met many new trustwor-thy friends (i.e. Canadians) thanks to his plastic Tim Hortons mug attached tothe outside of his backpack. This ad also plays on the long-standing Canadianpractice of travelling with the talisman of the Canadian flag prominently dis-played on clothing and backpacks, so as not to be mistaken for an American,and presumably, treated roughly by locals. Clearly this young man has not goneto Europe to discover Europeans, but Canadians.




More recent ‘True Stories’ seem to address the critical charge that these sto-ries promote a romantic construct of a white homogeneous, if not overtly xeno-phobic, culture. One such ad that garnered much public attention was dubbed bythe press ‘Anti-hockey Grandpa’ (Keller, 2006). This story begins in what appearsto be the 1970s. An Asian-looking boy (Jimmy) is playing street hockey with hisfriends, when his Chinese immigrant father (Lou) stops him, insisting that he comein the house to study. The story shifts to the present, where Jimmy, now grown,watches his own son play hockey in an arena. The grandfather joins him in thestands, holding a cup of Tim Hortons coffee and handing a cup to his son. Jimmyasks his father why he is there to watch the grandson when he refused to attendhis own hockey games in childhood. It turns out that Lou had been watchingsecretly from the sidelines years ago and that he is still proudly carrying an old,creased photo of his son in his hockey gear. When the son, incredulous, holds thisphoto in his hand for too long, the father insists he wants it back.

Clearly this story plays on stereotypical ideas of the Chinese as studiousand goal-oriented immigrants who want to get ahead in their new country. Italso hints at the ambiguity within Canadian culture about benefits and dangersof assimilation into mainstream culture, and disrupts the typical advertisinggloss of multi-culturalism as simple and unproblematic. As Canadians aretaught in school and through state advertising and programming that they area multi-cultural society, rather than a melting-pot, the issue of how far one isto assimilate is always present. Apparently the middle-aged Jimmy did studyhard, implied by his middle-class standing. His father allowed him to playhockey – just not too much of it. Here, caution, humility and pride are all mixedwith the immigrants’ pain of watching their children become inevitably deraci-nated from their own deep cultural knowledge and traditions. Sharing their TimHortons coffee becomes a somewhat sad, yet important, connection betweenthese two men. It is a small, intimate comfort as they watch the grandson(inevitably) play (Timbits) hockey.

The State, the Sensual Mundane, and Articulation

How does one begin to make sense of these ‘True Stories’ in terms of the autho-rization of Canadian identity? One place to begin is by placing them in thebroader context of Canadian national culture. Even the most casual observer ofthe popular and prolific icons of Canada repeated on television, t-shirts and post-cards will note that they are usually mundane, practical and somewhat silly –donuts, toques, hockey sticks, canoes, beavers. Linking these seemingly unre-lated icons are long-running themes supported in academic, journalistic, andpopular cultures. In academic and literary work, especially that of NorthropFrye (2003) and Seymour Lipset (2001), much has been made about Canadianidentity and the confrontation between the early newcomers and the vast frozennorth, suggesting environment and geography shaped a rugged, no-nonsensenational psyche. This idea persists in spite of the fact that Canada is a highly




urbanized country with the vast majority of the population living in the farthestsouthern regions. Similarly, journalistic work has for decades played on simplis-tic dichotomies that allow Canadians to posit an identity derived from a nega-tion of apparent American characteristics and values – e.g. Americans areviolent/Canadians are peace-loving, Americans are individualists/Canadian arecollectivists. In the realm of humour, perpetuated especially by the national radioand television service, Canadians tell jokes about how obliging and friendly theyare – e.g. ‘How do you get a bunch of Canadians out of a hot tub? – You say,please get out of the hot tub.’ Or, ‘What does a Canadian say when you step onhis foot? – Sorry.’

This emphasis on civility helps explain the permanence of the highly soberand statist icon of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer (‘Mountie’) in for-mal red serge uniform on mugs, t-shirts and the like. Certainly this is an extensionof the handsome, honest, Nelson Eddy character popularized in the 1930s byHollywood. Nevertheless, this icon complements the national slogan ‘Peace, Orderand Good Government’ that requires order to mitigate unlimited individual free-doms. Such orderliness and civility extend into the state’s regulation of consumerdesire vis-à-vis Canadianness itself. The famous Massey Commission Report3 of1951 formalized a long-standing assumption that Canadian culture was in dangerof being overwhelmed by market-driven American culture – presumably by wayof Canadians’ unlimited desire for all things American – making the state and itsagents the primary source of the protection and promotion of Canadian culture.As well as funding Canadian artistic cultural projects of all kinds, federal regula-tions require particular quantities of Canadian content (facetiously referred to as‘Can-Con’ by most Canadians) for Canadian television and radio broadcasts. Asset out by the Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), estab-lished in 1968, Canadian content is evaluated through a complex and bureaucraticsystem that determines if a particular song or television show can be deemed‘Canadian’, and therefore count toward the broadcaster’s required quota of‘Canadianness’. Ironically, this technical definition of Canadian culture assignsCanadianness to objects and practices by virtue of the fact that they are producedby Canadians and/or in Canada, sidestepping the whole issue of what makes thesecultural products distinctively Canadian and therefore worth protecting.

Charland explains this powerful role of the state in terms of its promotion ofan ideology surrounding technology (Charland, 2004). He builds on economistHarold Innis’ famous characterization of Canada as a staples economy, depen-dent on ‘space-binding’ technologies of transportation and communication.Charland argues that by promoting the notion that Canada is the product ofvarious (state-controlled) technologies that overcome space – the CanadianNational Railway, CBC radio and television – the state shores up its own hege-mony by connecting the idea of Canada to technology: ‘In Canada, the constitu-tion of a “people” of individuals united under a liberal state requires that thebarriers between regions be apparently transcended. As it permits mastery overnature, technology offers the possibility of that apparent transcendence’(Charland, 2004: 32). Ultimately, he argues, this ideology allows no basis for




community other than communication technologies. He concludes that Canada isan ‘absent nation’ (Charland, 2004: 29). Or, put another way, there is no ‘content’in Can-Con, only form or technology itself – i.e. the broadcasting of Canadiannessitself. Particular songs, shows, movies, etc. become signifiers of Canadiannessbecause they are being broadcast rather than important in themselves.

This tradition of controlling the definition and proliferation of Canadian cul-tural products is important in this context because it creates an opportunity for acommercial purveyor of Canadianness like Tim Hortons to operate outside theawkwardness of state-sanctioned culture and identity. As Dorland (1996/1997)points out, policies of cultural nationalism mean the state takes over the publicsphere, raising anxiety about what space is left for the generation of cultural prac-tices – a way of life – outside the purview of the state. If Anderson is right that ‘[i]tis the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny’ (Anderson, 1983: 19) – inother words, to turn the historic contingency of the particular nation-state into animaginary inevitability – the obviousness of a state-sanctioned culture and identityis likely to kill off this magic. It allows only the ‘dis-enchantment’ (Weber, 1946)produced by planning, predictability, calculation and control. So, while certainlymany ‘True Stories’ piggyback on notions like space-binding technologies, TimHortons also responds to – or fills in – the gap produced by overt cultural andtechnological nationalism. The celebration of technologies themselves shifts tothat of ordinary actors traversing space (be it Lillian’s climb up the hill or theThortons’ cross-country trek) by virtue primarily of their own character.

So far this discussion has mainly explained how a desire for national iden-tity is generated by the emptiness of statist cultural nationalism and the ideol-ogy of technological nationalism. But what positive content does Tim Hortonsoffer to fill this desire? Palmer (1998) uses Michael Billig’s notion of ‘banalnationalism’ – the idea that national sentiment is dependent on ordinary, every-day and unspectacular practices and ideas – to explore the place of the body,food and landscape in the formations of national identities. She calls for a the-ory of national identity that links deep structural political, economic and socialrealities, which surely do affect the imaginary community of the nation, to howordinary people get a sense of nationality in everyday practices and experiences.Palmer explains that the body, food and landscape are each used symbolicallyby groups to distinguish themselves from others and create in-group identity.Certainly in the case of ‘True Stories’ body, food and landscape are intimatelyintermingled to generate nationalist sentiment, but this is not operating throughthe negating notion of distinction from others.

Keohane develops the sensuous and material aspect of national sentimentin a more positive sense by asserting that the way of life of a group or nation is‘an articulated constellation of bits of enjoyment’ (Keohane, 1997: 19). As dis-cussed, Tim Hortons has positioned itself as a guarantor of enjoyment bydefending a seemingly more ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ cultural space than thatguaranteed by the state bureaucracy or empty notions of technology. The keyto its success is its capacity to exploit this tension within Canada’s culturalnationalism and offer more banal, mundane and sensual manifestations of col-




lective enjoyment. Many ‘True Stories’ emphasize the sheer joy of sharing cof-fee with a spouse, friend, or child in a coffee shop, arena or foreign county. TheLillian ‘True Story’ even posits a character who does not require companion-ship, as her enjoyment is self-contained by her personal rituals and challenges.In all the ‘True Stories’ both the generation and consumption of enjoyment arelocal and very much produced by the participants themselves, along the lines ofa folk culture, as defined by Williams (1983: 136), in which producer and audi-ence are interchangeable. Moreover, the stories themselves originate from andare focused on these ‘folk’. Nothing could be further from the statist produc-tion and consumption of culture and enjoyment.

Moreover, this emphasis on small ‘bits’ of enjoyment (Tim Hortons’ bite-sized donuts are even called ‘Timbits’, as are the children who participate in TimHortons sports) enables Tim Hortons to flatter Canadians that they practice aquiet, rugged, humble style of national pride rather than one that shouts itself out.As Lipset put it, ‘Canadians repeatedly remind themselves that they are andshould be the quiet North Americans’ (Lipset, 2001: 60). And, if it is true – asnoted by an astute American graduate student – that there is nothing more obnox-ious than a people who will not stop announcing their own apparent humility,then this is an even more impressive accomplishment on the part of Tim Hortons.It allows the articulation of a national identity that insists that it is inarticulate.This ‘bit’ of national pride is slipped by without its irony becoming apparent. AsCanadian national identity plays on the ambiguity of humility in tension withboisterousness, Tim Hortons offers to solve this contradiction with sensual andmundane enjoyment and consumption of food. It does not offer its food as anachievement, as a national haute cuisine, but rather as simple, comforting fare tobe fallen upon and eagerly consumed. As such mass, ordinary consumption is sooften understood as a type of passivity – the opposite of cultural production – itsolves the problem of a boastful and intentional articulation of national identity.Indeed, these bits of localized enjoyment even open up a space for regret – asembodied in the three-generational story of ‘Anti-hockey Grandpa’. In the face ofreal social, economic and political pressures for immigrants to assimilate withinCanadian society (regardless of ideological protests to the contrary), the smallcomfort of sharing Tim’s coffee at the hockey arena becomes meaningful.

Conclusion

Through my examination of Tim Hortons’ long-running ‘True Stories’ adver-tising campaign, I have argued that the remarkable success of Tim Hortonsin the competitive coffee industry depends on its savvy understanding of theambiguities and contradictions of Canadian national identity. Specifically, ithas capitalized on a desire opened up by rationalized, centralized and techno-cratic federal control over the generation and enjoyment (production and con-sumption) of Canadian cultural products. Because this control is necessarilyovert within a democratic culture, the mechanisms of generating ‘Canadianness’




are obvious and de-mystified. Hence, the national identity they offer up is nec-essarily, as many critics charge, hollow. This allows Tim Hortons to establishitself in a seemingly more authentic, organic, and natural social site and to artic-ulate versions of Canadianness that share these qualities. Moreover, as enjoy-ment itself seems liberated from the bureaucratic state, it too can accrue to thiscommercial location in an apparently natural way.

This ‘liberation’ of consumptive nationalist enjoyment from the state allowsTim Hortons advertisers to set up a series of implicit conceptual oppositionsaround Canadian cultural products and their production. To the question of howcultural production should proceed, it offers the ‘genuine’ story in contrast to theartificial. To the question of where cultural production should arise, it offers themundane in contrast to the bureaucratic. To the question of what cultural produc-tion should be, it offers the ambiguous and cautious in contrast to the definite, yethollow. So while some of the themes taken up by Tim Hortons – ruggedness,endurance, civility – do piggyback on clichéd versions of Canadianness, it is howand where these characteristics arise that shifts the ground of national identity toTim Hortons itself. It is on this ground that the local, small, sensual and ambigu-ous articulation of national identity can thrive. It is also on this ground that TimHortons authorizes itself as the site and source of Canadianness.

While it is certainly true that advertisers all over the world use flatteringnational images to sell their products, and that the themes of ruggedness, civil-ity, and tenacity used by Tim Hortons are often attributed to national groupsby advertisers, it is not always made clear in academic studies exactly how theseadvertising campaigns succeed in the particular political, historical and culturalcontext in which they operate. I have suggested here that within the context ofCanada, such investigations must consider that role of the nation-state in fram-ing consumptive desire and identity. This allows a more nuanced discussion ofthe meaning of the mundane, the sensual, and the articulation of national iden-tity, and perhaps moves toward a deeper sociological understanding of thedynamics of branding, advertising and marketing as they relate to the commod-ification of identities, nationalist and otherwise.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Jim Cosgrave, Carla Haley-Baxter, Robert Kennedy, KieranKeohane, Jane Phyne, Norine Verberg, and the anonymous reviewers for CulturalSociology for their helpful comments.

Notes

1 While owned by American conglomerate, Wendy’s International Inc., since1995, Tim Hortons shows no evidence in its shops or advertising that it is nowunder foreign ownership, except that sometimes a Wendy’s and Tim’s will share




a roof. Since Wendy’s restaurants have long operated in Canada, the physicalproximity of the two shops is not a notable sight for consumers. As a franchisedoperation Tim Hortons is still run by Canadians and advertising comes out ofToronto. The President and C.O.O. is Canadian and he sits on the Board ofDirectors for Wendy’s Inc. Officially, the chain is based in Ontario and operatesas a distinct entity from Wendy’s International Inc.

2 Compared to other provinces, Tim Hortons has few outlets in Quebec relativeto this province’s population and its rate of coffee consumption. Its ‘TrueStories’, or ‘Histoires Vécues’, are broadcast in Quebec, but are for the most parttranslations of the English-language ads. Generally, a formally bilingual policy isfollowed that glosses the problem of how the ‘two solitudes’ of English andFrench Canada socially and culturally come together in a single nation-state.This gloss follows very much on the gloss found in federal government represen-tations of the Canadian nation-state.

3 Formally the Massey Report is called the Royal Commission on NationalDevelopment in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences, 1949–1951.

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Patricia Cormack

Patricia Cormack is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology

and Anthropology, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her research interests

include national identity, consumption, media and the state. She is currently working on a book

with Jim Cosgrave (Trent University, Canada) that explores statist desire and Canadian identity.

Address: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St. Francis Xavier University, P.O.

Box 5000, Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5, Canada.

Email: [email protected]




Tim Hortons and the Branding of National Identity

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