Ex large double-double please

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By Angela MacKenzie

Hello, my name is Angela, and I'm a coffee addict. It's been two hours since my last drink. I confess I enjoy all kinds of coffee and get it wherever I can, but my usual pusher's name is Tim - Tim Horton.
Timmie is good to me. He's not only supplies me with caffeinated, liquid sunshine for a reasonable price - he feeds me sweet concoctions of pure joy made available at more than 2,400 stores bearing his name across the country. He's my sugar daddy, but he's also so much more.
Born in Cochrane, Ontario in 1930, Tim Horton lived every Canadian boy's ultimate dream as a NHL hockey player.
But realizing his hockey career wouldn't last forever, he decided to try his hand at business and opened his first donut and coffee store in 1964. The rest is history.
Tim Horton's has become a unique Canadian icon, influencing our collective language and culture.
"Timbits" - a term used to describe those dangerously easy to eat donut holes - has achieved commonplace usage in Canadian lingo.
But the word Timbit has yet to attain the ubiquitous nature of the term "double-double" - a phrase to describe a coffee with two creams and two sugars, most often used by Timmie regulars across the country. In 2004, the expression earned its citizenship status when it made it into the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
Timmie's coffee and donuts are craved by Canadians everywhere, and have even been shipped as far as Kandahar, Afghanistan - a taste of home relished by our fighting men and women.
Canadian Press reported last week, however, that Canadian soldiers in Kandahar are missing their Timbits.
A Tim Horton's restaurant opened at the Kandahar Air Field just before July 1. To the chagrin of the Canadian soldiers there, "Timmie's trailer" has already run out of donuts and there's no telling when they'll get a fresh batch (armaments and basic supplies are apparently a higher priority).
"Canada's soldiers in Kandahar say they can live with the oppressive heat, dust and exhaustion of fighting Taliban. But they draw the line when they lose their donuts," the news agency reports.
Timmie's is also a cultural phenomenon that Koreans in Canada have embraced wholeheartedly, donut centres and all.
Launch a Timbit into the crowd of a local Tim Ho's and, chances are, you'll hit a Korean.
My mom recently bemoaned the closure of a Timmie's on Burnaby's North Road - the main strip of the Lower Mainland's Korea town in B.C. Developers are apparently planning to build condos and other retail stores on the site. But alas, where will she meet her friends now after church? They have lost their gathering place. An unpretentious spot, where they could sit comfortably, talk about their lives and occasionally share gossip.
In a completely non-scientific, personal poll, I asked several Koreans here why they prefer the extra-large double-doubles to venti, non-fat, no-foam lattes.
"Not as bitter, not as expensive, always fresh," they reply, echoing the company's motto. Some have asked me how to go about opening a franchise in Seoul, where they believe the coffee and donuts would sell out. (Eager entrepreneurs take note!)
Whatever the reason, Timmie's is a fixture of the Canadian landscape and one that is not likely to disappear anytime soon - not if the ever-growing numbers of Koreans here have anything to do with it.

Angela MacKenzie is a 1.5 generation Korean Canadian and editor of C3 Society's News & Views. Submissions to C3 may be sent to aymackenzie@gmail.com.

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