Tim Horton's business - and the legend - still thrive
Lance Hornby, Toronto Sun February 22, 2014
Tim Horton at work. (Photo courtesy Tim Hortons)
TORONTO - When Dick Duff pays for his coffee and doughnut at Tim Hortons outlets across Ontario, he often points to the logo on the cup or the picture on the wall of the late Maple Leafs defenceman in his No. 7 uniform.
“I played with this guy, he anchored four Stanley Cups,” the 78-year-old Duff will tell a surprised cashier. “And let me say, he’d be very happy to know all these years later, he helped high school students get a job, or a part-time worker make extra money to support a family.”
Forty years ago this past Friday, after his death in a high-speed car crash, the ox-strong Horton, who played his way out of risky, low-pay drudgery in mining country to Hall of Fame icon, retains his name above a $2-billion uniquely Canadian enterprise.
Recent estimates have the company’s 4,000-plus locations controlling 76% of the country’s baked goods market (ranked by number of customers) and 62% of all coffee sales. A recent study by global opinion research firm APCO Insight placed Tims 61st of the world’s 100 most widely revered brands, using an “emotional linking index.” Disney and Google topped the board. Canadian Business magazine ranks Tims No. 1 in the nation on reputation.
Its market success was ensured by Ron Joyce, a one-time beat cop who frequented the first store Horton struggled with on Ottawa St. in Hamilton in 1964. Joyce loaned knowledge from his similar sideline as a Dairy Queen franchisee and took the reins after Horton’s death, eventually becoming a billionaire.
But “Always Fresh” had to start with a big name, one that people admired and respected. That was Miles Gilbert Horton (the registered names were for each of his grandfathers), who came from Cochrane. Ont. in the late 1940s with many northerners intent on making the Leafs.
Players such as Horton, Duff, George “Chief” Armstrong, Frank Mahovlich and Dave Keon knew their ticket out of a hardscrabble existence was the NHL, luring them through Foster Hewitt’s radio broadcasts from far-off Maple Leaf Gardens.
Horton spent daylight hours on the ponds around Cochrane and Sudbury, and game time as a stay-at-home defenceman with the Copper Cliff Redmen.
“By the time he got to the NHL, he could have skated 40 minutes a night if he wanted,” Duff insisted. Recommended to the Leafs and St. Michael’s College by scout Bob Wilson and school alumnus Charlie Cerre, Horton was given the green light to jump into the play by the offensively challenged Majors. That’s what caught the Leafs’ eye.
“What really made Tim a great defenceman was his speed,” Leaf captain Armstrong told writer John Iaboni in the book 100 Greatest Leafs. “He was just a premium skater. And his strength. He was born with muscles. We went to high school together in Sudbury and he never lifted weights or anything. It was hereditary.”
Horton was supposed to stay in St. Mike’s only for 1947-48, but school legend says he deliberately flunked French to remain another year. When Leaf patriarch Conn Smythe decided to load up his other junior feeder team, the Toronto Marlboros, for a run at the Memorial Cup, the 19-year-old Horton didn’t want to play against good pals on the Majors and opted for the American Hockey League. With 31 points and a team high 146 penalty minutes, he helped the Pittsburgh Hornets to the 1952 Calder Cup.
Horton’s big break with the Leafs came partly through tragedy. A few months after his Stanley Cup overtime winner against the Canadiens in 1951, defenceman Bill Barilko, whose upbringing mirrored that of Horton’s, disappeared on a bush-plane fishing trip. Horton was pressed into service full time a year later, the start of more than 1,200 games. He saw some lean years in the mid-1950s, the gilded age through Punch Imlach’s arrival and four Cups, followed by another dip in club fortunes.
“We began as 19- to 20-year-olds, with the goal of wearing the Leaf sweater,” Duff said. “We had to replace the older guys and when we came to practice at the Gardens, all we saw were pictures of those great teams and players (from the ‘40s). That really resonated with Tim, Billy Harris, Bob Baun, the Chief, myself ... everyone.”
As time and titles added up, Horton was like many Original Six players, with everything but money. As a second-team all-star member in 1954, Horton had only made around $8,000.
“Salaries weren’t great,” Duff said of the pre-union days. “And you were one bad hit away from losing everything. Tim had already been conked once (a check from Detroit’s Bill Gadsby broke his jaw and leg in March of 1955). So you had to have another job.
“We all worked in the summer, George and I in the mines up near Falconbridge, Tim worked in the sand pit for Smythe’s company with a lot of other players. Later on, George and Tod Sloan ran small hotels and guys worked for the breweries. Some tried university. You had to plan for outside of hockey.”
Horton’s first two ventures didn’t net much. He worked for a Studebaker car dealership in Toronto before the company stopped production, then tried running a hamburger restaurant. That led to a doughnut shop, a business Duff called brilliant in its simplicity
“Have a coffee, read the paper, shoot the breeze, maybe talk hockey. That was the pattern in the small towns where a lot of us came from. Many cities had a Kresge’s, Woolworth’s or an Eaton’s that had little coffee shops or lunch counters. All the people were in those places. Tim said ‘Let’s try one and see.’”
Horton meant to be hands-on at first, before nearly burning himself in a deep fryer. Initially slow to generate traffic, the first store in Hamilton gradually made progress with Joyce’s assistance, and the two became full partners in 1967. But, it was still an era where NHLers were expected to give 100% attention to the game in regular season, not personal enterprise.
Imlach had ribbed Horton’s business in the press, saying he should bring a box of doughnuts to practice for use as pucks. That was the same tone taken by well known Hockey Night In Canada host Ward Cornell in a intermission interview in 1968.
Cornell asked Horton how his “doughnut emporium” was doing and jokingly asked if he would retire a rich man. Rather than feel belittled, Horton used the big stage to thank his customers and plug the store, decades before wearing promotional baseball caps and t-shirts for such TV bits was the norm.
During a contract dispute with the frugal Imlach, Horton did send him some doughnuts as a way of underlining he had financial means to hold out, a stunt Imlach did find hilarious.
But, Imlach and the Leafs did hold their five-time all-star in high regard. Horton, who survived most of his 24 seasons without a helmet, was idolized by players such as young roommate Pat Quinn.
“He got better as he got older,” Quinn said. “His stomach, at 40 years old, still had rippling muscles on it. He couldn’t scrap, but he knew how to put the squeeze on you in a fight. That big guy on Phil Esposito’s line (Ken Hodge) ... Tim once got a hold of him so tight I thought he’d squeeze his eyes out.”
Gordie Howe, long regarded as the strongest man ever on skates, rated Horton his toughest playing foe.
Pressing his own young son, Brent, into the Leafs lineup for the first time, Punch made sure to put his boy on a line with Horton and the equally powerful Orland Kurtenbach to ensure safety.
“He was a handful,” Leafs winger Eddie Shack once said of Horton. “When he drank, everybody drank. When he told a joke, everybody laughed. The best thing to do when he got pissed was to stay out of his way.”
In Game 6 of the 1967 Stanley Cup final, Imlach put Horton at centre for a few draws against Montreal to utilize his strength on faceoffs. And, for the crucial late shift near the end of the tight game that would give the Leafs their last Cup to date, Imlach chose Horton and longtime partner Allan Stanley on the blueline.
Horton played two more years in Toronto before a trade to the New York Rangers. He was briefly with the Pittsburgh Penguins before Imlach, then running the expansion Buffalo Sabres, talked him into a comeback. Despite being 44 with poor eyesight, he was a regular on the budding Sabres, allowing him more cash to expand the doughnut chain, then up to 30 or 40 stores.
For the 1973-74 season, despite his reservations, Imlach agreed to Horton’s contract clause, paying for a fancy De Tomaso Pantera sports car.
Horton was given permission to drive it to and from a game in Toronto on Feb. 20, 1974. Playing with a sore ankle and suspected broken jaw that night from a deflected puck at practice, Horton missed the final period, but was still third star in the 4-2 loss.
There was a business meeting with Joyce in Oakville on the way back that ran late and Joyce suggested Horton stay in his house. But, with a morning x-ray scheduled and a home game that night against the Atlanta Flames, Horton wanted to get back.
He never made it.
Police clocked his car doing about 160 km/h near Burlington around 4 a.m. on Feb. 21 and pursued in vain. Heading into St. Catharines, the Pantera hit an elevated sewer grate, flipping several times and ejecting Horton, who died in hospital.
Horton’s pain medication and mechanical failure were considered causes of the accident at the time. However, autopsy data released in 2005 showed his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit.
Joyce soon bought out Tim’s widow, Lori, of her shares for $1 million, a deal she tried unsuccessfully to re-open years later. One of Horton’s daughters went on to marry Joyce’s son. The company and the legend continue to thrive.
“I’m proud as hell to say I played with him,” said Duff. “He was a great player, a lot of fun and made sure that young players or single guys were never alone, always inviting them to his house. And he did a lot for kids with the foundation he started through the stores.
“For a guy like that to die, at any age, is just not right.”
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