History
1964-89:
The chain's first store opened on May 17, 1964, in Hamilton, Ontario under the name "Tim Horton Donuts"; the name was later abbreviated to "Tim Horton's" and then changed to "Tim Hortons" without the possessive apostrophe. The business was founded by Miles G."Tim" Horton, who played in the National Hockey League from 1949 until his death in a traffic collision in 1974. Horton had an initial venture in hamburger restaurants.
Soon after Horton opened the store, he met Ron Joyce, a former Hamilton police constable. In 1965, Joyce took over the fledgling Tim Horton Donut Shop on Ottawa Street North in Hamilton. By 1967, after he had opened up two more stores, he and Tim Horton became full partners in the business. Upon Horton's death in an auto crash in 1974, Joyce bought out the Horton family's shares for $1 million and took over as sole owner of the existing chain of forty stores. Joyce expanded the chain quickly and aggressively in geography and in product selection. The 500th store opened in 1991.
Ron Joyce's aggressive expansion of the Tim Hortons business resulted in major changes to the Canadian coffee and doughnut restaurant market. Many independent doughnut shops and small chains were driven out of business, while Canada's per-capita ratio of doughnut shops surpassed those of all other countries.