A Tim Horton’s Too Far

It’s a very long way down to Vancouver from my neck of the water, but I went and just returned.

Van has quite grown up over the past many years, so much so that I have little memory of the place as it was 20 years ago. For example, sections of the city that were once rundown trouble spots are now very high-end tourist destinations.

This would be places like Gas Town, where visitors flock to stand under the steam clock when it goes off, actually vying to get close enough so that the foul runoff from the steam eruption drips on their heads. Many photographs are taken.

I wasn’t in town to site-see, though. It was a trip based on the needs of the heart.

Having somewhat recently witnessed the woman with whom I’d shared my life and place on Blind Channel up and leave on a boat to “go to town” to seek work again in her given profession of nursing, the quiet finally got to me and I cracked. I scrounged up the airfare and took a seaplane all the way down to visit her and to check out if there were any way I could possibly bring myself to forsake the northern winding channels and the dense, roadless woods for a place where I would have to have a land vehicle to move around on roads of rock – not the waterways I drive a boat over now.

Seeing Maddie Higgs, or ‘Mad’, was a very good thing for the both of us. After the first day, though, it was time to go outside and around to look at what was what.

We dropped down to the fabulous market on Granville Island, a little speck of land under a highway bridge that is located on False Creek, a part of the greater Vancouver Harbour area that caters to pleasure boats and a heavy tourist trade.

We bought some groceries that we used to make a wonderful meal in the small flat that Mad has let over on the way toward the University of British Columbia. When I say the flat is small, I mean it’s not much larger than the interior of Big Boat, my 27-foot all around work and transport vessel. One tiny sitting room, a small dining area that is set off the cramped little kitchen. One bedroom, a washroom and a big closet. There is a small back porch overlooking a garden that is shared by all three tennants in the building, which is an old sub-divided Victorian in a good area of town.

But, back to our out and abouting. We went to a few pubs and listened to some live Irish music and that was well worth the trip. I brought my mandolin along on the journey and I was able to sit in for a few tunes with one fine group that was kind enough to ask me to join them.

We went into the main area of the city, not far from where I landed on the seaplane. I avoided the steam clock queue. I did not like Gas Town and some of the other things that have sprung up because they all have some form of commercialization associated, meaning the whole area is aimed at getting people to leave their money behind and I do not have heaps of money to leave anywhere.

A couple of days passed and there was now pressure in the air.

What was I thinking? I could hear her think to herself. Could Mad and I reach an accommodation? I kept looking around at various things, asking myself how I might be able to change my way of life to join, in this sprawling metropolis, the woman I have grown to care for so deeply.

On the plus side, I did see there was a small boatbuilder’s shop over on Granville Island. It was closed when I peered through the window. So, someone was obviously doing some small boat construction locally. I also noted that there were a couple of ski fields not too far away from downtown. I do enjoy skiing very much, so, another plus.

So it was I found myself trying very hard to rationalize how a move, at least for the winter, could be accepted by myself from an emotional and mental point of view.

Then, we went to Tim Horton’s.

For those of you not familiar with Tim Horton’s, it is a chain eatery named after a Canadian hockey player of long ago that was initially established as a donut and coffee shop. Over the years, it grew into a Canadian institution – a much grander version of the Dunkin’ Donuts of U.S. repute.

However, a few years back, Tim Horton’s was acquired by an American company, I believe the fast food chain Wendy’s. When that happened, I vowed to never again set foot in a Tim Horton’s, because I go by the saying, “render unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser’s and render unto God that which is God’s.” Except, in my case, I hijacked the saying and my version goes like this: “Render unto Canada that which is Canada’s and render unto the United States that which is the Untied States’ ” and, in that manner, we can keep it unique for citizens of either country who take a trip across the border.

In other words, I did not think Tim Horton’s ought to have gone into the hands of American corporate owners. This is also why I refuse to drink Molson, due to the fact that Molson is owned by the same company that brews that God-awful American Coors watery stuff that has been alleged to be beer.

In fact, I despise global corporate dominance and, frankly, Vancouver, with its McDonalds and all that horridness, has become much like many other places. What ever happened to the quaintness of cultural differences and adventure that was to be found in travel?

That it has extended to beer is a disaster. Thank the Dear Lord that so many small batch breweries have come up to save the taste buds and the culture, particularly that of Western Canada.

Again, render unto Canada that which is Canadian – like beer with some bite and texture. (Although I have enjoyed many fine American small brewery products, like Full Sail, Alaskan Amber, Sam Adams, Anchor Steam and several more, including Blue Boar Irish Ale from Portland, Or.)

Ah, I have wandered off again.

As I said, we went to a Tim Horton’s out in the area not far from where Mad now resides.

(Prayer is now in order: Dear God, why did you send me there? I suppose to give me the strength I needed to see clearly that I can’t live in the city for any longer than a couple of days at a time. In fact, after the Tim Horton’s experience, I could barely breathe. Thanks, I think, for the trial through which you put me. Amen.)

So, we’re walking in her new neighbourhood and Mad says, “let’s go in there for a coffee (meaning Tim Horton’s).” Neither of us will go into a Starbucks – for reasons already explained above.

I looked apprehensively through the window at the uniformed girl behind the counter, who was speaking with a customer who was purchasing a sack of takeaway donuts.

I hestitated as Mad said, “Come on, Taggs.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh, come on Taggs,” she said, pulling on my coat sleeve.

“Oh, alright, a coffee, just that,” I relented.

In we went. The air inside was heavy with the scent of donuts and grilled sandwiches. The place was quite full and it was noisy. It felt very stuffy and I began to get the creeps because I don’t see many people most of the time. We ordered the coffees at the takeaway counter and Mad got a scone, I think. Instead of leaving, which is what I quite wanted to do, Mad wanted to be seated so we could “talk.”

“Let’s have a sit while we have this,” she said.

“Let’s go outside and find a bench,” said I.

“Look, there’s a table just over there,” she pointed.

She won, as usual. We sat down.

Not more than a minute after, I looked up when I heard this sort of grunting sound just as a gigantic man and an equally huge woman came down the aisle and turned butts to our faces as they decided to take the little table directly across from us.

I swear to to you, the way this all unravelled was swift and merciless. I lay it out here for you to take pity on me, even though I have no doubt I would not be able, traumatized as I presently am, to take to heart anything anyone might say to me to try to ease my mental anguish, or to attempt to help me erase these debilitating pictures that keep playing across my mind’s eye.

Let us just say: it was bad.

The equally massive woman and the man tried to seat themselves at exactly the same time. Now, I use the word “massive” as a way to avoid the truth. In this case, the truth being that these people were among the most obese I have ever seen and they appeared to be hungry.

They undertook the effort to seat themselves, laterally schooching and wiggling their rear ends into the bench seats by sliding their rumps along the almond coloured faux wood grained plastic bench backs until they could slide no further because the table edge stopped them both at their respective “gros ventres.” (Canada is multilingual, you know.)

They inched their flabby legs in under the table so that they they were ready to be seated, but for the fact their guts were resting above the edge of the table and actually on the table on either side.

Therefore, the last part of the exercise, the actual sitting down part, proved to be impossible, as they were both so fat that neither of them could create enough room for their protruding guts to clear the table edge as they pressed their massive arses against the backs of the bench seats.

This was a hell of a thing to see.

Both had a gap of a third meter between the seats and their rear ends. There they were, stuck half standing, half sitting, shoving the table back and forth at each other in order to clear enough room so that one or the other of them could get their guts off the table, slide their butts down the bench backs and onto the seats themselves.

“Stop pushing the table, Hal,” the woman hissed at the man.

“You’re pushing at me!” he barked at her.

Meanwhile, they were both using their ramrod TransCanada rears to shove against the bench backs on either side in a vain attempt to locate clearance from those directions. Behind those bench backs were people seated, backs to them, eating.

So, in effect, what was underway was really a four-way crushing exercise involving fat Hal, the fat woman and the two poor souls, both men, who were at the adjacent tables, and who were being rattled as they tried to eat their tomato bisque, or whatever it was they were spilling all over themselves during this fracas.

These two innocents kept turning to look over their shoulders at what was underway behind them.

I whispered to Mad, “Are you believing this?”

She looked at me with that look of hers that said, “Don’t, Taggs, don’t say anything rude.”

Just then, the fat woman’s cell phone went loudly off.

Unbelieveably, whilst suspended between standing and sitting, she began to furiously fish in this sack of a purse-bag thing she had drapped over her right shoulder and under her gross arm in an effort to answer the blasted device.

Mind you, she was as stuck as a beaver in a trap. Now wrestling with her bag, phone going off with a musical ringtone that I think was a rendition of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’, she gave a last mighty, desperate push backward with a reverse pelvic thrust.

There was a cracking sound. She had succeeded in shoving her bench and that of the man behind her back just enough that her massive behind slipped down the plastic and slammed into the seat. This got her gut off the table to just below its edge.

I think the seat had been attached to the tile floor, but no longer, as the loud cracking report indicated.

This gave Big Hal enough wiggle room to shove the table into the woman, where the edge of it got her just below her voluminous sagging breasts, pinning her fast. Then, he too slammed down into the seat with a thud.

The guy behind the woman was visibly irate and he turned and said, “excuse me!”

Hal said, “Mind your own business! These tables are too small.”

The woman got out the musical phone.

“This is Babs,” she shouted loudly enough that half the Tim Horton’s customers looked up.

Hal looked at the menu. Babs began sqwaking, “We’ve stopped to eat. You fix yourself something and we’ll be home later. No, I don’t know where the dog is!”

Mad and I tried to ignore them.

Then, just as the wait person came up the aisle, Hal leaned to his left and released a loud, angry fart.

“That feels better,” he said to no one in particular. Sweat dripped from his brow after the wrestling match with Babs over the table clearance.

“Oh, my God!,” Mad furtively implored to me.

As the waitress arrived to serve the huge two, I stood up suddenly gasping for air, grabbed Maddie Higgins by the coat sleeve and tugged her out of her seat. She came willingly and with haste in her step.

We hurtled toward the door.

The perky, cheerful counter girl said, “Thanks for coming to Tim Horton’s!”

I turned to her and said – “Tim doesn’t own it anymore.”

And we left.