If you were born after 1970, the name "Tim Horton" probably makes you think only of doughnuts, "Timbits" and coffee. For those of us who are little bit older, and especially if we loved hockey, we can't hear the name "Tim Horton" without thinking of the great defencemen who led the Toronto Maple Leafs during their glory years in the 1960s to four Stanley Cups.
For those of us with an interest in cars, Horton will always be associated with the exotic De Tomaso Pantera, the car he was driving when he was killed on Feb. 21, 1974. This is the story of Tim Horton's last ride, and the car he was driving.
By 1973, Tim Horton was in the twilight of his hockey career. After winning the Stanley Cup in 1967 the Maple Leafs went into a steady decline due to trades and retirements. After finishing dead last in 1970 the Leafs traded Horton to the New York Rangers. Tim spent one year in the Big Apple before being taken the next year by the Pittsburgh Penguins in their expansion draft. In yet another expansion draft the following year Horton was chosen by the Buffalo Sabres.
Horton, at 43 years of age, was already the second-oldest player in the league (goaltender Gump Worsley was a few months older) and with the growing success of his doughnut shop chain -- it was started in Hamilton in 1964 and was already up to 30 stores -- he was ready to hang up his skates and focus more on business.
It was Buffalo's general manager, Punch Imlach, who convinced Horton to stay on one more year in Buffalo. Imlach had coached Horton and the Leafs during their glory days of the mid-1960s. His new team had plenty of promise, with young players like Gilbert Perrault, Richard Martin and Rene Robert but needed the leadership and maturity of a veteran like Horton.
What cinched the deal to keep Horton on the ice was an unusual signing bonus: Imlach agreed to give him a 1973 De Tomaso Pantera sports car as part of his one-year contract.
Horton's last game was played in Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens on Feb. 20, 1974. Though the Sabres lost, and Horton was almost certainly playing with a broken jaw, the result of a deflected slapshot during the previous day's practice, he was still named the game's third star.
While all the other players drove back to Buffalo on the team bus, Horton had special dispensation from Imlach to drive the Pantera alone. Horton knew the route well and often stopped to visit franchises along the way. He had an early morning X-ray appointment for his jaw in Buffalo, that, given the amount of pain he was in, he probably didn't want to miss.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 21 a report came over the Ontario Provincial Police radio of a sports car moving at high speed through the Burlington area along the Queen Elizabeth Way. Another constable, near Vineland, saw a car jet past him, tried to follow but couldn't keep up. He estimated the car was going at least 160 km/h.
Finally, at around 4:30 a.m., news of a terrible accident near Stoney Creek filled the airwaves. While the QEW is a multi-lane expressway, there was a "traffic circle" exit -- a concrete wall that the road goes around -- that Horton and his Pantera failed to make. The Pantera hit an elevated sewer grate and flipped several times, throwing Horton from the vehicle. His body was found almost 60 metres from the crumpled wreck of his beloved Pantera.
No one really knows all the contributing factors that led to Horton's death. There's little doubt that he was taking pain killers for his jaw. And the treacherousness of the interchange where he died was remedied several years later when the traffic circle was removed.
As for the De Tomaso Pantera Horton was driving, though the cars had teething problems not uncommon in new models, there has never been a suggestion that mechanical failure in any way contributed to his death.
Shortly after Horton's death, his wife, Lori, sold the family's interest in the budding restaurant chain to Horton's business partner, Ron Joyce, for $1 million making Joyce the sole owner. Lori tried to overturn the sale in the 1990s but was unsuccessful at trial and in the Court of Appeal.
Joyce, in addition to growing the business into the giant it is today, was careful to ensure that Horton's legacy would live on. In 1974 he established the Tim Horton Children's Foundation in honour of Horton's love for children and his desire to help those less fortunate. This year it has raised more than $7.4 for children's camps and tsunami relief. Tim would be proud.
By The Vancouver Sun September 30, 2005
eli@steamworks.com
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