The campaign launches August 12. Sending something right now is worth more than sending something perfect next month.

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1. What's happening

On July 28, Tim Hortons announced a Harry Potter campaign launching August 12. Licensed Harry Potter products generate royalties for J.K. Rowling, who has spent years and a substantial amount of her own money campaigning against trans rights and trans healthcare.

Egale Canada opposed the partnership the day it was announced. Police-reported hate crimes targeting people for their gender identity or expression have risen four years running in Canada.

Tim Hortons has spent decades building an identity as the ordinary Canadian place where everybody belongs. We're taking the brand at its word.

2. Before you send

Nearly every Tim Hortons location is franchisee-owned. These are local small business owners, many of whom put their savings into a single store. They had no say in this and no power to change it.

Send it up, not sideways. The button below goes to Restaurant Brands International, the parent company, and to the Tim Hortons press desk - not to the store on your corner.

3. Send the email

One tap opens a message in your own email app with the addresses, the subject line, and the letter already written. Add your name, add your reason, hit send. [be sure to customize the letter before you send]

write the email now

Nothing is sent until you send it, and nothing comes to us.

In the draft, replace the bracketed parts:

  • [your name] and [city, province] - so it isn't anonymous

  • [the bracketed paragraph] - two or three sentences on why this matters to you - that’s the most important part

Identical form letters get counted as one item; a letter with a real sentence in it gets read out loud in a meeting. It doesn't have to be polished. Specific beats eloquent every time.

Share this image on your socials after you send your email!

4. What the email asks:

  • End the campaign, and say publicly why.

  • At minimum: disclose the licensing fee and match it with a donation to Canadian trans advocacy organizations, and commit in writing not to renew the licence.

5. Other ways to send it

Some email setups don't play nicely with automatic links; if the button doesn't work for you or you’d rather copy and paste into your own email, here are the addresses:

  • mediainquiries@timhortons.com The Tim Hortons press desk. Monitored by people whose job is reputational risk, so your message reaches someone who can escalate it. This is the main one.

  • Media@RBI.com Restaurant Brands International, the parent company. A licensing deal this size was signed here, not at store level.

  • investor@RBI.com RBI investor relations. The most underused of the three. Brand risk is a disclosure category, so IR reads everything.

6. The full toolkit [PDF]

Three pages. Everything above, plus a letter template you can adapt and notes on what makes a message work. Print it, share it, hand it out.

Download Toolkit PDF

7. Why this one, and why now

Police-reported hate crimes targeting people for their gender identity or expression have risen four years running in Canada, up 184% since 2020, according to Statistics Canada. Anti-trans legislation has moved through several provinces. Alberta is the sharpest edge of it, with restrictions on trans healthcare already law here, but this reaches every province.

J.K. Rowling has not been quiet or incidental about this. She has spent years using her platform and her personal wealth to campaign against transgender people's access to healthcare, legal recognition, and public life. Every licensed Harry Potter product generates royalties that flow toward that work.

Tim Hortons is not a neutral brand in that environment. It has spent decades building an identity as the ordinary Canadian place where everybody belongs - the rink, the highway stop, the after-church coffee. That identity is what this deal puts on the table. Saying so is not an attack on the brand. It's taking the brand at its word.

We don't think a donut chain is the largest front in this fight. We do think that when a company this woven into Canadian life makes a choice this visible, saying nothing is its own kind of answer.

8. Where to put your money instead

9. Pass it on

Volume with variation is what registers as a movement rather than a campaign. Send yours, then send this page to three people. Share this image on your socials after you send your email!

10. Sources