'Brutal' or 'iconic'? How a giant puddle in a Tim Hortons lot became Hamilton legend 'Lake Timmicaca'

Samantha Beattie · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 14, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 21 minutes ago

At a Tim Hortons in downtown Hamilton, drivers intent connected getting their morning double doubles brave the murky waters of the parking lot, arsenic sloshing waves scope arsenic precocious arsenic their car bumpers. 

Welcome to "Lake Timmicaca" — possibly Hamilton's astir iconic, and persistent, puddle.

At John Street S. and Jackson Street E., the assemblage of h2o has for years formed with the outpouring thaw and during downpours in the summertime months. The awesome excavation that sits implicit a sewer grate has inspired photographers, printmakers and Reddit users. While some as immoderate others telephone , including Tim Hortons customers who CBC Hamilton spoke to this week. 

"It feels precise Hamilton," said Max Rose Begg Goodis. "It's decidedly an iconic visual, a noteworthy landmark." 

Goodis believes she's the archetypal to travel up with the name Lake Timmicaca. 

As a theatre kid, Goodis utilized to bash a vocal lukewarm up that included the connection "Titicaca" — the catchy sanction of a existent water successful the Andes Mountains of Peru and Bolivia.

She thinks that's wherefore "Timmicaca" popped into her caput arsenic she passed by the eye-catching basin connected her accustomed locomotion to enactment astir 2017. 

She told her friends and coworkers astir Lake Timmicaca, and yet it dispersed to Reddit, the fashionable online treatment board, arsenic the puddle's infamy grew. 

"As a city, we are precise proficient with... spinning stories that whitethorn not beryllium wholly affirmative into thing that's wholesome, oregon with a comedic takeaway, oregon arsenic a Hamilton legend," she said. 

'Brutal and beauteous caca'

Lake Timmicaca goes by antithetic spellings — Lake Timicaca and Lake Timmycaca — but CBC Hamilton has stuck with the treble "m" and the "i" as Goodis envisioned.

It's besides been described on Hamilon's sub Reddit arsenic a sixth Great Lake.

After driving done it to parkland his car connected Wednesday, Tims regular Dwayne Waldron called it "brutal and beauteous caca."

Caca happens to be derived from the Latin connection "cacare" meaning "to defecate." 

Local lensman David Fillion captured Lake Timmicaca during a sunset in 2023. The resulting print has been "very popular" astatine Art Crawl, the monthly thoroughfare festival successful the city. "It stands retired to people," helium said. 

Hamilton residents Matt and Dan Jelly, of creation and photograph people company Jelly Bros, made an illustration of "Beautiful Lake Timmycaca, Hamilton's largest inland sea" conscionable implicit a twelvemonth ago. 

"I've been alert of radical calling it that for years and ever got a chuckle erstwhile I'd locomotion by and spot the monolithic puddle that ne'er seems to spell away," Matt told CBC Hamilton. "We are inactive unclear connected wherefore it exists, oregon wherefore it continues to exist, but it's beauteous amusive the mode the assemblage has turned it into a section wrong joke." 

Harrison Wheeler, who frequents the Tim Hortons daily, described Lake Timmicaca arsenic "absolutely atrocious." At the aforesaid time, he'd similar to spot Tim Hortons commission a mural connected the broadside of the adjacent gathering commemorating the puddle, helium said.

"Welcome to Lake Horton," helium suggested the mural say. 

Fellow Tim Hortons lawsuit Michelle Korzak agreed. 

"They should gully attraction to it," she said. "If they hole it, it would beryllium shocking." 

Private spot issue, metropolis says

The City of Hamilton said successful a connection that municipal h2o and wastewater infrastructure successful the country is moving well, and the contented is connected backstage property. 

After receiving complaints, the bylaw section said it is actively investigating and moving with the spot absorption radical to code the puddle "as rapidly arsenic possible." It did not accidental erstwhile the complaints began.

The city's spot standards bylaw requires walkways, driveways and yards are maintained and tin beryllium passed done safely, said the metropolis statement. There's besides a bylaw that requires spot owners to guarantee lasting h2o does not accumulate betwixt April 1 and Oct. 31 to forestall the dispersed of West Nile virus.

As to wherefore the waters of Lake Timmicaca person been permitted to ebb and flow for years, the metropolis did not supply a effect earlier publication. 

The onshore the parking batch sits connected was purchased successful 1988 by "Tim Donut Limited" for $500,000, according to a spot grounds search. That corp was yet transferred to The TDL Group Ltd., the licensing institution for Tim Hortons. 

Tim Hortons did not respond to requests for comment. 

Goodis said implicit the years she's seen repairs being done astatine the sewer grate underneath Lake Timmicaca. 

"But thing ever seems to truly nonstop it distant forever," she said. "It wishes to persist."