'Brutal' or 'iconic'? How a giant puddle in a Tim Hortons lot became Hamilton legend 'Lake Timmicaca'
CBC
At a Tim Hortons in downtown Hamilton, drivers intent on getting their morning double doubles brave the murky waters of the parking lot, as sloshing waves reach as high as their car bumpers.
Welcome to "Lake Timmicaca" — perhaps Hamilton's most iconic, and persistent, puddle.
At John Street S. and Jackson Street E., the body of water has for years formed with the spring thaw and during downpours in the summer months. The impressive pool that sits over a sewer grate has inspired photographers, printmakers and Reddit users. Some others, including Tim Hortons customers who CBC Hamilton spoke to this week, call it "atrocious."
"It feels very Hamilton," said Max Rose Begg Goodis. "It's definitely an iconic visual, a noteworthy landmark."
Goodis believes she's the first to come up with the name Lake Timmicaca.
As a theatre kid, Goodis used to do a vocal warm up that included the word "Titicaca" — the catchy name of a real lake in the Andes Mountains of Peru and Bolivia.
She thinks that's why "Timmicaca" popped into her head as she passed by the eye-catching basin on her usual walk to work around 2017.
She told her friends and coworkers about Lake Timmicaca, and eventually it spread to Reddit, the popular online discussion board, as the puddle's infamy grew.
"As a city, we are very proficient with... spinning stories that may not be entirely positive into something that's wholesome, or with a comedic takeaway, or as a Hamilton legend," she said.
Lake Timmicaca goes by different spellings — Lake Timicaca and Lake Timmycaca — but CBC Hamilton has stuck with the double "m" and the "i" as Goodis envisioned.
It's also been described on Hamilon's sub Reddit as a sixth Great Lake.
After driving through it to park his car on Wednesday, Tim's regular Dwayne Waldron called it "brutal and pretty caca."
Caca happens to be derived from the Latin word "cacare" meaning "to defecate."
Local photographer David Fillion captured Lake Timmicaca during a sunset in 2023. The resulting print has been "very popular" at Art Crawl, the monthly street festival in the city. "It stands out to people," he said.
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