Yesterday was the end of a huge job. I painted for four hours on Wednesday morning and then headed to Discount Truck Rental to pick up a 16 foot moving van. When I returned home, I immediately began filling it with all the junk in the basement and throughout the house. Though many would argue that plenty junk remains in this house, I was satisfied when the basement was empty and the van was full.

I drove to my father's house and then went straight to bed. The next morning was very cold and I had a hard time getting started since it was 7:30 in the morning and I had a 16 foot cube van full of garbage and furniture most of which was surprisingly heavy. Through my own stubborn determination, I emptied the truck and put everything away.

I headed to my Dad's office for an appointment and was then on my way back along the 401. At one point I was behind a beer truck. There was a glass of beer painted on the back and I marvelled at the ridiculous name written above: "The Beer Store."

Why and how did the Ontario government decide to name the place that sells beer "The Beer Store"? I suppose that it is the simplest name, and the name that avoids confusion, but it struck me as quite odd that of all the names and all the creative people in the world that this is the best that they could come up with.

When I was a kid, it was called Brewers Retail, but along the way of me reaching the age of majority the name was changed to The Beer Store. I think that "Brewers Retail" is a much classier name than "The Beer Store" despite what some people say about the power of branding.

As I was driving along I started thinking about why they might have changed the name. Was is because people were too stupid to know that beer is brewed and that the people who brew beer are brewers? Was it because most people called it the beer store (i.e. "I'm heading down to the beer store. Do you need anything?") and in an effort to dumb the world down they decided to change to their everyman name?

I wondered if it had anything to do with the apostrophe. www.thebeerstore.com refers to their name historically as Brewers Retail. It seems to me that that is spelled incorrectly. My knowledge of the possessive tells me that for a singular noun the apostrophe comes after the word and an "s" is added (brewer's). Similarly, in a plural noun, the apostrophe also comes at the end of the word with an "s" added and though not incorrect to include the second "s", it is more appropriately removed (brewers').

According to the history, the brewers of Ontario created the Brewers Warehousing Company Limited. It would seem to me that this was a collection of brewers, hence making it plural because there was more than one brewer. Should not the name Brewers Warehousing Company Limited have an apostrophe becuase the warehousing company belongs to them? Should it not, therefore, be spelled "Brewers' Warehousing Company Limited"?

Because Brewers Retail is the name of a company that distributes the beer of various brewers in Ontario, shouldn't the name be spelled, "Brewers' Retail"?

I thought about the name Tim Horton and thought about how I would spell the doughnut franchise. Tim Horton was a player on the Toronto Maple Leafs (aka: "The Leaves") and he opened up a doughnut shop in Hamilton in 1964. Because it was his, it should have been called, "Tim Horton's Doughnuts." The spelling of the franchise should be Tim Horton's. Nevertheless, their website only refers to itself as Tim Hortons.

I've uncovered a few interesting sites addressing this problem. Wikipedia has a note that states, "Note that the name "Tim Hortons" has been officially written without an apostrophe since at least the mid-1990s. However, some older locations retain signage with the spelling "Tim Horton's"." A BBC article has a note: "Tim's started out its existence as Tim Horton's. The apostrophe was lost to the language legislation in the Province of Quebec: unless a business name is simply a personal name, in Quebec the signage has to be translated into French: Tim Horton's Donuts would have to become Les donuts de Tim Horton. Rather than producing entirely new signage for the Quebec market, Tim Horton's became Tim Hortons from coast to coast to coast."

Consider the following sentences:

a) Tim Horton's hot breakfast sandwich is delicious.
b) Tim Hortons' hot breakfast sandwich is delicious.
c) Tim Hortons hot breakfast sandwich is delicious.

Which is correct and why? It's no wonder that people have difficulty learning and using English.

There is a petition here to have an apostrophe added.

Note: As I was driving along the highway and considering the use of the apostrophe, I laughed at the irony of me creating a blog post on the correct use of a grammatical device since my blog is so riddled with grammatical errors. This post no doubt includes ending a sentence with a preposition, the improper use of quotation marks, incorrect comma placement, and capitalization errors, just to name a few.