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Today marks the 40th anniversary of Tim Horton’s death in a car accident on the QEW near St. Catharines, Ont.

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Early in the morning of February 21, 1974 Horton was heading home to Buffalo after playing with the Sabres against the Leafs, his former team.

As an autopsy obtained by the Citizen in 2005 showed, Horton was drunk. He had twice the legal limit of booze in his system. There were also indications he had been taking Dexamyl, a then-legal prescription drug that mixed dextro-amphetamine with a barbiturate.

Horton is now the subject of an online campaign to put his picture back into the eponymous donut shops he founded with partner Ron Joyce . Many customers, it seems, have no idea that Horton was a bruising blue-liner in the last glory days of the Leafs.

Obviously, this is somewhat awkward, as we now know that Horton was also one of Canada’s most famous drunk drivers.

Some mitigation, however: In 1974, drinking and driving was not subject to the kind of moral condemnation that quite rightly attaches to it today. Back them, and even much later, lots of people did it. I did it in high school in the 1980s. So did just about everyone I knew.