Canadian Tire Logo History: How the Red Triangle Took Shape Since 1940

Two brothers and a garage in Riverdale

In 1922 the brothers John William and Alfred Jackson Billes bought the Hamilton Tire and Garage in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood for $1,800. Despite the name, it was a Toronto business. By 1923 they had moved to Yonge Street, and when they later chose the name Canadian Tire, A.J. recalled that they picked it because it sounded big.

The name came before the country-spanning store network did, so it was a promise as much as a description. That ambition explains a lot about the Canadian Tire logo. A small garage that called itself Canadian needed graphics to back up the claim, and a maple leaf would turn out to be the easiest way to do it.

A customer’s sketch opens Canadian Tire logo history, 1926

The earliest logo in Canadian Tire history did not come from a designer at all. In 1926 a customer handed A.J. Billes a drawing of a tire running hand in hand with a dollar coin, with two slogans about making customers’ dollars go farther and getting the longest run for their money. The man left before anyone asked his name.

The drawing went onto the side of the first store and was printed on coupons and catalogue covers until 1933. It is a charming piece of work, cartoonish and literal, and it suits a company that launched a mail-order catalogue in 1928 complete with road maps. The artist never got credit for a mark that ran seven years.

Where the triangle came from

The triangle arrived in pieces. In 1929, shortly after the brothers incorporated the business, A.J. superimposed the Eldred Pennsylvania Oil logo onto an upside-down triangle. Around 1934 a maple leaf and a triangle appeared together in advertising for Mor-Power batteries, and the inverted triangle showed up on in-store products such as Canadianize Wax Polish.

In 1935, a year after the first Associate Store opened in Hamilton, Ontario, the company introduced an encircled maple leaf with the letters CTC inscribed in it. It ran on catalogue covers, then on the Tested Proven Products label, packaging and window signs. By the late 1930s the two ingredients of the modern Canadian Tire logo were in daily use.

The orange triangle of 1940

In 1940 J.W. Billes commissioned William Punkett, of Oakville, Ontario, to combine them. The result was the original version of the current logo: a bold orange triangle with a green maple leaf inscribed with CTC, and the word Canadian flowing along a curve inside the triangle. It closely resembled the Mor-Power battery mark.

Orange may surprise anyone who grew up with the red version, and old catalogue covers from the 1940s look oddly warm to modern eyes. The green leaf, however, has held its place since that first triangular logo, which makes it the oldest colour decision in the company’s visual identity still in use as of 2026.

The 1950s brought Canadian Tire money, first issued in 1958 as a rebate for gas customers, and a revised logo with rounded corners, updated black lettering and the words Associate Store across the top. Signs with that version hung outside stores across the country. By the 1960s the lettering had returned to white, with the green border of the 1940s.

The red triangle of 1967

The decisive change came in 1967, Canada’s centennial year. With designer Bernie Freedman, the company widened the triangle and made it red instead of orange. The maple leaf was stylized and lost its CTC lettering, and the name was set in a more modern typeface on straight lines rather than on a curve.

That is the version most people mean when they talk about the Canadian Tire logo. It was simpler, flatter and far easier to reproduce at any size, from a highway sign to a coupon. It also happened to make the mark look like a strawberry, an accidental resemblance that people still point out online nearly sixty years later.

A small aside about the money. From 1961 Canadian Tire money was printed by the British American Bank Note Company, the same firm that printed the federal government’s notes. That gave a paper rebate the feel of real currency. Dealers first resisted the scheme, fearing for their profits, until customers made it one of the chain’s best known features.

The wordless triangle, 2014 to 2022

The 1967 design proved durable. The company’s own timeline moves from Freedman’s red triangle to 2014 without describing a full redesign in between, while the chain added gas bars, new store formats and decades of weekly flyers. A mark that simple had little left to remove, and that turned out to be its strength.

By 2014 the company described two logos in use. The Classic logo kept the name, while the Icon logo was just the red triangle and green leaf with no wording. The company says the two are used interchangeably and that consumers recognize the Icon on its own, which very few retail marks in Canada can claim.

In 2022, the company’s 100th year, Canadian Tire introduced an updated design that uses the red triangle and green maple leaf in what it called a modern, bold and confident take on the classic. The changes are subtle rather than dramatic. As of 2026, the triangle and leaf remain the brand’s main signature.

The Canadian Tire logo among Canadian brand marks

Put the Canadian Tire logo next to other national brands and a pattern appears. Red and a maple leaf dominate. Air Canada wraps its leaf in a circle, as the Air Canada logo history shows, and Tim Hortons pairs its script with a leaf, covered in the Tim Hortons logo history.

What makes the triangle unusual among famous logos is that it was assembled from shop graphics over fifteen years before anyone formalized it, then redrawn once in a way that stuck. For the brand’s place on screen, see the history of Canadian commercials. Have you ever seen it and thought of a strawberry first?