A Hamilton Diner Accepted Canadian Tire Money as Real Currency for 31 Years. Then the CRA Found Out.

The diner is called Stelco's, named for the steel plant that used to anchor the neighbourhood. It opened in 1971. The current owner, Anna Karagiannis, took over from her father in 2009. She inherited the cash register, the recipes, and the sign by the till that read, in handwritten marker: ‘WE TAKE CANADIAN TIRE MONEY. ASK INSIDE.’

The sign went up in 1993. Her father had gotten into a mild argument with a regular — a retired millwright named Wally — about whether CT money was ‘real’. Wally argued that anything you can spend at a Canadian Tire is functionally currency. Anna's father said fine, prove it, I'll take it for a coffee. Wally paid for a coffee in CT money. The next morning he paid for breakfast. By the end of the week he'd paid for a full week of meals.

Within a month, four regulars were paying in CT bills. Within a year, the diner had a shoebox under the till specifically for CT money, sorted by denomination. The tradition was that if you paid in CT, the staff was tipped in CT. The staff would then go to Canadian Tire on the weekend and buy actual things — tools, snow tires, a ride-on lawnmower in 1998 that became part of restaurant lore.

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Anna's father kept the tradition going. Anna kept it going after him. By 2015 the diner had over $14,000 of CT money in three shoeboxes in the back office, accumulated over decades. Most of it was old paper notes — pre-2018, when Canadian Tire moved primarily to digital ‘Triangle Rewards’.

The wedding rehearsal dinner happened in October 2008. Wally — same Wally from 1993 — was marrying off his youngest daughter. He had been saving CT money for fifteen years specifically for this. He arrived at Stelco's with a shoebox containing $2,840 in CT bills. He paid for a 22-person rehearsal dinner, including wine, in full, in Canadian Tire money. Anna's father gave him a 10% discount because, in his words, ‘the man committed to the bit’.

The CRA auditor walked in on a Tuesday morning in March 2023. He ordered eggs. He saw the sign. He asked Anna about it, casually, as a customer. Anna, who is honest to a fault, explained the entire 30-year tradition with enthusiasm. The auditor finished his eggs. The auditor paid in cash. The auditor came back in May with a notice of audit.

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What followed was nine months of correspondence with CRA's small business unit. The technical question was: how do you account for revenue received in a non-cash, non-cryptocurrency, non-foreign-currency loyalty instrument issued by a third party? The answer, it turned out, is ‘nobody had ever asked before’.

CRA eventually ruled that CT money received as payment had to be valued at fair market value at time of receipt — which is, technically, face value, since Canadian Tire honours it 1:1 in store. This meant Anna owed back-taxes on roughly $14,000 of unrecorded ‘revenue’ accumulated over a decade of her tenure, plus interest. The total bill was $4,310. She paid it in cash. The auditor specified, in writing, that he would not accept Canadian Tire money. Anna asked. He said no. She framed his email.

The sign came down in January 2024. Not because of the audit, but because Canadian Tire's paper-money program is winding down — most denominations are no longer printed and exist only as collectibles. Anna donated the diner's shoeboxes of CT cash to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. The museum accepted them. They are now in the collection.

Wally is still a regular. He is 81. He drinks his coffee black. He pays in cash now, but he leaves his tip in a CT bill, every morning, for old time's sake. The waitresses keep them in a jar on the back counter. They are not declaring it.