A Walking Tour of Hamilton, Ontario

De: Doug Gelbert

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

There is no better way to see Canada than on foot. And there is no better way to appreciate what you are looking at than with a walking tour. Whether you are preparing for a road trip or just out to look at your own town in a new way, a downloadable walking tour from walkthetown.com is ready to explore when you are. Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. Every tour also includes a quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on North American streets. Hamilton has hooked on to several nicknames through the years but none has ever been more fitting than “The Ambitious City.” That ambition was in its genes, tracing back to founder George Hamilton. George was one of four sons of Robert Hamilton, a Scottish businessman who landed a contract to supply goods to the British Army at Fort Niagara in 1780 which became the basis of the family fortune. George Hamilton signed on to the War of 1812 when he was 24 years old and during his service likely gained knowledge that the creation of the Gore District was being planned for colonial Upper Canada. In 1815 Hamilton purchased 257 acres from James Durand with an eye towards building a town that would become the new district capital. New neighbour Nathaniel Hughson was all in on the scheme and together they offered land to the crown for a courthouse and jail. With help from Durand in the House of Assembly the Gore District was hatched on March 22, 1816 and the as yet non-existent Hamilton was named the district town. George got to work laying out a street grid for the townsite with 80 lots set up as homesites. Just being named a district capital was no guarantee for a young town’s success. Many a government in the North American frontier moved around in the early 1800s and private towns were especially vulnerable to such vagaries. Hamilton, motivated as much by the desire to keep his land valuable as civic pride, worked hard to ensure the survival of his town. The Burlington Canal was constructed in 1823 and the new court house was ready by 1827, at about the same time all his original lots were finally sold. He established an important market and added more building lots from his land. George Hamilton died in 1836, not living to see his namesake town achieve Official City status a decade later but he had put the venture on solid footing. One of the last important things to happen during Hamilton’s lifetime was the chartering of the London and Gore Railroad on March 6, 1834. The line ran from Niagara Falls to Windsor and when it was opened in 1854 the then-named Great Western Railway (GWR) lopped 200 miles off the journey from New York City and Boston to the boomtowns of Chicago and Milwaukee. The GWR located its maintenance shops in Hamilton and the city’s industrial foundation was laid. Soon there would be iron and steel mills. And then beer and tobacco and textiles. Procter & Gamble and the Beech-Nut Packing Company established their first operations outside the United States in Hamilton. Studebaker built an assembly line in the city. Hamilton was a working town, a union town, a progressive town. The first telephone exchange in the British Empire was set up here in 1878. Most of the industry has shuttered now but Hamilton has segued into the service business, growing to over 500,000 residents with amalgamations of surrounding municipalities. Along the way the “Ambitious City” made a concerted effort to rid itself of the “Victorian rot” on the streets and embrace modernistic structures. To see the results of those efforts our walking tour of the hub of the Golden Horseshoe will begin at the point that George Hamilton designed to be the most important intersection of his nascent town grid, where King Street, the main east-west road, crossed James Street, named for one of Hughson’s sons and the principle north-south thoroughfare...