not keep pace with the growing demand, and the plant was closed. Today the buildings — complete with original boiler house, pump house, chimney, and fuel shed — have been preserved and deemed a national historic site. Inside are two original water pumps, fourteen metres high, one of which remains operational and is used for demonstrations. Visible from the busy QEW, the waterworks is situated at Woodward Avenue and Burlington Street.
Hamilton’s historic waterworks, located on Woodward Avenue, were designated a National Historic Site in 1983.
Hamilton Harbour sports two faces. The industrial landscape lies largely east of the HMCS Haida, which was towed to Hamilton in 2002 and is now a popular national historic site.3 West of the Haida, the harbour becomes recreational. The Hamilton City Yacht Club and the Royal Hamilton Yacht Club show off dock after dock of sailboats and yachts. Farther west are the Parks Canada Discovery Centre and Harbourfront Park, once the site of the Great Western Railway’s dock facilities. Now a landscaped landfill, the park offers boat launches, cycling trails, a swimming beach, and fishing docks. Pier 4 Park nearby offers lookouts over the bay and play areas for children.
Though most evidence of old Port Hamilton has long gone, one link remains. The red-brick building at number 469 Bay Street once housed William W. Grant’s sail-making operation. Built in 1869, the exterior still looks much like it did when the nine-by-twenty-eight-metre interior was workspace. But the age of steam rendered the tall ships a thing of the past, and in 1907 the building became Reid’s Gasoline Engine Company. Over the years it was put to a variety of uses, until 1985, when it fell into disrepair and was condemned. The new owner, recognizing the heritage value of this rare building, has begun to restore it — an unusual success story in demolition-happy Hamilton. Nearby streets also reflect the heritage of the harbour, and rows of early workers’ homes are now undergoing gentrification.
One of the first Europeans to arrive at the head of the lake was Richard Beasley. Among the first of the Loyalists to flee the newly independent American colonies, he constructed a small house on the summit of Burlington Heights, overlooking Burlington Bay. This location would prove strategic during the War of 1812, for it was from these heights that on June 5, 1813, seven hundred British and Canadian troops, under Lieutenant Colonel John Harvey, set out for Stoney Creek. Here they surprised 3,750 American troops, putting them to flight and marking a key turning point in the war. A section of the British earthworks remains visible in the Hamilton Cemetery, across from Dundurn Castle, and is marked with a commemorative cairn.
Mention the word castle in Ontario, and two spring to most minds: Casa Loma in Toronto, and Hamilton’s Dundurn Castle. While nearly eight decades separate the ages of the two massive structures, both were the accomplishments of men with vision and dreams. Casa Loma was built by Sir Henry Pellatt in 1912, a home that high taxes, combined with his dwindling fortune, forced him to vacate. Completed in 1835, Dundurn Castle was the dream home of parliamentarian and railway promoter Allan Napier McNab (later knighted by Queen Victoria in 1837 for his role in helping to repress William Lyon Mackenzie’s rebellion).
The sprawling forty-room Regency-style villa, one of Ontario’s grandest then and now, earned the nickname “castle,” although architecturally it was not castle-like in its appearance. From its vast grounds, McNab enjoyed a wide view across Hamilton Harbour (then known as Lake Geneva) and within a few years would add to it the sprawling yards and shops of his pet project, the Great Western Railway.
Today the castle is a national historic site and Hamilton’s most visited museum. Costumed guides lead visitors through the many rooms, refurbished to reflect the 1855 time period. In the basement is the brick and stone foundation of a much older building, the home built by Richard Beasley in 1799. The grounds also contain such unusual features as a one-hundred-hole birdhouse and the controversial Cockpit Theatre. In the late nineteenth century a small amusement park operated on the grounds. The stone Coach House was added in 1873 to shelter the family’s horses and carriages. Now a restaurant, The Coach House is available for rental only. Curators have also recreated a Victorian kitchen garden similar to that which McNab would have harvested.
Although the McNabs resisted overtures from the city to buy the property, thirteen hectares were opened to the public in 1878. As the popularity of the park increased, sports fields and a small roller coaster were added. In 1899 the city finally purchased the park for fifty thousand dollars and closed the amusement facilities, although they opened a small zoo that remained until 1928. Opened as a museum in 1935, then renovated in the mid-60s, Dundurn Castle and its grounds now offer visitors access to the gardener’s cottage and the Battery Lodge, currently housing the Hamilton Military Museum.
In 1839, Dundurn “Castle” was built atop Hamilton’s Burlington Heights by railway entrepreneur Allan Napier McNab. Since the 1930s it has been a museum run by the City of Hamilton.
Another of the Heights’ more prominent features is the striking Thomas B. McQuesten High Level Bridge. Son of Calvin McQuesten,4 Thomas chaired the Hamilton Parks Management Board for twenty-five years, from 1922 until 1947, during which time, as provincial minister of highways, he helped launch the construction of the QEW. But to McQuesten, the highways of his day should be aesthetic as well as functional. The high level bridge, which at the time marked the York Street entrance into Hamilton, was built in 1931–32 to replace an earlier structure over the Desjardins Canal. The new bridge is noted for its four art-deco pylons, each of them twelve metres high and bearing the coat of arms for the city. In 1986 it was declared a historic landmark under the Ontario Heritage Act, and renamed for McQuesten.
The McQuesten legacy for which Burlington Heights is most noted is the Royal Botanical Gardens. Thomas McQuesten was an avid student of garden design and, as Hamilton’s parks commissioner, promoted the beautification of Hamilton’s northwest entrance by adding a botanical garden. Canada at the time had only two botanical gardens — those on the grounds of the University of British Columbia, and the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. At that time, both the highway and the shoreline leading into Hamilton presented an eyesore of billboards, shacks, and boathouses. In this age of urban beautification, McQuesten reasoned that Hamilton could do better.
In 1929 the parks commission acquired an abandoned gravel pit and converted it into a rock garden. In 1930, local farmer George Hendrie gifted forty-nine hectares of his Hendrie Valley farm, giving the new gardens a total of 162 hectares. That same year McQuesten received royal assent to bestow the designation royal on the gardens, after which the concept was altered from that of a more formal garden to one that reflected the various vegetative components of the world at large.
The Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington started out as a rock garden in an abandoned quarry. Work began in 1929, and it was opened to the public in 1932. Seven themed gardens cover an area of more than 1,100 hectares.
The garden was severed from the parks commission in 1941 and became its own entity. By that time it was spread over 486 hectares, and within a few years would approach one thousand hectares. Landscape architect Carl Borgstrom greatly altered the layout of the gardens and, now encompassing 1,100 hectares, they include an arboretum, various flower gardens — including the immaculate Rose Garden and an indoor garden — and a modernized visitor centre, as well as
