Hamilton 1967
FROM THE 1967 100TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
IT’S A CITY OF SCENIC GRANDEUR and throbbing industrial might.
It’s a city of parks and botanical gardens unmatched in Canada and a city with air and water pollution that are a national disgrace.
It’s a city of factories and football fighting a years-old fight to shake the Lunch Pail Image.
And it’s a city in transition, a city struggling out of the cocoon imprisoning its sprouting wings.
If carefully-gauged hopes and audacious plans now on the books materialize, Hamilton will change more in the next decade than it has in the past century.
Hamilton’s 20th century renaissance — triggered by publicly-sponsored urban renewal schemes — is the greatest venture ever launched by a Canadian city this size.
Urban renewal schemes cover the territory from Main to Merrick Street, from MacNab to Bay Street, from Bay to Dundurn; and the old North End — bounded by the Canadian National Railways main line, Wellington Street and Hamilton Harbour.
The city’s theory: Public urban renewal generates private renewal on its perimeter; one project promotes another and the circle of rejuvenation spreads out from the rebuilt civic core.
Miles out from the city centre, other components of 21st century Hamilton are taking shape. A $100 million medical complex is planned for McMaster University. The federal government’s Great Lakes research centre will appear at the mouth of the Burlington Canal, across from the new Centennial Docks.
THE MEANTIME, Hamilton goes on manufacturing. It makes motors, mirrors, manhole covers and movies. Tractors, tarpaulins, tanks, trailers, tombstones, brooms, bridges, billboards, cans, clothes, Christmas cards, vacuum cleaners, valves, air brakes, furniture, soap, shoes, sausage, sewer pipes, bottles, bricks, boilers, boxes, railway cars, jam, jewelry, transformers, tubes, tools, tires, irons, washing machines. … And steel. Steel pipe, steel rods, steel beams, steel nails, steel rails, steel bars, steel plates, steel tacks, steel coils, steel wire, hot rolled steel, cold rolled steel, galvanized steel.
More than half of the population of the city, which makes half the nation’s steel, works in or is dependent on steelmaking.
Steel makes Hamilton’s magnificent, but thoroughly polluted harbour the second-busiest port in Canada. Mostly because of shipments to the waterfront steel mills, the harbour handled more than 10 million tons of cargo last year. The harbour handled 1,661 vessels in 1966.
Hamilton industry grinds out a money-making cacophony in 1,160 factory buildings, the base of an economy that supports 3,548 commercial buildings, and housing for the city’s 286,000 people.
Hamiltonians live in 61,298 houses and 687 apartment buildings with 18,318 units.
They support 87 bank branches, 66 hotels, 16 motels, nine taverns, 14 theatres, 52 public halls, 121 schools, a university and 71 office buildings with 2,424 suites.
Ready to spread its wings and fly
They drive an estimated 80,000 cars, 1,200 trucks and 185 taxis, which use 16 car washes, 91 used car lots and 262 service stations.
They own the Hamilton Street Railway — 151 motor buses and 48 electric trolley coaches, carrying 27,291,850 fares over 6,763,590 miles last year. Its subsidiary, Canada Coach Lines, hauled 3,495,298 passengers 3,122,727 miles in 95 buses operating out of bases in Hamilton, Brantford, Galt, Niagara Falls, Welland and Crystal Beach.
They patronized the meagre passenger services offered by the two railways in the city — Canadian National and Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo, and the their heavy-volume freight facilities.
This city is run by a 21-member council elected every two years, with a mayor and four controllers elected at large, and 16 aldermen, two from each of the eight wards.
The 16-member board of education — two trustees elected in each ward — operates 89 schools. Most of the remaining schools are operated by the 16-member Roman Catholic separate school board.
The city looks after its sick in 4,958 beds, including 262 bassinettes, in Hamilton General, Henderson General and Chedoke General and Children’s Hospitals, the Hamilton Health Association’s Brow Infirmary, Rehabilitation Hospital and Mountain Sanatorium, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ontario Hospital and St. Peter’s Infirmary.
Hamilton is 11 miles long, from Gray’s Road to the Dundas boarder; and nine miles wide, from the Burlington canal to Rymal Road.
Hamiltonians participate in or watch hockey, football, soccer, bowling, baseball, curling, softball, basketball, golf, tennis, badminton, volleyball, gymnastics, track sports, sailing, billiards, cricket, archery, revolver and rifle shooting, trap shooting, swimming, lacrosse, water polo, rowing, bocca, lawn bowling, squash, horseshoe pitching, water skiing, motor sports, wrestling, boxing, skating, skiing and tobogganing.
Football is Hamilton’s only big league, big money sport.
Seven public library branches, an art gallery, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, military and private bands, amateur theatrical and operatic companies, 14 movie houses, and school and community centre auditoriums round out the city’s supply of cultural assets.
Newly-restored Dundurn Castle, 19th century home of Sir Allan MacNab, puts Hamilton at the very top of North America’s restored mansions list.
The 75-room completely and accurately put into 1850s condition surpasses even Mount Vernon and Monticello.
TAXABLE LAND and buildings in this city are assessed at $631 million for tax purposes. With assessment value at roughly one third of market prices, the city’s taxable property is worth more than two billion dollars. That doesn’t include churches, government and institutional lands and buildings that are not taxed.
The city assessment department lists the main religious groupings as 93,580 Roman Catholics, 32.76 per cent of the population; 49,669 Anglicans for 17.37 per cent; 45,669 United Church members for 15.99 per cent; 29,137 Presbyterians for 10.20 per cent; and 9,650 Baptists for 3.38 per cent.