THE MAKING OF STEELTOWN
The city’s first blast furnace set the stage for Hamilton’s Industrial Age
You don’t hear Hamilton being called Steeltown much anymore.
A lot of steel is still produced and processed here, but the days of its dominance in the local economy are over.
In the 2020s, Hamiltonians are far more likely to find work in government, health care or at McMaster University than in a factory on the Bayfront.
The local steel sector has shrunk to about 6,000 local jobs at the big employers ArcelorMittal Dofasco and Stelco Hamilton compared to more than 30,000 in the early 1980s.
Yet, it’s interesting to remember the era when steel was king. And it begs the question — how did the industry come here in the first place?
Why did Hamilton hitch its wagon to steel as opposed to some other product like aluminum or pulp and paper, or, I don’t know, hula hoops?
The short answer is that it was a combination of advantageous local conditions, aggressive entrepreneurship and major incentives from the City of Hamilton.
A key date was Dec. 30, 1895, when the Hamilton Iron and Steel Company, a forerunner of Stelco, opened the city’s first blast furnace and smelting works in a swampy section of Hamilton Harbour called Huckleberry Point. That’s where Stelco Hamilton Works is now.
And 125 years ago this week — on Feb. 8, 1896 — the owners had a big open house to show off the operation to people from out of town. According to a Spectator account, “the object of the trip was largely to make them sorry that they hadn’t secured the smelting works for Toronto.”
But what is a blast furnace? And why was the development so important?
Essentially, it’s a giant cooking pot that heats ingredients to a fantastic temperature to produce iron that is either sold to product manufacturers or further processed into steel. The challenges are engineering the structure to withstand the intense heat and managing complexities of quality control.
“This was really the beginning of industrial steel,” says University of Toronto steel expert Peter Warrian. “There were lots of small foundries around Hamilton through the 1800s before this but the new blast furnace was a game changer.”
“It would have been a major technological coup for Hamilton,” said Craig Heron, a social and labour historian. “It would have been seen as miraculous, a wonder of technology. You mix iron ore, limestone and coal together, apply heat and you end up with iron.”
“When you come down to it, it was an act of very aggressive entrepreneurship in Hamilton. They were really keen that they should have this and just about every major business person in town invested in it. The city wasn’t known as the Ambitious City for nothing,” says Heron, who is retired from York University.
McMaster University business professor Marvin Ryder says transportation and the availability of Bayfront property were big reasons why Hamilton was attractive to steel investors. Ships could be used to bring in raw materials and send out finished products. And rail was available as well.
But, Hamilton had disadvantages. There was no nearby supply of two key ingredients — coal and iron. So, a transportation network was essential. Only limestone, the third necessary input, was available locally.
The company was offered the 75acre site for no cost, with tax exemptions and there was a $400,000 bonus if the plant was operational by Jan. 1, 1896.
That’s why the blast furnace hurriedly opened two days before with a so-called “blowing in” to meet the deadline. John H. Tilden, president of the Hamilton Iron and Steel Company, told a crowd of people it was “the first properly equipped blast furnace that has been put in operation … and we will have a daily capacity of 150 to 200 tons of pig iron, manufactured from Canadian ore.”
In June 1910, the company merged with several other businesses to become the Steel Company of Canada that eventually took the name Stelco. Through time there were additional blast furnaces that came and went at Stelco. The initial 1895 furnace stayed in operation until 1968 and was later dismantled. Nearby Dofasco also built blast furnaces and the company still uses them.
But Stelco in 2010, which was owned by U.S. Steel at the time, took the historic step of “hot idling” its last remaining Hamilton blast furnace. (The company currently relies on its Nanticoke operation for iron and steel making, leaving a much downsized Hamilton Works for finishing operations and coke making.)
Hot idling meant the furnace was put out of operation but maintained for possible future use. Then a few years later it was cooled down, a process that causes enormous damage and would lead to tens of millions of dollars in startup costs to bring it back in operation.
More recently, it looked like the structure was destined to be demolished, but in 2018 new owners Bedrock Industries decided to leave it standing along with Basic Oxygen Furnaces that went along with it.
That suggested plans to return iron and steel making to Stelco in Hamilton. But so far, it hasn’t happened. Turbulence over renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., challenges with COVID-19 and some cyclical downturns have put restarting the blast furnace on the back burner.
Yet, there is an interesting what’s old is new again twist to this. There are other ways to make steel, most notably through an electric arc furnace — which relies on recycled steel — that is more efficient and less polluting.
But the old technology of blast furnaces is generally what the industry needs to produce lightweight advanced materials for automotive and other uses, says Warrian. Steel is facing stiff competition from aluminum and plastics, so the sector needs to further adapt its products.
So, when it comes to that dirty old blast furnace unveiled 125 years ago, it seems the folks at Hamilton Iron and Steel Company were really onto something. It changed Hamilton forever and the basic technology is still viable today.