A STRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
Hamilton’s last strip club, which opened as a hotel in 1908, closes its doors,
The tease is over: The city’s last peeler club is closing the door on stripping in Hamilton — not to mention an impressive history of pole-free performance at the old Hanrahan hotel.
City council sealed the fate of the last licensed club, Hamilton Strip, when it approved a razeand-redevelop plan for the three-storey Barton St. building that envisions townhouses and a medical clinic.
There are no immediate plans to knock down the building, which opened as a hotel in1908, and managers have not responded to requests for comment about the club’s future.
But Hamilton Strip advertised Aug. 24 as “The Last Dance” on Facebook and city licensing head Ken Leendertse told the Spectator the strip club licence expired at the end of August. Some residents have expressed relief, pointing to the club’s notorious reputation in recent decades.
Past news stories have featured biker gang brawls, lapdancing bylaw crackdowns and a violent death in front of the club near Barton and Catharine Sts.
“I guess at one point, there was a time and a place for such a form of entertainment,” said Ward Coun. Jason Farr. “Clearly, this is no longer the time and definitely not the place.”
But the last dance also prompted a spate of fond reminiscing by patrons and dancers online.
“Last night tears were shed. We drank, laughed and shared many hugs. Memories of this place will be with us all forever and I will always love my Hamilton Strip family,” wrote “Diamond Jayde,” who identified as a dancer in the industry for 11 years. Chelsea Fermoyle — who proudly identifies as an “empowered turbo stripper” in Newfoundland — started her career in Hamilton and performed on Barton St. in the early 2000s.
“For me, at that time, it was a vibrant, warm place to be,” said Fermoyle, who started dancing to support herself and a young daughter.
She pointed to “support, integrity and kindness” from longtime club employees like Ed Prociuk, who recently retired after 40 years waiting tables at Hanrahan-turnedHamilton Strip.
Prociuk, 71, told the Spectator earlier this year he will always have fond memories of the club where he met his wife, LaurelAnn, when she danced in the 1980s.
But he also expressed hope the end of the strip club — and the raunchier sexual “extras” on offer in recent years — could signal a return to “more burlesque-type performances” in Hamilton. (The city recently tweaked its bylaws to make it easier for burlesque dancers to ply their tease-trade.)
Prociuk has argued the heyday of peeler entertainment at what was then Hanrahan’s included legends like “Cadillac of Strippers” Dianne DeVille and Chesty Morgan, a famously well-endowed dancer who reputedly never doffed clothing below the waist.
The building was originally trumpeted as one of the city’s “leading hotels” when Thomas Hanrahan opened it in1908, according to the Hamilton Herald. Family members still lived upstairs as late as the 1930s.
The pre-peeler era also saw a less erotic but still-impressive crowd of performers roll through what was then a popular tavern — most famously, a mid-1950s visit by jazz legend Billie Holiday.
Even in the early 1980s, the performance bill included upand-coming bands like the Tragically Hip and local legends Teenage Head.
Despite all of the history, John Barton Investments is not planning to save the original hotel building, arguing it is falling apart. The city’s heritage committee encouraged the developer to “adaptively reuse” the building, but did not recommend designation, chair Alissa Denham-Roberts said.
The end of the Barton St. club — a “grandfathered” location — means stripping is effectively banned in the lower city, said Leendertse, with only two areas now zoned to allow such a business — near Rymal and Dartnall Rds., or near Centennial Pkwy. and the QEW.
Leendertse doesn’t expect much interest in the available licences. (An owner’s licence costs $6,700 a year in Hamilton, while each stripper needs to pay $600 annually.)
The rise of easy-access internet porn has been blamed in part for the demise of strip clubs across Canada. In Hamilton, there were once around a dozen.
In the past, owners have also pointed to everything from smoking bans to federal changes to temporary worker rules — meant to crack down on human trafficking — that cut down on the dancing labour force.