Dundas in 1897

“Hatts, Hairs and Heads – these are three of the oldest families in the historic town of Dundas, and, they, in their various branches know a good deal of the records of the place. In their honor streets are named and big business blocks are christened”

Hamilton Spectator.   January 02, 1897.

In the 1897 perspective, the Valley Town was “historic.”

 Although not immune from the advances that all communities around were making in the latter years of the nineteenth century, Dundas residents were proud of the town’s heritage, seeking to retain the ‘old’ with the ‘new’ as the town was growing rapidly.

In January, 1897, the Hamilton Spectator carried an extensive look at Dundas through the words of Miss Alma Dick-Lauder, and the artwork of J. R. Seavy.

Alma Dick-Lauder, then resident in the Hermitage, in Ancaster Township, was a sharply observant person, who also wrote with style and grace. She was sensitive to the changes that Dundas was undergoing at the time:

“To regard the Valley city from its really interesting point of view, one must see the old with the new, the ruin alongside the modern up-to-date, and perhaps there is no other town in Canada possessing so much of the one with an equal showing of the other.”¹

¹ “Delving Among Ruins : Artist and Writer In and Around Dundas”

Hamilton Spectator.   January 2, 1897.

Alma began her explanation of the history of Dundas by noting its topography :

“They call the place the valley city, and that is quite right. In only one way can it be reached or departed from on the level – that is by the canal route. All other ways lead the traveler up and down hill; nevertheless they are all pleasant ways and well worth traveling.”¹

Dundas in 1897 was definitely one of the oldest municipalities in Wentworth County, with only, perhaps, Ancaster able to claim a slightly loner history:

“It took its name – Dundas – from the name of the long military highway opened up by Governor Simcoe from the St. Lawrence to London, and christened after Henry Dundas (Viscount Melville), secretary of war in the Duke of Portland’s cabinet.

“That Dundas street, then the way of the warrior, is now known better among county councilors and others as the Governor’s road, which is used solely by followers of the peaceful art of farming and the pleasant pastime of bicycling or driving.

“At the time when the tramp of armed men was more common in the colony than now, Dundas was quite a place and only the advent of steam railways saved it from losing all its natural loveliness and becoming a great and bustling center of trade and commerce.

“Lucky accident that discovered the value of steam and saved Dundas! It has been a slow evolution in the town until finally the place seems to have discovered its mission as a beautiful outskirt of Hamilton, with a sufficiency of manufacturing and other business to warrant its existence as an incorporated town.”¹

An enterprise that had a significant impact on Dundas history was the construction of a canal to link the Valley Town with Hamilton Harbor (Burlington Bay). With the completion of the Burlington Bay Canal through the Beach Strip, Dundas aspired to be the western head of navigation for Lake Ontario:

“In those earlier days when the valley people were flighty and soaring as the mighty hills about their homes in enterprise, they projected and successfully carried through the Desjardins canal scheme, and for years fondly clung to the delusive hope that their town was to be the future great city of the province.

“They had good right to be aspiring, too, for at that time, with shipping they had, their port was the busiest along Ontario’s shores. It was in those days that the sight of from ten to fifteen large masted boats gathered in the canal was no uncommon thing. In those days the shores of the basin lined with great warehouses where many products were stored in preparation for shipment, and it was no uncommon thing in the busy season to see as many as a hundred teams tolling along the street through the town to the warehouses at the canal. It was also to be the headquarters for entry to Upper Canada by water. Many a group of Irish emigrants first set foot on soil Canadian soil at the basin.

“The canal was a fine piece of work, dredged through the immense marsh that at that time lay to the west of the town. Since that time, however, both canal and marsh have been gradually undergoing the evolution process, and today hundreds of acres of land used for wheat growing was at that time far under water.

“The drying up is going on even more rapidly now than even before, and the day is sure to come when the finest garden land in the country will be found in the marsh land in the valley between the heights and Dundas.

“Coote’s paradise they call that place of country even to this day, though most people now who use the name do not know what it means. In all past time, the marsh has been noted as the gathering place of water fowl, and in the early days when the men-of-war, stationed at York and other places, wanted good shooting they would come there for it. Capt. Coote, of the King’s regiment – the Eighth – was one of these sports lovers, and so great was his passion and so assiduously did he follow the sport at this place that it was nick-named Coote’s Paradise.”¹

When use of the Desjardins canal was at its height, as Alma explained, Dundas was an exceptionally prosperous community:

“Of course, when the boom of shipping was on, the Dundas people embarked in all kinds of manufacturing ventures, and, having an abundance of water power handy, factories of all kinds sprang up, mostly of stone, hewn from the rocky hills around, and for that reason they still stand making the town the picturesque spot it is. On nearly every street of the place, ruins of some kind or other are to be found, and each ruin represents a step in the evolution of the place.

“Back of the cotton mills and at the foot of the hill leading up to Col. Gym’s residence is a good specimen, which in some degree illustrates them all. It is all that is left to tell the story of an oatmeal and flour mills that flourished in the fifties.

Ruins of the Oatmeal Mill

“Down about the canal basin and along the banks of the creek leading from Ancaster, the deserted places are most numerous, and wherever they appear, they lend a charm and beauty to the scene.

Miss Dick-Lauder ended her pen picture of the Dundas of 1897 by confessing that she enjoyed the history of the canal, she also enjoyed what state the canal and the town generally were in as she wrote:

“But what has been written here is not intended to go beyond the canal and its influence upon the town. Old residents will talk of its past glories; present day residents see it merely as a sort of recreation spot where boating may be indulged in in summer and where in winter there is good skating.

“Today the basin, instead of being as of yore with grain-laden vessels waiting the springtime and opening of navigation to go on their way to Montreal, is a deserted looking spot, ice and snow-covered, its pile-lined side breaking away and ceasing to be of value in keeping back the caving shoreline.

“Nothing in the shape of shipping but a steam yacht and a few sail boats now float on its waters and the enterprise of the town is turned in different directions. And yet, even with other industries, the excitements of the old days are not to be found.

“Today the townspeople find all their fun in the summer season on but three occasions – the Bertram picnic, the House of Providence picnic, and the great fall fair. The rest of the summer time they spend in humdrum monotony, though in the midst of scenes unexcelled by nature in any other part of the world.

“So beautiful, so wonderful in fact that artists, even from far away Japan have made the place their home and spent their best efforts upon the work the work they found so lavishly distributed in and around the corporation confines.”

Dundas Basin