While Toronto and Niagara Falls are recognized far and wide as the top tourist attractions in Ontario, there’s a place about half way between these two tourists Meccas that few people ever consider visiting even for a day-trip. They don't know what they are missing. The place I'm referring to is the city of Hamilton and its environments. All that most Ontario people know of Hamilton is that it's the steel-making center they glimpse from their cars as they speed past it on their way to Niagara Falls.
Hamilton is often the butt of jokes, especially in Toronto. Just as Polish jokes from the U.S. are recycled into Newfie jokes in Canada, Cleveland Jokes are turned into Hamilton jokes in Toronto. Recently a TV newscaster who was covering a fire in Hamilton referred to the city as a lunch pail town, and to make sure his viewers got the point, the camera zoomed in on the steel mills.
Hamiltonians, as seen from Toronto, are "Laverne and Shirley" types who, when not toiling in the steel mills, spend all their time bowling, or rooting for the Hamilton Tiger Cats. As someone who has spent many a pleasant day exploring the Hamilton area, I can assure its critics that they are misinformed, big-time. And I’m not just saying this because my wife is a born and bred Hamiltonian. (Incidentally, one of my wife’s favourite Toronto jokes is about the guy she saw on Yonge Street wearing a tee-shirt that said: “ The Leafs, next year, for sure.” Yea, right.
Here, in no particular order, are just a few of the attractions awaiting Visitors to the Hamilton Area:
- Hamilton Place, a state of the art theater.
- Hess Village with its charming boutiques.
- Dundurn Castle and its eerie dungeons.
- The magnificent Royal Botanical Gardens.
- A vintage-warplanes museum and the famous Canadian warship, Haida.
- If you turn off Main Street, near the renowned McMaster Hospital, it's only a few minutes drive to Dundas, which bills itself as "The Valley Town." Until recently, Dundas, which is now a part of Hamilton, boasted the largest collection of cacti in the world. and it still has a cactus festival every summer.
- Over at Bulloch's Corners, just outside Dundas, there’s a lovely fieldstone Heritage House called Three Gables, and directly behind it you’ll find Webster’s Falls which, though nowhere near as big or as famous as the other one, is, nevertheless, picture perfect, in its surrounding parkland and picnic area.
- In the Hamilton area there are scenic conservation delights like Crooks Hollow, where my wife and I have spotted Blue Herons and, once, a wolf. There are many spectacular views of the city of Hamilton to be had from high on the "Mountain." OK, so it’s not a real mountain. But to hear Torontonians disparage Hamilton Mountain, you'd think the Scarborough Bluffs were the Rockies.
- In the Hamilton area you’ll find walking trails, apple orchards, quaint villages, the Flamborough Downs Raceway and Casino.
- If you suddenly feel like a blast from the past, drop into Easterbrook's authentic old-time diner over near the Botanical Gardens. Their foot-long-red-hots have been world famous in the Hamilton area forever. And their duck-shooting machine still costs only a nickel per game.
A trip to the Hamilton area will soon convince you that there is much more there than steel-mills, bowling alleys and football, not, as Jerry Seinfeld might say, that there's anything wrong with them. Hamilton is only a lunch-pail town, you say? No way, Jose.
William Bedford——
Bio and Archives
CFP “Poet in Residence” William Bedford was born in Dublin, Ireland, but has lived in Toronto for most of his life. His poems and articles have been published in many Canadian journals and in some American publications.
