From Queenston to Kingston. Ron Brown
tender, baggage car and two first-class passenger coaches leaped headlong into the yawning abyss below. The engine and tender crashed at once through the ice, carrying the engineer and fireman with them; the baggage car was thrown ten yards from the engine; the first passenger car came after and fell on its roof, breaking partly through the ice and being crushed to atoms, and the last car fell endways on the ice, and strange to say remained in that position.6
Fifty-nine people perished that day, either killed instantly or drowning in the ice-filled canal. Although an inquest blamed a broken axel for the derailment, speculation swirled around whether or not it was the cheaper and softer pine used in the bridge that caused the structure to crumble so easily. Sturdier oak was normally used for bridges. Today a steel bridge carries the freights and the VIA passenger trains over the canal. A few steps away, near the entrance to the Hamilton Cemetery, a stone monument commemorates the members of the train crew who died in the wreckage.
With the arrival of the railway age, the canal fell into disuse: “[T]he canal is now seldom used, except by raftsmen for the purpose of floating timber into Burlington Bay.”7 By 1890, railways were bypassing Dundas — to the north and east the Grand Trunk, and to the south the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway. Subsequently, the community went into an economic decline.
Today the town is well within the Greater Hamilton Area, and malls, suburbs, and condos line the old Governor’s Road, stretching out from the ancient town centre. The core has managed to retain a reasonable collection of early heritage buildings, much of which remains near the historic heart of the town, the junction of the roads to York, Waterloo, Hamilton, and London.
The town hall, built in 1849, is considered to be Ontario’s oldest municipal building. It was begun immediately after the town received its municipal status. Designed by a local contractor named Francis Hawkins, the classic revival hall contained an opera hall on the second floor and the council chamber on the ground level, while the basement of this all-purpose structure contained Alfie Bennett’s Crystal Palace Saloon, across the hall from which, conveniently, stood the lockup.
Across the road stands the Merchants’ Exchange Hotel, dating from 1847, while to the east, at 30 York Street, a stone building with a date stone of 1833 has been described by some historians as having been a customs house. An even earlier building is that which housed a blacksmith shop. Built of stone, but with newer windows, it stands at the corner of Main and the Governor’s Road.
But one of most beguiling of Dundas’s historic structures is the “doctor’s house.” Originally located on Main Street, it was moved in 1974, and is now a private residence on Albert Street. Constructed of board and batten, this tiny office was built in 1848 for Dr. James Mitchell, but was more popularly known as the “Bates’ Office,” named for its last practitioner, Dr. Clarence Bates, who practised in the building from 1935 until 1974.
In the oldest section of town, that bounded by York, Dundas, and King, handsome old homes line the shady streets. Number 32 Cross Street is one of the more interesting. Built by lawyer William Notman, the house for many years contained the famous Notman cannon. This six-pounder, a gift from Lord Selkirk, was used during the 1837 rebellion. Notman faithfully fired the cannon each May 24, up until his death in 1865. Today the famous cannon has found a home in front of the town hall, and grand homes still dominate Cross and Victoria streets, marking an historic part of town that is now a designated heritage district.
The famous canal today is little more than a weedy ditch, its turning basin now filled in. Its route through the Burlington Heights beach ridge remains, though its entrance to Cootes Paradise is now barred to boats. A paved cycling and walking trail leads from beneath the bridges to the Pier 4 Park at Hamilton’s west end. Historic plaques recount the many historic chapters in the life of this early, yet often ignored, waterway. High overhead loom the bridges of CN Rail’s tracks, the McQuesten High Level Bridge, and the later Highway 403 bridge. Stairs lead from the ends of the McQuesten Bridge on busy York Street to the water, where, about halfway down, tucked into the overgrown hillside, lie the stone abutments that witnessed the horrific train wreck of 1857.
Marking the far west end of Lake Ontario is a wave-washed sandbar. This long spit of land separating the lake from Burlington Bay (Lake Geneva) evolved over thousands of years. As the creeks that flowed down the Niagara Escarpment emptied into the lake, they met with easterly currents that slowed the flow, depositing the silt and sand carried by the waters.
The sandbar was long an aboriginal trail that Simcoe incorporated into his network of military roads. To establish his presence, he ordered the construction of the King’s Head Inn, the first permanent building on the strip. In 1813 the invading Americans burned the building (although its sign survived and is displayed in the Brant Museum in Burlington). At this time, the Beach Strip was a wilderness, its dunes covered with beach grasses and shrubs. At the north end, waves would occasionally cut through the sand, enabling small vessels to pole their way through and proceed on to Cootes Paradise and the village of Dundas at its head.
In 1826, at the urging of a local industrialist, James Crooks, who operated mills at the now ghost town of Crooks Hollow, a more permanent canal was cut through the sandbar, a change that would alter the destinies of the new town of Hamilton and of the older Dundas. Up until then, any goods being exported from Dundas had to be lifted over the sandbar to ships waiting on the other side, or poled through whenever the gap opened. On July 1, 1826, Ontario’s lieutenant governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, presided over the opening of the new channel. But it proved to be an inauspicious start. No sooner had the first vessel, the General Brock, navigated the new waterway, than it ran aground.
Vicious winter storms in 1829 and 1830 wrecked the piers and the first lighthouse. Finally, in 1832, the finishing touches were added, and the new canal, now properly constructed, opened. Two mast lights replaced the older light, but these proved inadequate, and in 1837 an octagonal wooden light tower was built on a sturdy stone foundation. A wooden ferry ushered any road traffic across the narrow channel.
But more devastation was to come. In 1856, the sparks from a passing steamer set fire to the new pier and lighthouse. Both were destroyed, and a new light tower had to be built the following year. Designed in the circular “imperial” style common on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, the new tower could boast stone walls 2.2 metres thick. The keeper’s brick house was also rebuilt beside it. This time the lighthouse was constructed to withstand storms and ships, which it did, until a new light was placed in a more prominent position atop the canal lift bridge in 1961. Though now abandoned, the stone tower and keeper’s house still stand.
This historic lighthouse tower and keeper’s house still survive beside the Burlington Canal. The light was replaced by a new structure in 1969.
A few hotels were built to cater to residents of the increasingly industrialized Hamilton, including the Dynes Hotel in 1846, and the Baldry House soon after. Then, in 1875, the Hamilton and Northwestern Railway laid its tracks along the lake side of the beach, ending forever the natural oasis. Almost immediately more hotels began to appear. First the Ocean House, then the Brant House — located in the former home of Joseph Brant — and a few years later, the similarly named Brant Hotel opened nearby. One of the grandest buildings on the spit was that of the Royal Hamilton Yacht Club. Opened in 1891, the two-storey wooden structure boasted wraparound balconies elaborately decorated with fretwork. The club was located next to the lighthouse, but sadly was lost to fire in 1915.
The first bridge constructed over the canal was a swing bridge, the site of a rail accident in 1891 that was all too reminiscent of the Desjardins tragedy thirty-four years earlier. When a fierce gale reduced visibility along the beach, the engineer failed to see the red light signalling that the bridge was open. As the Hamilton Spectator of August 31, 1891, recounted: