A short look at Hamilton, Ontario

[Wigs]

All photos taken with a 3 year old midrange Motorola phone. No Photoshop, colour correction here folks. Just what my android phone could capture through my eye



Hamilton primer. <3 min video to give one a quick overview of Canada's Steel making capital, a city of ~620,000 residents at the Western tip of Lake Ontario.
According to Statistics Canada, from 2018-2023 the city grew at an average rate of 9,200 people/year. Between 2022-2023 the growth rate increased to almost 12,500.
• Video Link

Hiking in the Hamilton area is good thanks to the Niagara Escarpment, the ridge that goes from Niagara Falls all the way to Georgian Bay.


One of the interesting features of the Niagara escarpment in Hamilton is Devil's Punchbowl.

The Devil’s Punchbowl is one of the Niagara Escarpment’s most amazing sights, created at the end of the last ice age by huge melt-water rivers that plunged over the Stoney Creek Escarpment, thus carving the Punchbowl and gorge.

It's better to come here in spring when the ribbon waterfall drops 33.8 metres/111 foot into the gorge below.

A smaller 5.5 metre/18 foot waterfall is in the gorge as well.

• Video Link

Video of the main waterfall. You can really make out the different layers of rock
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From the bottom of the falls, one can see the many different coloured rock layers of the Escarpment. The Punchbowl is the only area where one can view such a large vertical display of Ordovician and Silurian stratified rock. Some of the layers include Queenston Formation red shale, Cabot Head grey shale, limestone and shale dolomite.

There is a spectacular view of Stoney Creek and Hamilton Harbour from the lookout, not to mention the view down into the seemingly bottomless gorge.

Phone camera doesn't do it justice. On a clear day you could see the CN tower in Toronto from across Lake Ontario.





Near the Harbourfront, Dofasco is making steel. The green buildings with smokestacks nearby. If I'm not mistaken Dofasco still employs around 4,000 people making steel 24/7/365.
The Ontario provincial government is giving them $500M to replace old higher polluting equipment with modern electric arc furnaces. Those might not be in operation until 2028-2030 but the air will be noticeably cleaner for Hamilton residents


You can barely make out downtown Hamilton between the trees


Bayfront Park - Hamilton harbour






Mini sailboats teaching people how to sail. There's a single adult in each tiny boat


Hess Village - George St
Old Victorian era homes turned into restaurants, bars, etc.






Hamilton is becoming a city where 30-34 storey residential towers are becoming the standard for new builds. There are numerous cranes around the downtown core. Even McMaster university built a Graduate school student residence tower


Hamilton is the birth place of Canada's most popular coffee shop chain, Tim Hortons. The first location opened in 1964 on Ottawa St, just east of downtown.






This twin tower project, King William Urban Rentals is 525 units








Hamilton is seen as a "misfit" old industrial city in Canada with a less than stellar public perception reputation, so it's fitting to sell Misfits band onesies






75 James is a gargantuan 34 storey, 635 unit condo tower


On Augusta St, we stumbled upon what looked to be a new build advertising a roof top bar. We found the elevator at the back of a boutique hotel lobby that took us to the 7th floor.


We were rewarded with a great view and cool breeze.




Hamilton's current tallest is the c.1974, 43-storey Landmark Place residential tower at 130 metres/427 feet). This building has been fully renovated and has some interesting amenities to go along with some of the best views in the city
https://www.apartments.com/100-main-...on-on/ve2r1ce/











You know you grew up in southern Ontario when you remember Becker's convenience stores with the Bell telephone booth out front. A sign of the 1980s/1990s


Hamilton has some of the most fantastic residential architecture in Canada from a period of roughly 1880-1930. Foolishly, I forgot to snap photos on our walkabout.
This was the John Patterson house, 183 James St. South, c. 1887. Roughly 7,200 square feet. He was an Irish industrialist that built lumber yards/mill/planing factory and then became a large landowner and real estate developer towards the end of the 19th century.

Here's a great drone video showing a bird's eye view of Durand, where the wealthy merchant class built their mansions in the late 19th-early 20th century. These homes can typically sell for between $1-3 Million CAD ($740k-$2.2M USD) or more for the largest ones.
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/Fin

[benp]

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[benp]

Thanks for the tour. I need to start making day trips there and spend time visiting.

[Wigs]

benp, you accidentally quoted my entire post.. twice!

But yes, please get some Buffalonians to start making day trips trip to Hamilton soon. My Buffalonian friend Bill stated "you can feel the energy building up with all of the cranes in the sky and the new 30 floor towers in various stages of construction"

Unfortunately I didn't do Hamilton justice in my quick point and shoot day trip. It would be neat to see it through your lens

[O-tacular]

You should work in tourism for southern Ontario and Buffalo Wigs!

[giallo]

Wow. Hamilton is seeing a ton of development. Great shots, Wigs.

[Echoes]

Good things happening in the Hammer. Thanks for sharing!

[MayDay]

Seems like quite a few "misfit" cities are having something of a glow-up lately - thanks for the pics!

[xzmattzx]

Nice pictures! I have not spent much time in Hamilton in a few years. One year I'll have to attend a CFL game there. I guess the Tiger-Cats would be my home team, since my summers have been spent in Port Colborne.

[niwell]

Good stuff!! I see you made it to a number of different areas including some I cycled around when visiting a pal in the Hammer a few months back. There's a huge difference in the inner-city today compared to my first tour of the city way back in 2009.

[Cirrus]

3/4 of a million people, about the same as Birmingham, Alburquerque, and Rochester. Looks pretty darn great.

[Wigs]

Thanks for the kind words, guys. I hope it encourages some of you to visit and take photos so we can see the city through your lens!

niwell, I've been closely familiar with Hamilton since 2000-2001. James St. North was being held together mostly by the Portuguese community and the last Italian holdouts. Now it's much more multicultural and vacant storefronts have been activated by numerous restaurants and shops opened up in the past 5 or so years. Covid lockdowns were not kind to Hamilton's progress.
There's still some vacant and boarded up properties but even decades old dive bar/music venue This Ain't Hollywood (claiming the building had been a bar since 1893) has now turned into a French bistro

I'm glad I got to have a beer in there a couple of times when it was a dive, but also glad to see it see new life as something better for all of the new residents that will be populating the new highrise towers.



https://maps.app.goo.gl/rDvLtRW2n4g6QJsE6

2 decades ago, Jackson Square did not have a grocery store or a nice LCBO (Ontario liquor store) or revitalized movie theatre back then. The Eaton Centre attached to Jackson Square existed but you could tell even back then its days were numbered. The ambitious multi tower condo project on that site seems to have stalled out.
The farmers' market had yet to be revitalized with a wall of glass, bigger signage, and better connections to the main library branch above.



35 York Blvd
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AxaBmNsd4XiqZnHf8

There were no plans/funding for LRT/light rail like there are now. Hope that starts construction soon! I haven't kept on top of Metrolinx plans, timetable.

2009 was probably around the time when the first wave of Torontonians took notice of Hamilton as a city with then affordable real estate where one could buy a single family house right in the city for a cheaper mortgage than people were throwing away on rent in Toronto. The first batch of Torontonians saw themselves as almost rust belt pioneers helping to make Hamilton a little better, little cooler and more lively one building at a time.

By Canadian standards, Hamilton still feels "rough around the edges" as it was a heavily industrialized city with many factories no longer existent. However, my biggest gripe (besides one way streets King and Main that function as downtown speedways thru the city) we both noticed was litter. Hamilton is full of litter bugs so the city needs a team to keep on top of it. It was most noticeable on King St. particularly right near Jackson Square in the heart of downtown. Not a good impression for visitors, particularly those from USA that expect Canada to live up to its "cleaner" stereotype.

All in all Hamilton is on its way up to become a better more complete, more vibrant city.

[Steely Dan]

Awesome pics!

Love this thread.

Out of all the major great lakes cities, Hamilton is my biggest blind spot (never been there), but it sure looks like it's worth checking out.

[Kilgore Trout]

I've always been curious about Hamilton. One day!

Incidentally, I've been seeing Madrí beer pop up around here lately and I was intrigued because I'd never heard of it. Apparently it's a new beer introduced to the British market by Molson Coors in 2020, it quickly became a hit and is now brewed in Canada as well. It has no connection to Spain other than one of Molson Coors' Spanish subsidiaries providing feedback on the recipe

[Wigs]

Thanks, guys.

Steely, if you visited Hamilton first BEFORE Toronto you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you do it after you might be very underwhelmed haha. I'd recommend a Buffalo->Niagara Falls>Hamilton>Toronto trip if you could swing it. Make a lunch stop in Niagara-on-The-Lake for a bit of a "this is too pretty almost Disneyfied" effect.

Kilgore, why do you gotta ruin that for me.
I foolishly assumed it was imported from Spain. Paid $9.75 CAD ($7.25 USD) for a new to me beer with a great view and nice breeze 7 floors above the street.