As
far back as fifty years ago, when Hamilton had only arrived at the dignified
title of a city five or six years, it began to put on metropolitan airs and was
on the lookout for a favorable location in which to spend the summer months
away from the cares and frivolities incident to city life. No one then thought
of the sandy strip that divided the bay from the lake as the future summer
resort as only a few families of fishermen had squatted on the Beach. Capt. Thompson
was the lighthouse keeper, and he and his family were compelled to live there.
Old John Dynes and a Mrs. Badrey kept taverns for the convenience of amateur
hunters and fishermen who wandered that far from home in search of game. The
Charbonneaus and the Coreys made their living by feeding Hamilton with lake
trout and salmon, and in filling up the bushels of the amateur fishermen who
were as unfortunate as not to catch anything. During the season, wild duck were
plenty along the Beach; and even in those long ago days, John Dynes had a
reputation for being the best cook of duck and fish in the world, and the
family still keeps up the record. Many of the old boys who went out from
Hamilton in the past fifty years – and we hope many of them will come back to
the carnival next month – will have pleasant memories of the boat rides and the
fishing and the duck shooting in the bay and down to the Beach. Long John
Martin moved down there at a later date, and divided the honors with John Dynes
in furnishing liquid and substantial refreshments.
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Things have changed at the Beach, and
it has now become the summer home of scores of families who want to get away
from the daily dress parade of city life and enjoy themselves without reference
to what Mrs. Grundy may say. Handsome residences line the Beach from one end to
the other, and a fashionable summer hotel is filled with guests from far and
near. It is a gay place when the busy men leave their shops and counting rooms
and factories in town and join their wives and children in the pleasant
cottages down by the sad sea waves, where the mosquito works overtime. By and
by, when the Radial railway company will divide its large receipts with the patrons
of the road, who are now making millionaires of the stockholders, by hiring a
band for summer night concerts, the thousands of Hamiltonians who cannot afford
to own a cottage down by the sea, will blow in their old quarters and take a
ride on the Radial, enjoy the lake and listen to the music, then will the Beach
become what nature intended it to be – a summer resort for all the inhabitants
of this blessed city. With the mountain, the bay and the Beach, what more does
man or woman require to complete his or her happiness? It is the next thing to
heaven, and probably the only heaven some of us may enjoy.
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If it is given to those who have
passed from this world to a more beatific condition – and the spiritualists
hold out that promise – to mix in the scenes of the present, what a surprise it
will be to old John Dynes and Long John Martin and Mrs. Baldrey, and to the
Charbonneaus and the Coreys, and to the early fishermen who cast their nets
seaward from the east shore of the Beach, to see the transformation that has
taken place. Their wildest dreams could never imagine such handsome cottages,
and the whirling across the sandy stretch of the steam and trolley cars; but,
greater than all the modern and up-to-date concrete sidewalks from one end of
the Beach to the other, and the long line of incandescent electric lamps to
brighten up by night the dark and gloom that once ruled over the trackless
waste. The world moves, and Hamilton’s unrivalled summer resort is in the
advance of the procession. Yet all this availeth nothing as long as the pesky
mosquito has a bill to present. Science and coal oil will come to the rescue.
Sprinkling carts filled with crude coal oil will yet make a paradise of the Beach,
when the roadways are sprinkled once or twice a month with coal oil, and the
swamps along the shore with the same stuff. Then will the millennium come and
the mosquito go.
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Then another great need of the Beach
is a summer hotel, where once stood the Ocean House and a first-class
restaurant, where transient visitors could get a decent lunch without having to
pawn their watches and jewelry. The large majority is not educated up to dollar
dinners with wine on the side, but would rather enjoy two half-dollar lunches
and wash them down with the health-giving waters of Lake Ontario. Band
concerts, ice cream parlors, tasty lunches, the banishment of the mosquito, and
cheaper trolley rates would make the Beach what nature intended it should be
should be – the Garden of the Gods.
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Half a century ago, John Wilson owned
a fine form some ten miles east of Hamilton, along the lake shore. He conceived
the idea of transforming his productive acres into a summer resort, and give
his proposed village the name of Ontario. Streets were laid out straight and wide,
and it was intended to plant trees. One of the inducements to intending
purchasers of lots was the splendid view from the shore of Wellington Square,
Bronte and Oakville, the distant spires of Toronto and the Burlington Bay
canal, and as an enthusiastic writer said, “We know few more lovely scenes on a
summer morning then we have enjoyed from Ontario.” Best and Green were the
auctioneers, and the glowing description they gave of the location in the city
papers would almost tempt one to leave Hamilton and buy a home for winter and
summer, in the dream village of Ontario. Did you ever hear Tom Burrows
describe, in his florid Milesian style, a piece of property he was trying to
dispose of under the hammer? No? Then you have missed one-half the pleasure
that is allotted to mortal man and woman as they journey though this vale of
tears. Well, Tom can give you a song and dance that will make you bid whether
you want to or not, but he is only a humble raconteur when compared with old
man Best; and in telling this we are not deprecating Tom’s talents in the least,
for next to Best the writer considers Tom Burrows the greatest auctioneer in
Canada. Well, to get back to that advertisement of suburban lots in Ontario.
The location was free from the heat and dust of summer. Not a bad beginning.
Then there was no marsh, and a case of ague had not been known for fifty years.
That was a solar plexus at the Dundas frog pond. The lake water was pure and
the location afforded all the advantages of the sea-side for its cooling
breezes and pleasant drives. But here was the greatest inducement of all – the
owner would be free from the enormous taxation of the city, while its
respectability would always afford agreeable society. The avenues and the
streets were to be laid out, till the charming village of Ontario would vie in
beauty with Cheltenham and other far-famed watering places in England. The
historian does not tell the result of the sale, but from the fact that the
village of Ontario has no place on the map, we must conclude that John Wilson’s
dream was never materialized and that the avenues and villas did not
materialize where the pumpkin vine and the cornstalks intertwined in such
profusion. The picture was not changed. It is probable that Winona blossomed
where Ontario was planted years ago.
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At midnight on the 13th of
September, 1854, a fire broke out in the engine house of McQuesten and Co’s
foundry, on the corner of James and Merrick streets. In those days the fire
department had to depend upon private wells and cisterns for water, there being
only a few public cisterns in the streets, and as a consequence the fire gained
rapid headway. In our Musings we have before referred to this matter, but since
the organization of the Veteran Fireman’s association, the history of that fire
has been discussed, each raconteur giving his recollection of it. In the
veteran association, there are less than half a dozen who belonged to the
department in 1854, and no two of them tell the same story. In order to get the
straight of it, we have hunted up some old records and are thus able to give
the facts. After the fire had been burning for some time, the alley wall of the
main building fell in while a number of the members were hunting up the leather
buckets and running a line of hose from James street through the alleyway to
the rear of the building. The falling wall caught four of the boys, one of them
being buried in the ruins, three severely hurt, one of whom died the next day.
The killed were Lieut. William Henry Woods of No. 4 company, and Lawrence
Powers of No. 3. William Omand of No. 3 and Second Lieut. Loftus Major of No.
4, were severely injured and barely escaped with their lives. One stranger was
reported buried in the ruins. William Omand still lives to tell the story of
the McQuesten fire. He is now superintendent of the government bridge and pier
at the Beach, and is a member of the Veteran association.
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An ingenious Englishman, fifty years
ago, invented a shaving machine which was considered a success, but from some
cause, it never came into general use. The victim was seated in an
old-fashioned arm-chair. Four razors were fixed longitudinally on cylinders, at
an angle of 60 degrees, with fine camel-hair brushes between each cylinder. The
person was lathered and shaved at the same time, the lather being forced out
from the hollow cylinders. The machinery was operated by the weight of the
person being shaved, the seat gradually giving away under he reached the ground
when the shaving was completed. As soon as the person got out of the chair, the
seat raised again to its proper position, when it was ready for the next customer.
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It was a greater crime to steal an
umbrella fifty years ago than it was to steal money. At the November term of
assizes in this city, a woman was found guilty of purloining an umbrella, and
even though her daughter swore that the mother had bought it, the learned judge
would not be convinced. The woman was sent to prison for six months with hard
labor, and the daughter was taken into custody on the charge of perjury in
trying to swear her mother out of the difficulty. Evidently, the judge’s heart
was touched by the daughter’s loyalty, for the case against her was dropped. At
the same time, there was more than a dozen convicted of stealing money and
goods worth far more than the value of the umbrella, and they were let off with
jail sentences of from ten days to three months. Somebody must have stolen the
judge’s umbrella on a rainy day, and he had his revenge on that woman.
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