I miss the pungent aroma of the city streets in the early spring after a rain, from the time when I was really young. Maybe I was closer to the ground back then, but it doesn’t seem the same these days. The air then was sweet with anticipation. The trickling water along the side- walk edge, under the curbside ice was our little musical urban brook. Even though the ice was black, this little stream was as refreshing as a wilderness creek meandering through a springtime forest.
My home, on Park Row North, was a short distance from Dofasco. Hamilton air. I’ve absorbed lots of it, that north-east Hamilton air. I lived in that little, comfortable house on Park Row for over 30 years, with nothing but positive memories. On those early spring days I would skip out of kindergarten and walk the streets of my neighbourhood picking up popsicle sticks at the curbside. For some reason there were lots of them then. I walked the streets alone for hours until my pockets and hands could hold no more of those multicolour stained pieces of flat sticks. We kids built popsicle stick frisbees and competed against each other’s creations by launching them against the brick walls of old Queen Mary school. The ones that stayed intact gave the builder prestige in our school yard.
Once, I convinced my friend and neighbour, Gary, to skip school with me to go to Centre Mall for popsicle sticks. The mall was open to the sky then and there were lots of sticks to be found, especially when everyone else was in school. My wonderful hard-working immigrant parents trusted me, at five years of age, to be responsible when they were not at home. But Gary’s mom was a stay-at-home mom, so she found out quickly that we were not at school. Children’s Aid was called, and so my mom and Gary’s mom agreed that Gary’s mom would keep an eye on my school attendance when my parents were at work. I didn’t mind, because I got peanut butter sandwiches at Gary’s house.
As I got a little older, I resumed my wanderings on Hamilton’s vibrant streets. It wasn’t long before I was walking downtown, about three miles. You could buy a lot with 10 cents back then, so the trolley buses were mostly winter transportation. The streets were full of people walking home from shopping or work, families sitting on their porches, as well as with kids playing in their front yards. One day, Mayor Victor Copps was walking home along Kenilworth Avenue, with one of his daughters in hand. He stopped to talk to me and asked where I lived. I guess he was concerned at how far from home I was, because he bought me an ice cream and then walked me most of the way home.
By my first year as a teenager I was quite comfortable with my solitary downtown walks. There was plenty of stimulation in every streetscape, particularly along King and Barton streets, and especially in the areas west of James Street. I decided then that one day I would own buildings downtown, because that’s where the universe started.
That was also the year that many downtown merchants west of James Street were given six months to vacate their build- ings. Soon after that, an unimaginable hole appeared within the universe of my youth, stretching from James Street to Bay Street. Not many people at that time understood that an existing fabric of stone and brick had value, and that vast amounts of new concrete, glass and steel, might not produce the best environment.
At 13, I also found myself standing under the east portico of the Royal Connaught Hotel when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau came out of the hotel with local MP John Munro. A Mountie standing beside me lifted me into the waiting convertible for a warm handshake from the prime minister. I liked that, because it made quite a few of the older girls around me a little friendlier. Thirty years later, John Munro and I became close friends, and to date I have not met many people that are as passionate about this city as he was.
So the air doesn’t smell the same in spring, to me, here in Hamilton anymore. It’s cleaner I guess. I must have that messy air gene in me still. I went to university in Ottawa for five years, and couldn’t wait to get out of that city’s orderly emptiness and get back to the thick ethnic vitality of Hamilton’s central core. Urban renewal marched through the original core efficiently, with promises of futuristic, economically and environmentally responsible, neat new structures, alongside nationally significant people places. Unfortunately, over the passing years, this proved to be dead wrong.
Soon after returning to my place of pleasant memories lost — around the time of the completion of the Standard Life Building in 1983 — I enlisted with Nina Chapple’s troop of heritage-preservation avatars. That talented gathering of volunteer individuals working with Nina accomplished so much that has benefited our community’s built heritage and the streets that surround it. I believe one of the empty niches in the high level bridge should be occupied by a sculpture of Nina, as one way of saying thank you. Another niche should be occupied by a sculpture of Gil Simmons, facing in the direction of Hamilton Bay, but that’s another story. I’ll never forget lawyer John Nolan’s passionate and extraordinarily eloquent verbal gifts of wise guidance to LACAC on many significant urban issues within our city core and beyond. If I had learned to speak as clearly and forcefully as Nolan, there might be just a bit more colour within Hamilton’s streets.
Working as an architect in Hamilton in the early 1990s, I was able to build a little and dream a little. During that time, a play- ful little change house was designed and built at Mohawk Sports Park, and a new tennis clubhouse on the HAAA grounds. At the same time, I was asked by the planning department to think about what kind of redevelopment the soon-to-be-restored TH&B railway station could generate within the surrounding area. The resulting report, Guidelines for an Integrated Central Business District, showed images of a pedestrian-only and mixed-use promenade extending from the TH&B station along Hughson Street to a restored Gore Park fountain in the middle of Hughson Street, and extend through a public square at King William Street to connect with the (empty at the time) CN Station.
I called this route ‘the station-to-station promenade’. The study received extensive positive media coverage, even from London and Windsor newspapers. A Gore Park fountain restoration committee was started at that time, and raised private donations to build the replica fountain that is in the park today. City council came very close to approving the placement of the fountain in the centre of Hughson Street after a very spirited period of community discussion. Although the Hughson promenade was not implemented, I was fortunate to be able to work as the project architect on the restoration of the CN Station by LIUNA in 1999. City council ultimately decided to create the promenade to the harbour at Ferguson Avenue.
Soon after the Hughson Street prome- nade concept was unveiled, the economic development group at the City of Hamilton asked me to extend this study toward James Street along King William. They were looking for a ‘what if ’ kind of imagining. That study resulted in design sketches for a new square opposite a future, fully restored Lister Block. This new square included pedestrian penetrations that would sensitively connect to the corner of King and James, as well as mid-block to King Street and the Gore. The proposed name for this new square might have been Sesquicentennial Square.
In the latter part of the 1990s I was able to talk about small urban renewal opportunities available in the city through a series of Hamilton Spectator articles. One of my favorite daydream images, was that of a new mountain brow restaurant built just below Sam Lawrence Park, on the side of the escarpment just above the Jolley Cut. This restaurant, seamlessly blended into the natural escarpment, would provide for wonderful views of Hamilton and our bay, as well as forming an effective retain- ing wall against rock slides in that area. A pedestrian bridge could connect patrons and deliveries over the upper portion of the Jolley Cut to parking off Concession Street.
I also talked about the potential for a continuous park from the Sir John A. Macdonald School site to the west harbourfront lands, which the city has now acquired. At that time I mentioned that at the base of this park — at Colbourne Street extending to Stuart Street — “a model community could be built, based on sustainable design concepts and advanced waste man- agement systems, including public spaces, commercial uses, recreational opportunities and residential uses. This innovative, high density, low-rise and terraced water- front residential community could build on, and complement the existing north end community fabric. The railroad marshalling yards would stay in place, but could be covered by the continuation of Central Park, with recreation facilities above, and rail uses below, providing an uninterrupted connection to Piers 1 and 2, and the bay.”
My favorite daydream and article was to develop a Grand Red Hill Canal waterway in the place of the current Lincoln Alexan- der Expressway. I was kidding, but I had fun thinking about gondolas as water taxis moving people across the mountain, from Ancaster to Lime Ridge Mall, and onward to Carmen’s, with canoeists portaging at Albion Falls to continue along the Red Hill Creek to the beach. In winter, the skating would rival Ottawa’s Rideau Canal.
In the year 2000 I was able to fulfil my youthful dream of owning property in downtown Hamilton. I was able to purchase a building that had been on the market for quite some time, with the extraordinary assistance of the Business Development Bank of Canada. At that time, no one was interested in property downtown, the banks especially, so many thought I was a little crazy. During the same time, I wrote, “I am, and will continue to be committed to being a significant contributor toward the resurrection of a central area, that surpasses the conditions of my youthful memories. My intention with this property, and others to follow, is to begin the process of healing our central business district, one building at a time.”
The second building on James Street North was purchased in 2005, with the short-term assistance of a wonderful private investor who trusted me to follow through on the ideas I presented to him. At the time of purchase, this building was empty for some time, and on the day of closing, my first task was to lock out the squatters. The third building purchase, in 2007, was also accomplished with the assistance of the same individual. This building was also unoccupied for quite some time. Here I was able to follow through on another long planned dream: a short-stay guesthouse in the core, calling this little gem, ‘An Architect’s Guesthouse’. I am immensely thankful to the Effort Trust Company for their follow up support in each and every of these purchase adventures. Today, no one thinks I’m crazy anymore — at least not about the value of downtown property.
The core area has been improving one building at a time, and these days at an accelerated rate. I’m extremely impressed with the young entrepreneurs that have been starting wonderful businesses over the last 10 years, and purchasing properties for these businesses if they can. Soon these opportunities will be difficult to find and will shift to those with deeper pockets.
My last thought is that I worry about the light rail transit initiatives currently being debated in our community getting derailed. The system must be implemented very carefully to ensure success. The east-west LRT route is not easy to implement due to the length and the many physical barriers and design challenges. In contrast, a light rail transit route from the airport along Upper James Street to a mountain brow terminal at Southam Park (complemented by a low-rise boutique hotel/restaurant/transit terminal with very limited parking) could be implemented with much more ease. At this point travelers would transfer to a new incline railway that connects to a more frequent LRT train along lower James Street, with stops at the two GO Transit terminals, and ending at a waterfront hotel development on Pier 8.
This light-rail system could be built quite quickly and provide interesting and exciting development opportunities at the waterfront, escarpment edge, and along the Upper James corridor. Instead of mountain automobile commuters driving downtown to work, or to connect with Go Transit ser- vices, parking lots along the Upper James corridor could gather these cars, keeping them off our congested highways, so com- muters could take the train. Who knows, perhaps with the LRT system in place, the Linc would become obsolete, and we could revisit the ‘Grand Red Hill Canal’.
Over the years I have been reasonably strong, despite disruptions, because I was lucky to have experienced a childhood that allowed me freedom to learn, to explore and to dream. Hamilton air keeps me going, even though it is a bit less messy. But in my 60th year, I’m still looking for that sweet anticipation.