red hill dissertation: chapter 2
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2. Water, Stone and Steel: Hamiltons Socio-Ecological Roots
The Head of the Lake: Aboriginal Inhabitants and Colonization
The city of Hamilton is located at the far western end of Lake Ontario, about seventy
kilometres west of Toronto and an equal distance northwest of the United States border
at Niagara Falls. One of the oldest cities in the province of Ontario, Hamilton has long
been regarded as distinct from surrounding communities in the Greater Toronto Area
because of its unique history, physical geography, and built environment. While Toronto
and surrounding communities are characterized by rapid urban transformation that
routinely effaces the past, traces of Hamiltons geological and social history are much
more evident to the naked eye. Early European colonists referred to the area as the
Head of the Lake because it is situated at the headwaters of Lake Ontario, with the
Niagara escarpment, a massive glacial plateau, offering spectacular vantage points
across the water. For many years, the city was literally framed by the escarpment and
the waterfront. Since the late nineteenth century, Hamilton has been known regionally
as Steel City on account of the large steel-manufacturing sector that developed in the
citys north end and along the waterfront.1Industrial sites remain a prominent feature of
the urban landscape below the escarpment, forming the first and only impression of the
city for passing motorists travelling along provincial highways.
1 During this period, the city was becoming so prosperous that it was considered as the potential
capital city of Ontario, vying for prestige with Toronto.
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A long history of controversial, large-scale development projects, from the extensive
railway constructions of the mid nineteenth century to the urban renewal and
expressway projects of the twentieth century, has also garnered Hamilton the nickname
of The Ambitious City. More recently, the gradual decline of the manufacturing
sector, the hollowing-out of the inner city, and rising levels of poverty and air
pollution have contributed to popular perceptions of the city as a place of socio-
economic decline and urban decay. This image is countered by alternative visions of the
city that variously highlight contemporary urban virtues such as lean and mean
economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability, cultural diversity and/or
artistic vitality. Before turning to some of these competing visions of the city and their
articulation through the Red Hill Valley Expressway debate, the following chapter
provides a broad overview of the citys changing history and geography from the pre-
colonial period to the mid 20th century, highlighting the roles that ecological processes
and representations of nature have played in those changes and paying particular
attention to the historical geography of the Red Hill Valley.
Hamiltons physical geography is one of the citys most distinctive features. The
Niagara escarpment runs across Southern Ontario, from the Niagara region to the tip of
the Bruce Peninsula, and divides Hamilton into two regions, with the older city below
and more recent suburban development on top of the escarpment. Known locally as the
Mountain, the escarpment consists of ancient Silurian rock that was deposited about
12,000 to 13,000 years ago and gradually eroded over time to produce deep ravines and
fissures. It runs east to west across the Hamilton area at an average height of 90 metres,
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rising past 100 metres at its highest points. The surrounding region contains associated
glacial landforms such as moraine ridges, fields of elongated hills or drumlins, and the
two thin land barriers that divide the area into three local bodies of water linked by
natural outlets: the marshy river mouth of Cootes Paradise is divided from Hamilton
Harbour by the Burlington Heights, a tall and narrow stretch of land, and the beach
strip, a longer and less elevated sand bar, separates the Harbour from the expanse of
Lake Ontario (McCann 1987) (Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1: Physical geography of Hamilton (Wood 1987)
These two major landforms, the lake and the escarpment, have dramatically shaped
the course of urban development in Hamilton and they have been dramatically shaped in
turn by the impacts of human activity. The Red Hill Creek Valley, bordered by the
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escarpment and stretching down to the edge of the lake, provides a particularly rich
example of this interaction between social and biophysical processes. Contained by one
of the largest river valleys in the area, the creek runs across the top of the escarpment
and flows over Albion Falls, running 17.1 km out into marshland before reaching Lake
Ontario. The escarpment walls that surround the southern portion of the river valley are
composed of a mixture of sedimentary rock. The oxidization of ferrous oxide in the
shale gives some of the surrounding earth and stones a reddish hue, inspiring the name
Red Hill given to the area during the late nineteenth century (Peace 1998).
Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the valley and the surrounding region was
heavily forested, with pockets of prairie grasses and swampland. Wildlife in this area
was abundant and diverse, including species such as the elk, moose, black bear, cougar,
wolf, white-tailed deer, river otter, beaver, passenger pigeon and many others,
particularly bird and fish species (Duncan 1998). Aboriginal archaeological sites within
the Red Hill Valley, some of which may date back as far as 9000 B.C., include fishing
areas, campsites and an Iroquois village one of the five oldest village sites in Ontario
(Tekawennake News, July 30, 2003).2 There is ample evidence that First Nations people
lived within the valley and utilized its rich resources over a period of 11,000 years as a
place for seasonal hunting, fishing, gathering and dwelling (Wilson 1998). Local
2 Iroquois was the name French colonizers given to the Haudenosaunee, the People of the
Longhouse. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was a league of five nations: the Mohawk,
Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. Around 1720, the Tuscaroras joined the Confederacy
(Wright 1992). The names Iroquois and Haudenosaunee are used interchangeably in this
dissertation, with the later being more prevalent. However, in this section on the history of theHamilton area, I refer to the Iroquois because this is the term used in the past and within most
historical accounts.
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historians have recounted the discovery of Native campsites and artefacts in the
valley (Wood 1915), and more recent archaeological excavations have uncovered many
more sites (see Chapter 6). A number of Aboriginal trails passed through or nearby the
valley, including a north-south trail running from the escarpment to Lake Ontario, an
east-west Mississauga trail following the shoreline from Niagara to York (present-day
Toronto), and two additional Iroquois trails, above and below the escarpment, running
east to the Niagara region (now known respectively as Mohawk Road and King Street)
(Manson 2002).
The lives of the Aboriginal inhabitants of the valley and surrounding region changed
rapidly with the arrival of Europeans and the ensuing military and trade conflicts which
erupted between the colonial powers. The French explorer Etienne Brul visited the area
in 1616 and 1624, and Samuel de Champlain provided the first written account of
European contact with what is now Southern Ontario in 1615. Champlain reported that
the area was primarily populated by an Iroquois-speaking people, whom he called la
nation neutre because of their neutrality in the growing conflicts between the Huron to
the north and the Iroquois of present-day New York. The Huron referred to these people
as the Attiwandaron: those who speak a slightly different tongue. Little is know about
the so-called Neutrals, including the name that they gave themselves, but their
communities likely consisted of fortified villages with economies based around
agricultural production and supplemented by hunting and fishing. Their numbers have
been estimated at between 20,000 and 40,000 people prior to European contact, with
thirty to forty villages across southern Ontario and further south. Wary of the French
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colonists and the proliferating epidemic of small pox, the Neutrals likely participated in
the fur trade indirectly through their interactions with the Huron, who had begun trading
extensively with the French (Noble 1978).
Supplied with larger numbers of Dutch firearms, the Iroquois intensified their war
with the Huron over control of the European fur trade. In the late 1640s, they moved
north to attack the Huron and those perceived as their allies, including the Neutrals.
Within a few years, the Neutrals, the Petun, the Huron and some Ojibwa were forced
out of southern Ontario. Weakened by plague and famine, the Neutrals themselves were
devastated and many of their people were likely absorbed by the Iroquois (White 1991).
During the late 17th century, as the French expanded their settlements around Lake
Ontario in mounting competition with the British, the Iroquois were gradually
supplanted by the Mississaugas of the Ojibwa Nation with the assistance of French
arms. Competition between the French and English for control of North America
escalated throughout the early 18th century, erupting into the Seven Years War in 1756.
During the conflict, Britain gradually wrested control of Canadian territory from the
French, who were crippled by economic difficulties, contemporaneous conflicts in
Europe, and deteriorating relations with their indigenous allies (Schmalz 1991).
The American War of Independence further altered the population of Upper
Canada.3 This conflict began in 1775, as portions of the colonial population rose up
3 The Constitutional Act of 1791 formally designated Upper Canada as those lands southwest of
the confluence of the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence Seaway, and Lower Canada as those
lands to the east of that point. In 1840, the Act of Union merged the two territories to form theProvince of Canada in an attempt to assimilate the French Canadian population of Lower
Canada. The Act of Union was dissolved in 1867 by the British North American Act, which
united the colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the Province of Canada (soon
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against British rule. The British were ultimately defeated and many thousands of those
who remained loyal to the Crown migrated northwards into Upper Canada. Frederick
Haldimand, the Governor of Canada, began to negotiate land purchases from the
indigenous population, primarily in exchange for goods, in order to expand settlements
for the Loyalists and the growing numbers of European colonists. Over one million
acres of land stretching westward from the head of the lake was acquired from the
Mississaugas through the Between the Lakes Purchase of 1784 and a portion of this
area, six miles on either side of the Grand River, was granted to the Haudenosaunee
Confederacy of the Six Nations in exchange for lands they had lost to the American
government while fighting alongside the British.
Joseph Brant, a controversial Mohawk leader who had worked closely with the
British and thereby contributed to a deep rift in the Confederacy, led a migration of
Iroquois loyalists to the Grand River and received additional land for his own estate in
nearby Burlington. Haldimands tenure of office passed before he was able to grant
legal title to the Grand River lands, leaving ownership of the land unsettled to this day.
In opposition to the Crown, Brant argued that the Six Nations should have political
sovereignty over their land. He was given responsibility for clearing much of this land
for agriculture and was soon involved in plans to sell or lease large sections of the
Grand River area to British settlers in order to demonstrate Iroquois sovereignty and to
generate revenue for the Confederacy. Brant was also involved in leasing land to the
subdivided into the separate provinces of Ontario and Quebec). These confederated provincesconstituted the Dominion of Canada. Other provinces and territories joined the confederation
over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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British Crown for the construction of a Plank Road linking Lake Ontario and Lake
Erie. Today, Highway 6 follows this same route past the Grand River lands. This area
was later designated as the Six Nations Reserve,4 occupying a mere fraction of the
original land granted to the Confederacy (Johnston 1964). The conditions under which
the additional lands were sold or leased remain the subject of debate and form part of
the basis for the ongoing land dispute in Caledonia, Ontario (see Chapter 7). According
to local historian Ronald Wright, Brant reasoned that leases to foreigners would remain
under Iroquois sovereignty, but the colonial government later converted his deals into
irrevocable cessions (1992: 315).
While Aboriginal inhabitants had undoubtedly modified the local environment
through selective burning, the construction of settlements, and the blazing of trails, the
influx of European colonists in the late 18th century brought much more dramatic
changes to the head of the lake as they worked to clear the forested landscape in order to
establish facilities for agriculture and the industrial extraction of resources. Although
the colonists depended heavily on the plentiful flora and fauna, hunting various types of
fish and game and harvesting wood, herbs and wild fruit, most likely viewed the dense
forest as something to be removed: at worst as an obstacle to farming and at best as a
source of wood for burning. Anna Brownell Jameson, visiting the Toronto area in 1837,
claimed that a Canadian settlerhates a tree, regards it as his natural enemy, as
something to be destroyed, eradicated, annihilated by all and any means (1990: 57).
4 Many Haudenosaunee people, who consider themselves a sovereign nation and their remaininglands to be national territories, regard the designation of this land as an Aboriginal reserve as
inaccurate and insulting.
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Animals considered dangerous to humans or livestock, such as wolves, bears and
rattlesnakes, were systematically hunted and killed, while other species were driven out
of the area by fires, the clearing of land, and the creation of pastures for cattle and
hogs.5 Non-native species of flora and fauna also began to be introduced, intentionally
or otherwise. Ecologist Bruce Duncan (1998: 84) comments, nothing has stayed the
same. That statement holds true even for the indigenous forest before settlers had
arrived, although the changes were slow and unspectacular unless fire struck. Once the
land was cleared, however, change was rapid and unrelenting (ibid: 84).
The theft, occupation and clearing of land was given ideological support by popular
narratives that represented settlement as a process by which wilderness would be
conquered and tamed. The so-called New World was seen as a potential Eden that
could be brought into being through colonial cultivation of the wilderness. The
Aboriginal population was regarded as part of that wilderness, a dangerous moral
wasteland to be improved through the introduction of colonial beliefs, practices and
technologies (Jennings 1975). As Benton and Short (1999: 29) write,
5 These colonial practices and views of local nature are well captured by the recollections of
John Ryckman (quoted in Freeman 2001: 17), a local man born in 1798: The city was then all
forest through which roamed bears and wolves. The shores of the bay were difficult to reach or
to see because they were hidden by a thick, almost impenetrable mass of trees and undergrowth.There were no roads. There was only one cow-path to Niagara and one to Caledonia. People
could travel readily on water in canoes or bateaux, but on land they traveled on foot or on
horseback Bears at pigs so the settlers warred on bears. Wolves gobbled up sheep and geese
so they had to hunt and trap the wolves. They also held organized raids on rattlesnakes on the
mountainside. There was plenty of game. Many time I have seen a deer jump over the fence intomy backyard and there were millions of pigeons, which we killed with clubs as they flew low. I
saw 112 killed with one shot.
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For the early Europeans in the New World the term wilderness did not mean
unpopulated, free of people. Wilderness had a particular moral connotation. It
signified a place of savagery, the locale of uncivilized people. The people of thewilderness had no legitimate right to the land in the eyes of the Europeans. The
term wilderness was thus used to invoke the image of a land vacant of
legitimate authority and hence subject to the power and authority of Europeanmonarchies and republics. This classical view depicted the New World as a
wilderness to fear and to subdue.
In this classical view, wilderness and the savage appear united as the antithesis of
civilization, obstacles that stand in the way of progress (Nash 1973). The march of
progress was widely regarded as an inexorable and blessed advancement of Christian
civilization across the frontier a literal transformation of the land that aimed to
exterminate the evils of wilderness and savagery, and replace them with the naturally
superior culture, religion, and morality of the colonizer (Razack 2002). This idea is
illustrated in the painting by John Gnast below, which depicts Native people fleeing
from the march of Christian civilization and the transformation of the land by modern
technology (Figure 2.2). As discussed later, this colonial view of nature as frontier and
its associated rationalization of exclusion and violence is by no means a historical
artefact and can be identified within contemporary imaginings of nature and
urbanization.
Figure 2.2: Progress by John Ganst, 1872 (taken from Kinsley 1995)
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Imaginary Lines: Waterways, Railways and Roadways in the Frontier City
The colonial project of claiming and clearing the land was greatly assisted by land
surveying, mapping, and the designation of private property (Blomley 2004). During the
late 18th century, the Red Hill Valley and surrounding region was gradually surveyed
and divided up into grid-like blocks of land, separated by road allowances, representing
the transformation of chaos into civilized order (Figure 2.3). As Bill Freeman (2001:
19) notes, for the many years, these roads remained no more than imaginary lines
through the bush, but for the British this grid symbolized the imposition of order onto
the wilderness, an order that remains today. The British Crown then granted land
patents to prominent settlers in the area who then rented or sold tracts of land to less
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affluent families.6 The emergence of new centres of settlement further transformed the
area and by the early 19th
century the valley, now part of the Saltfleet Township (named
after the salt mines that operated in this area throughout the 19th century), had been
significantly altered by the establishment of numerous farming fields, public buildings
and small settlements, including Hamiltons first schoolhouse, the Kings Head Inn
down by the lakeshore, and a village surrounding the saw and grist mill at the top of
Albion Falls. Like salt, grain was becoming a major marketable commodity in this area
and water-powered mills were built throughout the Niagara area to process grain into
flour (Gouglas 1998).
6 At this time Upper Canada was governed by various bodies appointed by the British Crown,
including a Lieutenant Governor, an executive council, a legislative council, and an elected
legislative assembly (Tindal and Tindall 2000). Counties were created to elect representatives to
the legislative assembly but power remained firmly in the hands of the Crown and the Family
Compact, a group of wealthy landowners who effectively controlled the government of Upper
Canada through its executive council and fought against proposals for more representativegovernment. These elite politicians feared that municipal self-government could create the
conditions for public dissent demonstrated by the recent American Revolution and so wished to
avoid democratic reform at all costs. However, Loyalist settlers continued to push for local self-
rule and during the late 18th and early 19th century a number of acts were passed that supported
the creation of small municipal bodies with the power to create and enforce regulations andbasic social services such as roads, sanitation, education, fire brigades and voluntary militias
(Isin 1995).
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Heights, providing them with well-drained land and a view of the surrounding area,
while working class families tended to settle upon the poorly drained lowlands to the
north and east, closer to the lakeshore (Weaver 1982).
Hamiltons location and physical geography presented challenges for the new
district. It was separated from the lake by the Burlington sand bar; the lakeshore
consisted of low swampy land with many creeks, ravines and inlets; and further
expansion to the south was severely limited by the valleys and steep slopes of the
escarpment. Yet the Head of the Lake also offered significant potential in the form of
its growing agricultural production and its location at the junction of major
transportation routes, namely the trails running east to Niagara and the Great Lakes St.
Lawrence waterway (Gentilcore 1987).7 In 1827, the district town become a port when a
dredged channel through the Burlington sand bar was completed, opening up Burlington
Bay (renamed Hamilton Harbour in 1919) to the lake. This allowed Hamilton to take
advantage of expanding trade routes through direct access to both the lake and the
surrounding communities above and below the Niagara escarpment.
The rapid growth of the port was soon matched by improvements in land
transportation, with new routes supported by the many stone quarries in the area and
7 During the early nineteenth century, Hamiltons reputation was also bolstered by the pivotal
military role that it played in repelling the invasion from the United States in the War of 1812. A
number of major campaign movements took place here, including the westward retreat of theBritish to their fortifications at Burlington Heights (the large glacial land bridge dividing
Cootes Paradise from Hamilton Harbour) and their decisive surprise attack on U.S. soliders at
the Battle of Stoney Creek, just a few kilometres east of the Red Hill Valley (Evans 1970).
British soldiers also made extensive use of the old Mohawk trail stretching across the top of the
escarpment, with Albion Mills at the top of the Red Hill Valley serving as an important restingand rallying point (Johansen 1994). Although rarely acknowledged in historical accounts,
Native warriors from Six Nations played a crucial role in a number of these battles, including
the pivotal Battle of Stoney Creek (Benn 1998).
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often managed by private companies as toll roads (Manson 2002). The reputation and
size of the town grew quickly, attracting significant numbers of European immigrants.
Between 1834 and 1841, Hamilton more than doubled its population from 1,367 to
3,414 people. This influx drove a vibrant economy based around the export of staple
commodities such as wheat, flour and lumber, and the growing demand for imports to
fuel the rapid expansion of colonial settlements across Southern Ontario. Manufacturing
activity, concentrated in the town centre, flourished during this period and a wide
variety of products were manufactured, including cast-iron stoves and agricultural tools
and machinery (Gentilcore 1987).
Figure 2.4: The Head of the Lake, c. 1835 (Weaver 1982)
While the port facilitated this surge of economic activity, it also facilitated the
spread of disease and in 1832 Hamilton experienced its first significant outbreak of
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cholera. The disease was transferred from Asia to Britain and then onto the colonies,
leading to outbreaks across North America during this period. The causes of cholera
were unknown but popularly associated with both the arrival of new immigrants
(particularly Irish immigrants and others viewed as somehow inferior to the British
majority) and with sections of the town considered filthy or dirty. These notions were
combined in popular miasmic conceptions of disease that saw illness as the product of
both unclean environments, such as alleyways and swamps, and unclean behaviour,
including personal hygiene (Gandy 2002). In Hamilton, local people reacted to the
cholera outbreak by organizing the cleaning of downtown streets and by physically
preventing new immigrants from entering the port (Weaver 1982).
This provides one telling illustration of the socio-ecological relationships that
characterized the frontier city. Agrarian production remained central, with social
relationships and consumptions patterns accordingly focused around subsistence
production. Natural processes were regarded and utilized as resources that must be
honed and cultivated, their usefulness distilled from the unmanageable and sometimes
dangerous chaos of wilderness and transformed into fuel for the emergent engines of
industrialization (Stren et al. 1992). The wildness of nature was often identified with
forces of disease and disorder that threatened the health of colonial populations. All to
often, reaction to this sense of threat was directed towards Aboriginal peoples and new
immigrants from countries considered foreign by the British majority (Jennings
1975).
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Yet, nature was also understood in terms of vital resources for the progress and
prosperity of the settler society. Natural landscapes, in the domesticated or cultivated
form or parks and gardens, were increasingly viewed as important sites of recreation
and repose, at least for elite members of society. This later trend was supported by
Romantic notions of a nature as an escape from or antidote to the perceived excesses
and dangers of city life, and related conceptions of the rural colonial frontier as a more
authentic and natural way of life threatened with extinction by urban industrial
development (Cronon 1995). This is reflected in the growth of literary and visual
representations of rural landscapes as places of rest and relaxation, devoid of human
labour and signifying the orderly control and prestige of colonial landowners (Cosgrove
1984).
As Neil Smith (1984: 13) argues, the romanticization of nature was not just a
possibility but an ideological necessity. The conquest of wilderness was nowhere as
swift, as brutal or as blatant as on the rapidly advancing American frontier, and the
deeper the swatch cut by civilization into the body of God and nature, the more extreme
were the attempts at legitimation. Smith (ibid: 15) contends that colonialism and the
emergence of industrial capitalism were supported by two contradictory but mutually
dependent conceptions of nature a conception of nature as external to human society,
resulting from the objectification of nature in the production process, and a
conception of nature as universal laws and processes that shape the behaviour of human
beings. During colonial conquest, the hostility of external nature justified its
domination and the spiritual morality of universal nature provided a model for social
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behaviour (ibid). Today, the perceived externality of nature continues to be utilized to
legitimize its use and abuse, while the universal conception of nature is used to
legitimize particular social relations and behaviours as natural.
Competition, profit, war, private property, sexism, heterosexism, racism, the
existence of haves and have nots or of chiefs and Indians the list is endless all
are deemed natural. Nature, not human history, is made responsible; capitalism istreated not as historically contingent but as an inevitable and universal product of
nature which, while it may be in full bloom today, can be found in ancient Rome or
among bands of marauding monkeys where survival of the fittest is the rule.
Capitalism is natural; to fight it is to fight human nature (Smith 1984: 16).
The ideal of transforming a disorderly and threatening first nature into a useful
and economically productive second nature, according to the demands of capitalism,
played a major role, materially and symbolically, in the emergence of what Harvey
Molotch famously described as urban growth machines: politically mobilized local
elites that share a common financial interest in the growth and expansion of local land
development, and thus seek to influence government policy in order to facilitate such
growth and accumulate wealth (1976: 309). As outlined in the previous chapter,
Molotch and others maintain that we cannot understand urban politics without
understanding how cities are shaped by conflicts between residents who are concerned
with defending the use value of particular places and entrepreneurial rentiers who aim
to realize the exchange value of those places through buying, selling or developing land
(Logan and Molotch 1987; Jonas and Wilson 1999).
While much of this literature focuses on twentieth century urban politics, Logan and
Molotch argue that the history of growth machines is nowhere more clearly
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documented than in the histories of eighteenth and nineteenth century American cities
(1987: 52). Citing earlier studies such as those by Wade (1959) and Scheiber (1973),
they go on to show how the growth of colonial cities was driven by competition
between growth elites in different communities for the development of transportation
infrastructure and public institutions such as government offices, courts, prisons and
schools. Land speculation and coordinated efforts to gain rents through the assistance of
government funds and policies became a central concern for many colonial
professionals, particularly those connected to real estate and banking (Logan and
Moltoch 1987).
For the growing ranks of urban boosters, the frontier city was the pinnacle of
civilization, utilizing the natural assets of the surrounding region to generate social and
technological innovations and to create new wealth. Urban growth and the
transformation of outlying rural and wild regions continued to be represented as a
natural march toward progress in the name of God, Queen and country (Miller 1967).
The extension of trade and transportation routes was celebrated as a vital means for
directing the flows of regional resources to the cities, evoking organic metaphors of the
city that ran contrary to the critiques of urbanization proffered by Romantic writers such
as Thoreau (Cronon 1991). Just as the Romantic tradition had reinvested nature with
notions of divinity and beauty (the sublime), new technologies such as the railroad
and telegraph gradually came to be represented as ways of harnessing and integrating
with nature rather than destroying it infrastructure became a new technological
sublime (Nye 1994).
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As in many North American cities during the eighteenth century, the rhetoric of
progress through urban growth in Hamilton focused upon the transportation connections
that could be made through the harbour and, by mid-century, the rapid development of
railway lines. The first development of this kind was the Great Western Railway, an
ambitious project spearheaded by Sir Alan MacNab and other local businessmen during
the 1840s. MacNab was a prominent lawyer, businessman and politician who had been
knighted by the British Crown for helping to suppress the Upper Canada Rebellion and
the demands for democratic reform made against the Family Compact, a group of
wealthy conservative landowners that effectively controlled the government of Upper
Canada through its Executive Council.8 MacNab was an ardent supporter of the Family
Compact and he and his associates utilized their formidable political connections and
financial resources to lobby for the public subsidization of the Great Western Railway,
pointing to the potential for future profits through the expansion of trade routes and the
utilization of land investments. In 1849, the Canadian parliament agreed to provide
8
The armed revolt, led by republican William Lyon MacKenzie, was eventually suppressed and
dispersed by voluntary militias led by MacNab. However, the Upper Canada Rebellion, like the
more volatile Lower Canada Rebellion which occurred during the same period in present-day
Quebec, fuelled ongoing debate over the need for more responsible and democratic government,
and drew attention to the concentration of wealth and decision making power within elite circles
of businessmen and politicians (Freeman 2001). In 1840, the British government responded to
the rebellions by unifying Upper and Lower Canada to create the Province of Canada.
Recommendations had been made for the creation of a separate system of representative localgovernment but this proposal was ultimately omitted from the Act. Instead, district councils
were created under provincial control with responsibility for roads, education, welfare, policing,
and property taxation (Tindal and Tindal 2000). Under this system, Hamilton was incorporated
as a city in 1846, with one mayor and five political wards, each represented by two aldermen.
Only those who owned property were entitled to vote or run for office (Freeman 2001). TheCanadian Confederation of 1867 subsequently divided the Province of Canada into the
provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
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substantial financial assistance for the completion of the many railroad projects
emerging across the country and railway promoters within the government soon
amended a prohibition against municipal investment in such projects.
Despite public opposition, Hamiltons district council soon began investing large
sums of money in the Great Western and other railways, as well as providing land for
construction (Freeman and Hewitt 1979). Through newspapers and other publications
that appealed to the virtues of progress, civic patriotism, and the allegedly universal
benefits of the railroad, local growth coalitions also worked to drum up public support
(Weaver 1982). Upon its completion in 1854, many supporters emphasized the
connections that the railroad would establish between Hamilton and other urban centres,
particularly in the United States. Politicians from both countries celebrated the
strengthening of political and economic ties between the British Empire and Young
America, often representing the railroad as the vehicle for realizing grand visions of
global colonial conquest.9Others described the railroad as the literal embodiment of
Western power and benevolence, continually levelling and as continually advancing up
the inclined plain of progress, improvement and civilization (The Daily Spectator,
January 20, 1854). While this patriotic fanfare dominated public discourse, the increase
in property values promised by the railroad was a potent argument in an era when the
only municipal voters were property owners (Freeman and Hewitt 1979: 16). Indeed,
9 Paraphrasing the speech of one such speaker, a local paper predicted that the railways would
open a path for the great conqueror and the globe would soon be encircled by an iron track laid
and defended by the resistless energy of Young America, aided by their English cousins, toensure that the energy, enterprise, intelligence and destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, their
language and their institutions will surround and predominate over the globe (The DailySpectator, January 20, 1854).
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as Freeman and Hewitt demonstrate, property ownership and land development was
concentrated in the hands of a relatively small business and political elite who
frequently used public office to pursue private ends.
Hamiltons population and economic activity grew rapidly in the 1840s and 50s, as
trade and transportation routes expanded. The construction of the Great Western and
related infrastructure was a massive undertaking and the dredging of marshes, the
cutting of hills and the construction of new roads further transformed the area as the
edges of the city grew outwards. The railway facilitated increased trade with an
expanding rural hinterland and linked the city with other major centres in Canada and
the United States (Weaver 1982). The Great Western Railway yards were constructed
along the western lakeshore, close to the port facilities and a good distance from the
elite neighbourhoods to the south. Metalworking firms, machine shops and other
industries connected to the production of steam-powered engines and railway
construction were attracted to this area, while other industries such as oil refineries,
tanneries, meat packers and textiles also began to locate along the waterfront in order to
access rail connections and water supplies (Cruikshank and Bouchier 2004).
This growth of construction and manufacturing activity depended in large part upon
the cheap labour of new immigrants, including the large numbers of poor families who
fled the Irish famines during the late 1840s. While these boom times brought great
wealth for some, many were faced with poor pay, frequent layoffs, the threat of illness
and a lack of basic social services (Weaver 1982). Those unable to support themselves
were forced to rely on the charities of the rich or the citys newly created House of
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Industry, a facility that would provide limited food and shelter (Freeman 2001). Under
these conditions, the growth of the labour force was accompanied by the growth of
labour protest and the emergence of the first workers unions. The official incorporation
of the city of Hamilton in 1846 introduced new measures to focus on the central tasks of
stimulating economic growth while controlling civil unrest arguably, these remain the
primary concerns of Canadian municipalities and they were certainly the dominant
concerns within burgeoning industrial cities such as Hamilton during this period.10 The
Act of Incorporation gave the city the power to enter into contractual relationships with
private companies and provided new authority for supporting policing and other forms
of social regulation (Weaver 1982). Greater investments in public services soon
followed, most notably the construction of the Hamilton waterworks.
The rising costs of damage from fires and the deaths of hundreds of people during a
second cholera outbreak in 1854 convinced many that the city required a safer and more
reliable source of water than local creeks, cisterns and wells. The creation of water and
wastewater infrastructure was also seen as a symbol of progress and a prerequisite for
10
Isin (1992) argues that the 1830s saw the proliferation of a new idea of liberal colonialism
that advocated municipal self-governance in the colonies as a means of enlarging the productive
territory of the parent State, expanding markets, relieving population concentrations within
Britain, and creating the capacity for settler societies to better regulate their own affairs.
Therefore, as much as there was fear of empowering bodies politic there was also an attempt
politically to incorporate colonists in their own governance. The liberal credo that to governmeant to steer the conduct of subjects with their willing compliance was fully consistent with
what is called the devolution of power (Isin 1992: 166-167). This liberal managerial view
existed alongside and overlapped with other popular conceptions of local self-rule. These
included traditional conceptions of local government as a corporation created by and for
property owners (Kaplan 1982) as well as various reformist (and later, revolutionary socialist)visions of municipalities as the primary sites for creating an inclusive, participatory democracy
(Magnusson 1996). As discussed in subsequent chapters, variations of these views all remain
influential within contemporary urban governance debates.
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any city that wished to continue competing with bi-national neighbouring communities.
These pressures convinced the local government to take action, rather than following
the conventional laissez-faire approach of facilitating private investment. Some
suggested that water should be taken from the Burlington Bay but lead engineer Thomas
Keefer, inspired by the recently completed Croton Aqueduct in New York City,
proposed instead that water be drawn from Lake Ontario, three to four miles from the
city centre (Cruikshank and Bouchier 2004). Hamilton politicians lobbied the
government of Canada for the permission to do this and in 1856 the Waterworks Act
was passed, allowing municipalities to go outside their boundaries in order to secure
water supplies and to appropriate as much as may be required (quoted in Gentilcore
1987). The Hamilton waterworks, completed in 1859, consisted of a filtration basin and
steam-driven pumphouse along the eastern lakeshore, near the mouth of the Red Hill
Creek, and a large reservoir further south along the edge of the escarpment, with the
main distribution lines running back towards the city centre.
By the mid 1870s, only one in ten homes had access to the gravity-based sewer
system and sewer access would remain confined to wealthy neighbourhoods until the
turn of the century (Cruikshank and Bouchier 2004). Nevertheless, the construction of
the waterworks had a dramatic material and symbolic impact. As a number of recent
studies in urban political ecology have argued, the identification of circulating waters
with urban progress during this period was strongly influenced by organic models of
metabolic circulation popularized by writers such as Sir Edwin Chadwick, whose 1842
Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain invited
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readers to imagine both cities and states as social bodies that require constant
circulation in order to maintain health, generate wealth, and avoid the perils of
stagnation, disease and decay (Swyngedouw 2006).
Matthew Gandy (2004) sees the introduction of water and wastewater systems in the
late nineteenth century as a crucial part of the emergence of the bacteriological city
a new set of spatial and socio-ecological relationships driven by new technological
advancements and an emergent concern with the managerial and hygienic ordering of
urban space. We can see here the roots of a distinctly modern form of urban governance
in which the local state or public sector actively engages in creating and maintaining
basic public services and infrastructure; taking on tasks that the private sector was
unwilling or unable to perform and profoundly transforming ecological processes such
as water flows in the name of improving the social and economic vitality of the city.
The later introduction of new water technologies such as household plumbing systems
brought about a new emphasis on the regulation of urban sanitation, public order and
public health that came to characterize modern urbanism (Gandy 2002; Swyngedouw
2004a; Kaika 2005).11 The development and expansion of public infrastructure networks
for water, sewage, electricity, communication and transportation during the late 19th and
11
As William Cronon notes in his study of Chicago (1991), the view of the city as an organism
with its own distinct metabolism was supported in part by urban boosters who emphasized the
dependence of urban growth upon utilization of the natural resources and physical geography of
the surrounding region. Such views challenged the Romantic conception of the city as
antithetical to nature, a place of corruption and pollution, and undoubtedly also exerted aninfluence upon the emergence of the City Beautiful and Garden City movements at the turn of
the century.
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early 20th centuries would come to be seen by many as testaments to the social and
technical progress of urban life (Graham and Marvin 2001) (Figure 2.5).
Figure 2.5: Artists Depiction of the Hamilton Waterworks, 1863
(Stewart-DeBreau and Nugent 1998)
The Rise of the Steel City
While the waterworks pumping station was constructed near the Red Hill Valley, the
area remained on the rural periphery of urban expansion during the 19th century.
Nevertheless, the area was dependent upon the economic fortunes of the nearby city as
much of the produce generated in the valley was sold at the Hamilton farmers market
or to local food processing firms. By the end of the century, the vast majority of the
valley had been cleared and further subdivided into smaller lots. Property values in the
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area were rising as urban development extended further east but the area continued to
support numerous farms. Many farms had begun to specialize in fruit-growing, taking
advantage of the unique climatic conditions below the escarpment and the development
of such enterprises further east in the Niagara region. As railway lines expanded, the
valley became the site of a number of bridges and crossing points (Stewart-DeBreau and
Nugent 1987).
Within the city itself, the dreams of prosperity attached to the success of the Great
Western Railway had been disrupted by a severe economic downturn that swept across
Europe and the colonies in the late 1850s, attributed in part to the excessive
subsidization of railway projects and associated land speculation (Weaver 1982). At this
point, over 75 percent of the citys spending was committed to simply paying interest on
the debts accumulated by the waterworks and the massive amounts of railway stock
purchased during the previous decade (Freeman 2001). Immigration slowed
dramatically during this period and by 1861 over one fifth of the citys buildings lay
vacant. A series of train wrecks on the Great Western, including the deadly collapse of
the bridge over the Desjardins Canal at Burlington Heights in 1857, had seriously
tarnished the railroads reputation and hopes were further dashed by plans for the
construction of the Grand Trunk Railway, a rival line which would run from Montreal to
Toronto and on to Sarnia, bypassing Hamilton altogether (Weaver 1982).
Nevertheless, older industries continued to grow, especially those related to iron and
steel manufacturing and the use of steam power, which was well supplied by wood and
coal transported to the city via water and rail. These transportation routes were
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expanded by the reconstruction of the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Ontario and
Lake Erie, and the addition of the Grand Trunk and other new railway lines in the
Hamilton area. By the 1880s, the city had grown into a major manufacturing centre,
with a particularly large number of stove foundries as well as rolling mills and textile
operations. The growth of the iron and steel industries, along with other prominent
industries such as clothing and textiles, was facilitated by a number of factors. A steady
influx of immigrants from the United Kingdom and the United States provided both
labourers and consumers for these rapidly expanding firms. Hamilton was also able to
make good use of its close proximity to iron ore from the Lake Superior region to the
north, metallurgical coal from the Appalacians to the south, and an increasingly dense
Ontario market (Weaver 1982). The expansion of the Welland Canal between Lake
Ontario and Lake Erie in 1887 helped strengthen these connections by increasing freight
travel and shipping (Wood 1987). Finally, a turn towards protectionist economic
policies across Canada during the late nineteenth century (exemplified by Prime
Minister John A. MacDonalds popular National Policy, adopted in 1876) assisted the
growth of manufacturing and attracted capital from the United States, as did the
substantial municipal tax exemptions, land donations and cash incentives offered to
industrialists by the city during this period (Freeman and Hewitt 1979).
Fuelling and fuelled by this renewed industrial expansion, Hamiltons population
began to grow again, doubling from 25,000 in 1871 to 50,000 by 1891 (Gentilcore
1987). Land use patterns began to change, with the citys urban form gradually
conforming to what Bunting and Filion (2000) call the pre-World War II or city
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development model: a centrally located business district surrounded by high density
residential neighbourhoods and factory belts clustered along railways and waterways. In
Hamilton, most manufacturing firms remained concentrated in the central city but many
had begun to locate further north and east, particularly larger businesses oriented
towards a wider market. Residential and industrial areas were gradually becoming more
distinct and spatially distant and this was facilitated by the introduction of the citys first
public transit system in 1874 (Gentilcore 1987).
The Hamilton Street Railway system utilized horse-drawn trams running along the
major thoroughfares of the city centre. The system was electrified by 1892 and quickly
expanded, making use of larger trolley cars powered by overhead wires. That same year,
the first incline railway was constructed to improve transportation between the city and
the escarpment, using a counter-weight system that allowed goods and people to move
up and down by way of two large platforms attached to tracks cut through the cliff
face12 (Figure 2.6). Transportation connections were further expanded by the
construction of electric railway or radial lines between Hamilton and a number of
neighbouring communities, and the addition of a new railway, the Toronto, Hamilton
12 Settlement atop the escarpment had remained very limited throughout the nineteenth century
and consisted mostly of elite estates and small communities, including many black refugees
who had fled from the United States. The population in this area began to increase more rapidly
with the construction of the Jolley Cut, a new access road to the escarpment that was the first tobe built with public money. The Cut was completed in 1873 but was plagued by erosion and
mudslides that generated substantial maintenance costs for the City. Nevertheless, the City
continued to fund the Cut as it came to be regarded as a major access route. In 1891, the city
limits were extended to include the edge of the escarpment and surrounding communities,
known as the Mountain Brow. Housing conditions in this area were quite poor and publicservices such as sewage, policing, fire protection and public transit were entirely absent until the
1930s (Johansen 1994).
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and Buffalo (TH&B) line, running along the base of the escarpment and out toward the
Burlington Heights through an underground tunnel (Manson 2002).13
Figure 2.6: East-End Incline Railway (Freeman 2001)
Figure 2.7: The Electric City, 1903 (Freeman (2001)
13 As Weaver (1982) notes, the TH&B line tunnelled underneath the wealthy neighbourhoods in
the west end of the city but ran straight through the less affluent neighbourhoods further east.
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By the turn of the century, Hamiltons burgeoning manufacturing sector had earned
it the nickname of the Birmingham of Canada and the reputation of a city with a
vibrant future. This industrial expansion began to accelerate in the early years of the
twentieth century, spurred by the citys extensive transportation connections and the
availability of industrial waterfront property, the various economic incentives and gifts
offered to new businesses by the municipal government, and new waves of
immigration. Industrial growth was also stimulated by the availability of cheap
electricity, made possible by the construction of a hydroelectric generating station at
DeCew Falls, fifty-four kilometres east of Hamilton, and a series of transmission towers
to carry power across what was then an unprecedented distance. By the turn of the
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century, Hamilton enjoyed its reputation as the city with the lowest electricity rates in
Canada and many American branch plants began relocating to the Electric City
(Freeman 2001) (Figure 2.7). Numerous waterfront sites were made available by the
municipal government, along with tax concessions and cash bonuses. One of these sites
was Huckleberry Point, a popular recreational area that was annexed and donated free
of charge to the Hamilton Blast Furnace Company as part of an incentive package to
assist in the creation of the citys first iron production facility (Freeman and Hewitt
1979).
Between 1900 and 1911, employment in manufacturing grew by 107 per cent and
Hamiltons population soared during this same period, growing to over 100,000 people
by 1914 (Freeman 2001). By this time, the city had expanded to occupy almost two and
a half times as much land as it had just twenty years earlier (Wood 1987). Much of this
growth occurred east of the city centre, in response to the growing demand for housing
and waterfront industrial sites. More and more factories began locating along the north-
eastern shoreline in order to better access port and railway facilities, and in order to
utilize the lakeshore as both a source of water and a waste sink. The City actively
encouraged industrial development in this area as a means of dealing with the
accumulated problems of waterfront pollution further west, the result of both municipal
sewage and indiscriminate pollution from local factories, including large quantities of
oil and sulphuric acid.
As early as the mid nineteenth century, this pollution had become plainly visible to
area residents and by the turn of the century the City had begun regulating when and
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where ice for refrigeration could be gathered from the harbour a common practice at
that time. Fearing expensive lawsuits from private landowners, the local government
also began purchasing some of these polluted waterfront properties and then directing
sewage from privately owned areas into these new publicly owned areas. As the western
shoreline became increasingly polluted, sewage outlets were moved further eastward
and the City began reclaiming or filling in many of the marshy inlets along the eastern
shoreline, using coal ash and other types of waste. This created larger waterfront sites
for new industries to locate and the City provided further incentive in 1903 by annexing
650 acres of Barton Township to create a special industrial district with a very low tax
rate (Cruikshank and Bouchier 2004).
Private real-estate manipulation was nothing new to Hamilton, but the level of land
speculation during this period was unprecedented. Realtors formed price-fixing pools,
received tax assessment benefits from the City and introduced exclusionary sales
restrictions in order to increase the profitability of particular projects. The rapid advance
of construction began to outpace the Citys ability to extend public transit, sewer lines
and other basic infrastructure. Industrial areas and housing developments intermingled
in a patchwork pattern, with overcrowded housing for labourers often quickly
assembled and clustered nearby the heavily polluted industrial lands. Far to the west and
south, exclusive neighbourhoods such as Westdale and Durand were expressly
developed for affluent families (Weaver 1982).14 The growing spatial polarization and
14 For example, in the early 1900s, developers in the Westdale neighbourhood that nowsurrounds McMaster University expressly forbade sales to Negroes, Asiatics, Bulgarians,
Austrians, Russians, Serbs, Rumanians, Turks, Armenians or foreign born Italians, Greeks or
Jews (quoted in Weaver 1982: 103).
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uneven development between different sections of the city involved divisions based on
socio-economic status, environmental conditions and ethnic background.
Up until the late nineteenth century, the vast majority of new immigrants to Canada
were from the United Kingdom but, by the turn of the century, employers across the
country had begun to actively encourage immigration from southern and eastern Europe
to meet the growing demand for common or unskilled labourers. In Hamilton, this
demand was particularly acute and growing numbers of new European immigrants
began settling in the neighbourhoods surrounding the industrial waterfront and railway
yards. In these areas, demand usually far exceeded the supply of available housing.
Frequently given the most dangerous and least secure factory jobs, many European
workers and their families also faced overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions, the
pollution of local air and watersheds, as well as the virulent racism directed against
foreigners by the British majority (Freeman 2001).
Of course, while European workers tended to face more dangerous assignments and
greater job insecurity, exhausting and unhealthy work environments were the common
lot of all labourers. As early as the 1830s, Hamilton workers began forming associations
and organizing strikes in order to push for better wages, improved working conditions
and greater control over their workplace. A few decades later, larger trade unions began
to emerge, typically oriented around a particular industrial craft, and a number of
influential strikes were staged by workers in the citys foundries. The struggle for a
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nine-hour workday began in Hamilton in 1872, leading to campaigns in other Canadian
cities and bringing about the gradual reduction of working hours.
However, the so-called second industrial revolution, which introduced new mass
assembly processes and managerial techniques designed to increase worker efficiency
and productivity, brought about tensions between the growing numbers of unskilled,
non-unionized assembly workers and craft union members who rightly believed that
these new mechanized production methods were threatening their positions. In addition
to embracing new mass production technologies and managerial techniques, some
companies began responding to the threat of further unionization by introducing
concessions such as insurance plans, housing assistance and profit-sharing schemes, as
well as workplace improvements such as better ventilation, heating, lighting and safety
precautions. Many others took a more aggressive stance and disciplined or dismissed
workers who raised concerns about their labour practices and working conditions
(Weaver 1982).
Nevertheless, workers continued to organize during this period and craft unions
grew quickly in size and political strength, due in part to their connections with
international networks such as the American Federation of Labour. Small gains were
made through occasional strikes, boycotts and protests but such actions generally
excluded the growing numbers of unskilled workers.15 In spite of the growing
numbers of labour organizations in the city, Hamilton had retained its image as a
15 Frustrations occasionally erupted into more volatile actions, such as the infamous HamiltonStreet Railway (HSR) strike in 1906 which culminated in violent clashes between rioting
strikers and the militia forces called in to suppress them (Freeman 2001).
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conservative labour city dominated by Conservative party politicians but this began to
change as workers invested more energy in electoral politics, primarily through the
newly formed Independent Labour Party (ILP) of Ontario.
Local support for the ILP and socialist politics more broadly grew during the years
following the First World War (1914-1918).16 The demand for machinery and munitions
sparked rapid expansion within many local industries and created a significant labour
shortage that was filled in part by the hiring of women into factory positions from
which they had previously been excluded (Freeman 2001). While inflation began to
rise, wages did not, and many companies were profiting greatly from arms production
and other war-related industries. As living standards declined and unemployment grew,
discontent among the working classes was evident across the country and particularly
strong in Hamilton. In this political climate, the ILP was able to mount a significant
challenge in Ontario against the long-established Conservative and Liberal parties, and
in the 1919 provincial election joined with the United Farmers of Ontario to form a
coalition government (Freeman and Hewitt 1979).
This win substantially expanded the political influence of labour, both within and
outside of the halls of government, but the ILP faced a severe economic depression in
the years following WWI. Conditions became particularly dire in Hamilton due to a
shortage of both housing and employment. Without the modern benefits of welfare or
16 With a long established military tradition and local newspapers such as TheHamiltonSpectatorwhipping up patriotic sentiments in the name of the British Empire, Hamilton would
make a larger contribution to this war than any other urban centre in Canada. Approximately10,000 men from the city volunteered and seventy percent of them returned injured, while one
in five did not return at all (Weaver 1982).
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unemployment insurance to supply the most basic means of survival, many unemployed
workers faced desperate conditions and this desperation was expressed in a series of
aggressive protests that raised concern among Hamiltons elite. While the radical left
wing of the labour movement provided support for these forms of direct action, a
widening and fractious divide was growing between those in support of the radical
change represented by communism and more conservative members who advocated
reforms that often remained confined to the interests of the larger craft unions.
Following the provincial election of 1923, which returned the Conservatives to power
and brought defeat for Hamiltons labour candidates, the ILP began to rapidly dissolve
(Freeman and Hewitt 1979).
The defeat and dissolution of the ILP was part of a broader curtailment of labour
across Canada during this period. The divisions between craft unions and the growing
ranks of unskilled industrial workers were widened by the further development of mass
production technologies and Taylorist managerial techniques, and employers advocated
open shops in which union membership was not required (Weaver 1982). In
Hamilton, support for the ILP and more radical expressions of socialist politics waned
as economic conditions improved during the 1920s, making housing and jobs available
to larger numbers of people (Freeman and Hewitt 1979). Furthermore, the ILP faced
serious challenges from the electoral system itself, which favoured the larger parties
and, up until 1920, made property ownership a prerequisite for municipal office. The
established Liberal and Conservative parties were also able to gain support from the
working classes. For example, the Conservatives opposition to the prohibition of
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parks, gardens and playgrounds. These concerns were highlighted and connected by the
City Beautiful movement, which called for the beautification of urban space and the use
of monumental architecture as a means of instilling civic loyalty and shared moral
virtues amongst local populations (Boone and Modarres 2006). This goal of moral
development was often directed explicitly at the urban poor, new immigrants and the
working classes, who were viewed by many upper and middle-class reformers as
morally deficient and as primary sources of social instability (Boyer 1978).
The voices of business tended to highlight the related goals of social stability and
economic efficiency in their interpretations of progressive reform. Promoting the now
popular association of politics with bias and corruption arising from ideological and/or
party allegiances, business leaders called for improved administrative efficiency and the
removal of politics from municipal government (Freeman and Hewitt 1979).17
Inspired by similar changes in the United States, many large Canadian municipalities,
including Hamilton, adopted a board of control system that transferred significant
powers from ward councillors to a small elected executive body, increased the power of
administration through the adoption of a city manager, and created separate
commissions and public boards to deal with different municipal services (Tindall and
Tindall 2000).
These influences and sentiments are clearly evident in the urban planning visions
commissioned for the city of Hamilton at this time. Noulan Cauchons 1917
17 As Christine Boyer (1983) demonstrates, averting social unrest and protecting the interests ofcapitalist development became central concerns for the professional discipline of urban
planning, which emerged in the wake of large-scale uprisings such as the Paris Commune of
1871 and the Illinois Pullman Strike of 1894.
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Reconnaissance Report on Developmentlinks the perceived necessities of human
development, economic efficiency and managerial expertise in its proposals for a high-
speed electric railway, elaborate public monuments, and an extensive parks system that
would include the western waterfront and nearby Cootes Paradise marshland. Beyond
the eastern edge of the city limits, Cauchon saw the Red Hill Valley as ill-suited for
residence but just the thing for park development and advised it should be secured for
that purpose from Albion Falls to the mouth at the Bay and of full width This would
create a park belt joining the beach and the mountain and be a great rampart against ill-
health and the evils of congestion (1917: 67). At the same time, Cauchon called for the
remainder of the waterfront to be utilized exclusively for industry and encouraged more
infilling of the bay and eastern inlets. His proposals for the development of parklands in
the west and the expansion of industry in the east were echoed in a subsequent report by
engineer E.L. Cousins for the Hamilton Harbour Commission, which called for clear
separation between the residential, recreational and industrial uses of the waterfront
(Cruikshank and Bouchier 2004).
These early plans presented a new vision of the western waterfront as sites for
recreation and the aesthetic contemplation of nature, albeit in the carefully managed
form of sculpted gardens and parks with commercial spaces such as restaurants, various
public amenities, and the accommodation of scenic roadways for the growing numbers
of automobile drivers. City planners began to implement these proposals but the
economic downturn of the late 1920s and 30s limited what they were able to
accomplish. Nevertheless, land was purchased to establish a number of new public
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gardens and parks, including the protection of the Cootes Paradise nature preserve at the
western end of the city and the transformation of a nearby gravel pit into a rock garden
as a make-work project during the Great Depression (Wood 1987). This later site
provided the foundation for the Royal Botanical Gardens, now widely known for its
cultivated gardens and nature preserve. In 1929, the City also purchased land in the
southern half of Red Hill Valley for use as parkland (Peace 1998).18
In the west end, boathouse homes were demolished and working-class families
relocated to make way for the newly designated parkland. Many local families could no
longer depend on these areas for food due to the introduction of a prohibition on
hunting and fishing (Bouchier and Cruikshank 2003). Further east, undeveloped areas of
the shoreline had long been used for recreational activities such as hunting, fishing and
swimming despite the growing levels of pollution from both factories and municipal
sewage. Many of these areas were gradually removed to make way for the further
intensification of industrial uses, in spite of public resistance. While wealthier
Hamiltonians were able to access waterfront recreational areas by boat or automobile,
working-class citizens increasingly found their access limited as industrial facilities
expanded southward and along the eastern shoreline, using more and more infill to
cover over inlets and extend outwards into the harbour itself. These developments built
18
The protection and preservation of Cootes Paradise was championed by Thomas McQuesten, a
prominent Liberal politician who later became provincial Minister of Highways. McQuesten
also supported the municipal acquisition of land in the Red Hill Valley in order to preserve forall time one of the outstanding spectacular areas in the County of Wentworth (quoted in Best
1991).
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upon and exacerbated existing spatial inequalities, further concentrating heavy
industries and accompanying sources of soil, water and air pollution in the northeast
section of the city while concentrating environmental amenities such as public parks
and gardens in the more affluent western and southern regions (Cruikshank and
Bouchier 2004).
This early incorporation of nature as a principle for designing healthier, more
attractive and socially harmonious cities undeniably had positive impacts for urban life
in Hamilton, as elsewhere. However, it is also clear that these benefits were unevenly
distributed and that the larger currents of social reform during this period were very
much guided by the interests and ideologies of a particular segment of the population.
The design of parklands and other naturalized public spaces, alongside related sanitary,
health and educational reforms, was driven in large part by middle-class aspirations for
orderly and morally uplifting urban environments, free from the threats of social unrest
and disease, and conducive to the assimilation of Canadian ideas and customs by the
growing numbers of non-British immigrants (Wilson 1991).
As Matthew Gandy notes, this apparent reconciliation between city and nature
masked the actual transformation of nature under the impetus of capitalist urbanization
(2006: 67). Such transformations included the rapid expansion of public infrastructure
networks for the circulation of water, sewage, and electricity, along with the
accelerating transformation of peripheral rural land into sites of development as urban
boundaries and conduits of roads, railways, wires and pipelines extended outwards.
Widely celebrated as evidence of progress during the early decades of the twentieth
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century, these changes fundamentally involved the incorporation of land and natural
processes as domesticated commodities and the associated emergence of new cultural
norms, such as the valorization of sanitized and deodorized human bodies made
possible by the private bathroom, or the ideals of personal freedom and recreation
associated with the proliferation of automobiles and scenic roadways (Wilson 1991;
Graham and Marvin 2001; Gandy 2002).
At the same time, the inequitable social and environmental conditions under which
these new technological networks were produced became masked by the fetishization19
of their value as symbols of human ingenuity and the promise of a more equitable and
prosperous future (Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000). Here we can see the emergence of a
conception of urban metabolism that would prove to be profoundly influential for urban
planning during subsequent decades, marrying utopian visions of the naturalized and
homogenous city with the principles of scientific management and the modernist ideal
of the machine as the pre-eminent motif for both industrial production and social
organization (Gandy 2002: 116). Facilitating the free circulation of water, air, people,
commodities and, increasingly, automobiles became the guiding principle for urban
19 Infrastructural networks became crucial conduits in the process of capitalist urbanization,
transforming nature into commodities through human labour. Fetishization, in the Marxist
sense, describes the way in which the link between nature and the final product (commodities)
is severed and the socioeconomic conditions of their production are obscured when
commodities become naturalized as mere embodiments or containers of exchange value(Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000: 122). As these authors argue (ibid: 123), blurring the
socioenvironmental process of their production by foregrounding their character as universally
exchangeable for anything else becomes an amazingly powerful mechanism. Severing
materially and symbolically the connection between producing exchange and use values
contributes to masking the qualitative social and environmental relations of production Thefetish character of commodities often turns them into objects of desire in themselves and for
themselves, independent from their use value.
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planners and urban boosters alike; one that placed emphasis on progress through expert
management, technological innovation, and the compartmentalization of urban regions
and functions, while often bracketing out the social and ecological costs of such
progress (Swyngedouw 2006).20
The Industrial Imaginary
In the Hamilton area, this vision of the scientific management of urban metabolism was
guided by an industrial environmental imaginary that highlighted the power of local
ingenuity to transform nature into productive resources such as steel and electricity and
to harness or overcome the unique and often imposing physical geography of the
area, from the dense forests and swamps that confronted earlier colonizers to the
enduring presence of the Niagara escarpment and Lake Ontario. Drawing upon familiar
identifications of industrial production with masculine power, Hamiltons local history
of industrial accomplishments and innovations came to represent the strength, resilience
and down to earth quality of Hamiltonians. Large-scale infrastructure and
development projects, including the Burlington Canal, the Great Western Railway, the
expanding road networks, the numerous cuts and tunnels through the escarpment for
road and rail, and the steel mills and smokestacks that dominated the citys skyline,
20 This view of urban metabolism can be understood as part of a general trend towardfunctionalism in the social sciences during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This
perspective was built upon the assumption that the study of the social world can be value-free
and that communities, including cities, could best be understood as social organisms in which
each group serves some function in the larger system. Using this model, social unrest was often
regarded as a form of dysfunction or disease that disrupted the equilibrium of the system. Sucha view was used to legitimate various forms of social control and new disciplinary techniques
for engendering conformity to particular norms of behaviour within institutions such as schools,
workplaces, prisons and mental institutions (Foucault 1975).
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were widely regarded as universally beneficially achievements dramatic features of
the regional landscape that demonstrated the ability of Hamiltonians (implicitly, male
Hamiltonians) to produce wealth, prosperity and societal progress through human
labour and the technological transformation of a wild and threatening first nature into a
domesticated and productive second nature (Figures 2.8 and 2.9). As suggested
throughout this chapter, these productive transformations of nature were often linked to
both localized notions of progress and nationalist sentiments celebrating the
advancement of Canada, the British Empire and Western culture more broadly
linkages rooted in colonial conceptions of the frontier.
Figure 2.8: Construction of the Hunter Street Tunnel, 1890s (from Weaver 1982)
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Figure 2.9: Postcard depicting the industrial waterfront, 1904 (Freeman 2001)
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Within the industrial imaginary, nature represented both an obstacle and a resource
for development and progress. Viewed through a capitalist lens, nature appears as raw
material for production like all commodities, a container of exchange value. Natural
or wild areas appear unutilized and undeveloped wasted spaces that require the
application of human labour and ingenuity to be transformed into something of
(economic) value and use to society. While the lake, escarpment and surrounding
forested landscapes were celebrated as unique natural features that contributed to the
character of the Hamilton region and its people, natural processes would increasingly be
incorporated into urban life, materially and symbolically, through the cultivated
landscapes of parks and gardens, the mediation of advertising, and via infrastructural
networks that transformed biophysical flows of water, gas and electricity into readily
available commodities while rendering the social relations that produced them invisible
to the average urban dweller (Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000). The emergent model of
the industrial city as a metabolic machine aimed to regulate the efficient flow of
biophysical processes, money, goods and vehicles through circulatory networks of
wires, pipes and roadways, and social relations between citizens through the control and
compartmentalization of urban space (Gandy 2006).
Despite the efforts of business interests to present industrialization and capitalist
urbanization as apolitical and universally beneficial processes, their inequitable socio-
economic impacts were deeply politicized by the labour movements of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century and particularly in manufacturing cities like
Hamilton. Yet, Hamiltons rich history of labour organizing has long been understood
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through a regional imaginary in which the socio-ecological consequences of
development were rarely considered as overtly political issues. In this respect, the
discourse of modernist urban planning effectively presented the regulation of nature and
natural processes as a matter of scientific management by governmental experts, rather
than democratic debate by citizens. Nature remained external to society and to politics,
its instrumentalization and degradation rendered natural by the demands of
industrialization and capitalist modernization. A pervasive economic rationalism asserts
and assumes the neutral, detached and, beyond all question, supremely rational
character of the free market and relegates nature to the sphere of externality, collateral
economic damage, beyond the scope of political debate and democratic deliberation
(Plumwood 2002).
This would change dramatically as citizens responded to growing concern over the
negative socio-ecological impacts of development by creating local environmental
organizations and new political narratives. The depoliticized vision of urban
development and its concomitant imagining of nature as both an obstacle and raw
material for industrial production and prosperity would face significant challenges as
new social forces began to draw greater attention to the political instabilities, socio-
economic disparities and negative ecological impacts of industrial capitalism and
modernization, helping to establish urban development and the use of nature as
inherently political issues that must be subjected to democratic dialogue and debate.