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.

Documents

Red Hill Dissertation: Chapter 2