Raise the Hammer

Funny but true post. All my life I have lived on the mountain. West mountain, until recently I tell people I live in the central mountain. But observing the map I actually live in East Hamilton? Fennel and Upper Wentworth, who would have thought that is East Hamilton neighbourhood? But if you ask me where Corktown is I know, where is Durand? I know that as well. I never lived there though. Delta, St. Clair and Westdale easy, and of course we all know where the North End is. From now on I will tell people I am from East Hamilton. I am sure they will ask me if I live near Parkdale Avenue though, lol. Great Post.

Comment edited by RonMiller on 2011-06-10 15:01:22

Calling that East Hamilton is going to confuse people. I mean, it seems pretty reasonable to think of Limeridge Mall as the centre of the mountain.

Either way, though, the mountain is such a large and simple grid that it's simple to just refer to the local cross-streets.

For me the harder area to discuss is Stoney Creek - I mean, people just use the term Stoney Creek to refer to the entire eastermost region of the city, both upper and lower.

Great post and this is why I feel Hamilton lost an opportunity to rename itself during amalgamation. Something like Macassa Falls would have been great the people would have used that along with their community names so it would be less of the Hamilton vs the smaller communities amalgamated with.

You basically point out the qualities of suburban neighborhoods.

Like you said, on the mountain there doesn't seem to be many distinguishing features that could be used to easily label a neighborhood. How does Berrisfield differ from say Rolston (Westmount)? It doesn't really, except maybe for the age of housing stock.

I wouldn't say mountain neighborhoods are lost, I'd say they just aren't as important as in denser urban settings.

Comment edited by mike_sak on 2011-06-10 22:17:35

I do not think many zoom in on the map and notice.Parkdale runs through alot of neighbourhoods. Not my current one though. Mountain seems to be the one feature people distinguish.There are so many other features though. But the interesting thing i noticed was mcmaster. http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=hamilton+map&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x882c986c27de778f:0x2b6aee56d8df0e21,Hamilton,+ON&gl=ca&ei=ZfLyTYKLAsqatweU7bj3Bg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CDQQ8gEwAA

Heritage is no small part of that community identification. Considering that the Mountain essentially stopped at Concession until the late 1920s, then surged out to Rymal over successive decades, the lack of generational identification with their "neighbourhood" is not as strong. This is less true of certain post-war builds -- Ancaster’s Spring Valley, for example, maybe Dundas' Pleasant Valley. To Hamiltonians of a certain age, the Westdale would be seen pretty much the same, I'm sure – it's an interbellum suburb, but still a suburb. Since the 80s, people tend to identify suburban neighbourhoods as developers' subdivisions – Ancaster's High Park, for example – which seems as valid as surveys.

Gets complicated, though. Where would you expect that the Bartonville neighbourhood would be found – Main & Kenilworth or Barton & Sherman?

There's also the urban propensity to self-identify as a neighbourhood resident, something that is generally of less concern to suburbanites. That creates its own spin-off effects, especially as displaced Torontonians venture here.

For me the harder area to discuss is Stoney Creek - I mean, people just use the term Stoney Creek to refer to the entire eastermost region of the city, both upper and lower.

This is a very intriguing comment in a very intriguing article that for me, comes down to identity.

It's all fine to have an 'It's a small world, after all...' mentality, but for me, identity includes a sense of place. I can't imagine every ridding ourselves of this, nor of clan, either.

'Stoney Creek' does present problems. To me, they should have renamed the part that was on the Mountain. It should not be 'Upper Stoney Creek'. (Even if informally.) There's a reason that people from Fruitland or Winona aren't from Stoney Creek, regardless of those communities having been absorbed pre-Hamilton amalgamation. It's because regardless of what the piece of paper says, they're not Stoney Creek. I think we play around with some pretty sizeable stuff with this blurring...even if it doesn't seem that way. People from Dundas are not 'Hamiltonians'. Neither are people from any of the other municipalities that were affected by Mike Harris's edict. (And while I still regard 'authentic' Stoney Creek to be The Golden Square Mile of Hwy#8 to the Escarpment, Gray Road to Centennial Parkway, I can concede that Stoney Creek stretches to the Lake and to the old boundary with Fruitland. Begrudgingly. But still has nothing to do with anything 'upper'. LOL)

Your observation regarding absorption is true of other outlying areas of the city as well. Stoney Creek's assimilation of Saltfleet a case in point. You could also look at Flamborough and the dozen or so sub-communities therein, or consider the turbulent history of the constituency of the antiquated Wentworth County.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wentworth_County,_Ontario

All of which is part of our community's fractured heritage.

This "lost community" idea came into play a bit during the EM Pan Am play – and the snarky quips about the Hannon Tiger-Cats. You'd also find it in Aerotropolis talk, which might touch on Mount Hope. But like Flamborough and Stoney Creek, the amalgamation bug struck in 1974 and again in 2001, so while the history is there (in Flamborough’s case, dating back to French expeditions and English conquests in the mid-17th and mid-18th century), it's not as eagerly compiled, and when it is compiled, it's often regarded as folksy trivia by Hamiltonians. (Perhaps this will be redressed this summer after the Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society & Archives relocates temporarily to the Central Library's 4th Floor.)

And it's not just the historians drawing blanks. A lot of downtown boosters seem to feel lost outside the old, lower city. And the mountain geography doesn't help things, especially if you learned to drive post-amalgamation. East of Centennial Parkway is Stoney Creek/Saltfleet/Winona; West of Centennial Parkway is Hamilton – the east/west divide is marked by James, as it is in the lower city, with Upper Paradise and Upper Ottawa roughly the same distance to Upper James. (Wards 1-8 approximate the Old City.) And the old distinctions still have some heft to them. Despite the common topography, few Ancaster residents would consider themselves "West Mountain" and more than Dundas residents would think to describe themselves as "West Lower City". Admittedly, navigation is complicated, again, by the duplication of certain street names in amalgamater communities.

There's definitely a fairly high degree of local community identification on some parts of "the mountain" - the co-op surveys along Stonechurch, former small towns like Greensville or the north end of the mountain (Concession, Brucedale etc). And even in our downtown communities, I suspect many residents would have trouble naming their 'hoods (though not as many). It's all a matter of degrees, and certainly not an absolute.

That being said, this is the number one reason I'd never live 'on tha mountian'.

The notion of community is very hard to define in practical terms. It's just also very hard to ignore.

Greensville was one I was thinking of – a place whose residents definitely don't think of themselves as belonging to Dundas or Flamborough. (I suspect Copetown, Lynden and Jerseyville may share a similar POV.) Depending on how long you've been living in the area, and how far you've travelled within the area, you'll be more or less aware of these kind of fault lines.

Funny, too, about "the mountain," a phrase which seems to apply to Hamilton alone. I can't say as I've ever heard someone talk about Flamborough Mountain or Burlington Mountain, despite the comparable elevation.