Hamilton 2025 – Day 3

We decided to do a short ride on the Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail, leaving it to ride through a neighbourhood to pick up some level 17 tiles, or Squadrathinos as they are called on Squadrats.com, before descending into Dundas, for lunch, then returning through McMaster.

We stopped early in the ride at the John Rebecca Park, named after the cross streets where it’s located, which was built by the city in 2019 on a former parking lot. In 2021, I went on a bike ride with Hamilton’s then chief planner, Jason Thorne, who stopped at this park, and explained that the city was trying to put parks in areas that were lacking amenities, and were planned to become denser with high-rise housing, so the parks would exist before the housing needed to be sold or rented, thus making the area more appealing.

The park has a splash pad, ice rink, shade, structure, trees, and walkways, benches, and tables for mingling, and stormwater management features that include rain, gardens and tree groves.

Hamilton has a number of bidirectional cycle tracks which provide a generous space for cyclists, who can ride side-by-side if no one’s in the opposing lane, and feel very comfortable with the concrete barrier and flexible post separation from motor vehicle traffic. This one is on Hunter Street and passes the Hamilton Centre GO Station.

The Hamilton Centre GO Station is a bus and commuter rail station. The station building is Streamline Moderne, a type of Art Deco architecture that emerged in the 1930s. It opened in 1933 as the head office of the Toronto, Hamilton, and Buffalo Railway (TH&B).  The inside is beautifully preserved, and there is a small museum upstairs.

The cycle track continues past Hamilton City Hall, which was opened in 1960, built in the international architectural style, designed by Stanley Roscoe, and replacing an older Romanesque building from 1888, designed by James Balfour, who also designed Alma College in St. Thomas. That beautiful building burned down in 2008, but I was fortunate to be able to photograph it before it burned down. Balfour’s city hall was deemed antiquated and inadequate for the growing city. It was demolished to make way for the Jackson Square shopping mall, which has suffered the fate of many downtown malls in Ontario cities, and become rundown and lacking for tenants.

Hamilton uses quite a few different configurations for it bike lanes depending on the local needs. There seems to be much more flexibility than there is in Brampton for planning different types of bike lanes.

Here are a few examples. Sometimes there is a bidirectional cycle track on a street that is one way for cars. Sometimes the cycle track is uni-directional and protected by parking, with only one-way travel for motor vehicles. Other times parking is maintained on both sides of the street, but the street is one way and has a cycle track. There are also quite a few contra lanes in Hamilton where cyclists can travel with motor vehicles in one direction, and in a bike lane in the other, but cars can only travel in one direction.

The Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail is discontinuous through the city, but has cycling infrastructure connecting the two parts. In the section from the Chedoke golf course that passes near, McMaster it is paved. From rifle range Road through to Brentford. It is crushed limestone, but is relatively smooth, almost as good as Caledon Trailway. 

This trestle bridge across a valley has nice views, and bump out, so one can look over the valley without obstructing through cyclist and pedestrians.

In Dundas we rode around the Dundas Driving Park, which dates back to the mid 1860s. At that time, it was one of Canada’s earliest racecourses for harness racing. It was purchased by the town of Dundas in 1886. The oval track is one mile long. The park now features lawn bowling, tennis courts, public washrooms, playground, wading pool, and skating rink.

The road in this image is Sydenham Road, and climbs the escarpment. It replaced Horse Kill Road which got its name from the steep and difficult terrain that often led to horses being killed or injured while attempting to traverse it. Clara Hughes, who competed in speed skating, and cycling at the Olympics, is the only person ever to have won multiple medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Clara trained extensively on Sydenham Hill. It has been renamed Clara’s climb in her honour.  

In 2019, after attending Greg’s ride, a fundraiser for Share the Road, we were riding back to Brampton City Hall to witness Brampton council approving its first Active Transportation Master Plan. There was much discussion the previous evening about how we would ride back to Brampton. We chose what seemed to be a less challenging route, Brock Road, but was nevertheless still very challenging. If I recall correctly I had to stop to catch my breath 2–3 times, and averaged only 6kph or so. 

We had lunch at Domestique, a bike themed coffee shop in Dundas. In cycling terms, a domestique is a rider who sacrifices their own ambitions to support their team leader, rather than trying to win the race themselves. They are crucial for a team’s success, often performing tasks like protecting the leader from wind, pacing them, providing food and drinks, and even giving up their own bike in case of a mechanical issue.  The food was good, but the salad I ordered was very small for the price.

I wasn’t sure which bathroom I was meant to use based on the symbols.

This is the Dundas post office, which was built in 1915. It was built in the Romanesque revival style and was the regional post office until the 1990s. It is now occupied by retail establishments.

We tried to ride from Dundas to McMaster via neighbourhoods and trails. We walked our bikes down this hill, and ended up at McMaster’s parking lots on the west side of Cootes Drive. I thought there was going to be a trail to get out, but we had to ride up Westaway Road which the cars use, but has a bridge over Cootes Road directly connection to campus, which was useful.

We did discover the McMaster University Medical Centre helipad.

Here are a few buildings we passed on campus. The first one, houses The Phoenix Craft House and Grill, in one of the original five buildings when McMaster opened in 1930, and was originally a refectory. 

We also passed the Altitude Tower, part of the facilities for The Altitude program at McMaster University, offered through the Department of Athletics & Recreation, which uses an Alpine Tower for team-building activities and adventure-based challenges. There appeared to be a summer camp there today.  Looks like fun.

We then rode around a small lovely street, Mayfair, adjacent to campus. Here are a few of the houses.

Sterling Street has recently been repaved with much wider, buffered bike lanes painted. It was comfortable to ride side-by-side, and there was almost no car traffic.

This lead us through Westdale , a residential neighbourhood, centred on a shopping district on King Street, laid out in concentric ovals. It was an early Canadian implementation of the concepts of the Garden City Movement, and is recognized as one of Canada’s first planned communities, focusing on integrating residential, commercial, and recreational spaces. 

Construction began in the early 1920s, and it was envisioned as an exclusive white Protestant neighbourhood. Specific groups such as blacks, Asians, Slavs, and Jews were unable to purchase homes; near the end of the Second World War restrictions upon Jewish home ownership were lifted whereupon many relocated from the central part of the city. However, legal loopholes allowed for discrimination to persist into the 1950s.

Its streets are lovely to ride on a hot summer day with the mature trees shading the streets.

The bidirectional cycle track on King Street is protected by Jersey walls as it crosses the 403.

Dinner was BLTs, bean salad, and chips and salsa.

Tomorrow, our friend, and fellow cycling advocate, Alina, will be joining us for a 42 km route I created to explore Hamilton when my daughter moved here to attend McMaster in 2016, that I like to share with people new to cycling in Hamilton.