…but first, a word from The Incline

Back at it again, I guess.

Just over three weeks after Ontarians went to the polls in a very silly winter election, we have once again been thrust into an early election, this time at the federal level. Yesterday, the Prime Minister requested the Governor General dissolve Parliament, she accepted, and the leaders launched their campaigns in a frantic late-weekend whirlwind.

Here in Hamilton, the candidate list is looking a little light. Of the major parties, the Conservatives lead with 4 nominated candidates and an as-of-yet-to-be-scheduled nomination meeting for their candidate on Hamilton Mountain. The Liberals are next with four nominated candidates. When I was originally writing this, there were only three candidates and a nomination meeting planned for Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas (HWAD) with two declared candidates, Salman Abbas and Kevin Whyte. But, on Sunday night, the Liberals announced they would be skipping that whole inconvenient grassroots democracy thing and just acclaiming Ward 8 councillor and central mountain resident John-Paul Danko as their candidate in HWAD, which, famously, does not include the central mountain or any part of Hamilton Mountain, the riding his wife contested as a provincial Liberal candidate just a few weeks ago. During Danko’s 2016 by-election campaign, when he was still the favourite of local progressives, his campaign slogan - which featured prominently on his signs - was “Independent. Experienced. Lives Here.” He’ll have to scratch two of those off this time around, I guess.

Danko’s nomination makes me believe there are only about a dozen local Liberals, six of whom are solidly right-wing, that their central party organization thinks are electable. Sorry to any eager young Liberal activist in Hamilton who thinks they have a shot. May I interest you in a membership to the “Oh no, all my political hopes and dreams are dead because Canada’s political parties actively hate their idealistic young members and just want to use us for our labour and our money until disposing of us when it’s convenient or when we’ve had the audacity to speak our mind” club?

The NDP has three candidates, but is missing candidates in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek (HESC) and the newly expanded Flamborough-Glanbrook-Brant North (FlamGlanBranNor!). The Greens only have one candidate announced: local educational assistant Georgia Beauchemin in HWAD. The fringe far-right populist People’s Party has a full slate and perennial candidate Jim Enos, who has previously run for the Christian Heritage Party, has announced he’ll be running in HWAD, marking his 10th attempt to win elected office.

All the polls that have come out since Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister on March 14 indicate the Liberals are leading by between 2 and 6 points, putting them back into majority government territory. While Carney has been doing his best to entice “progressive” conservatives back to the Liberals, much of the party’s recent success has come at the expense of the NDP. The New Democrats have fallen so low in the polls that they may have their worst electoral showing since 1993 and may not achieve official party status (the requirement for which is 12 seats). According to poll aggregators (which, again, should be used with caution), party leader Jagmeet Singh is currently projected to lose his seat.

This election has the potential to further shake up politics in Hamilton. Chad Collins, whose mayoral candidacy in 2026 was considered a virtual certainty up until a few months ago, has since decided to run for reelection. With Liberal polling where it is, he stands a good chance of winning, taking him out of mayoral contention for the foreseeable future. His absence from next year’s municipal race strips the city’s right-wing populists of their most palatable figurehead. The city’s anger-based populist project, which is currently and actively assembling a slate of candidates for the 2026 municipal election, might just have lost their most electable member to the Siren’s call coming from Ottawa.

The NDP might be further relegated to the political wilderness in Hamilton, unable to make any gains beyond holding Hamilton Centre. After the provincial election saw the Tories win Hamilton Mountain, the riding atop the escarpment was, for the first time since 2006, without any NDP representation federally, provincially, and municipally. Now former MPP Monique Taylor’s bid for federal office looks like it might fall flat and absentee MP Lisa Hepfner will be sent right back to Ottawa to represent the good people of Hamilton Mountain. The NDP also might slip even further in the vote count in HESC and it may be decades before the party is in a competitive position east of the Red Hill Valley again. We could be looking at a situation where, after election day, Matthew Green will be one of the last New Democrats in parliament, making him an obvious contender for the party’s leadership - interim or otherwise.

There are a few weeks between now, the close of candidate nominations on April 7, and election day on April 28. I’d like to do a little writing on federal issues in Hamilton (something I don’t do a lot of) while also giving provincial and municipal affairs their deserved attention as well. Ultimately, my focus will be determined by the big issues that come up, the candidates running in our area, and what I can accomplish during this zippy little election period.

But, until then, please enjoy a tour through some of Hamilton’s well-loved shopping districts of past and present. Oh, and be sure to check if your riding has changed! The federal boundaries are now different than the provincial ones, so take a look and make sure you know where you’re voting. You can do so on Elections Canada’s site here.

Takin' Care Of Business

Summer with the survey

The man refused to let me leave. He hadn’t provided the information I needed and, instead, was, after forty five minutes, still rambling about his political philosophy, which I quickly discerned was cobbled together like a ransom note made from old right-wing internet comments, Conservative Party flyers, and passages from Atlas Shrugged. During that time, I had spoken no more than a handful of words, hopeful he would wear himself out and relent. But he carried on with enthusiasm, showing little sign of slowing down. I wanted desperately to leave early on in the interaction, but he had strategically positioned himself between myself and the only visible door. As he talked, I looked around for other exits, but my unfamiliarity with the building, coupled with the irritating fact that he occasionally punctuated his speech with semi-rhetorical questions necessitating short responses (“hmm”, “oh yeah”, “interesting”) on my part, made a more fulsome escape plan challenging, if not impossible.

The proselytizing was relentless and, had a coworker of his not entered around the hour mark, I likely would have been there for the remainder of the working day. When the other employee came in, my unwanted lecturer opted to inform his coworker of his missionary work instead of carry on with it. In that moment, I saw my opportunity. “Well you’ve given me a lot to think about,” I said before sliding past him and bolting. I hurried along the Waterfront Trail without looking back, making the decision that it was as good a time as any to stop for lunch.

What precipitated this strange situation? Well, I suppose it all started when I decided to go to urban planning school…

***

My Master of Planning degree prided itself on emphasizing the “practical” aspects of the profession - large projects commissioned by actual real-world clients, a faculty with ample working experience, and the highlight of the whole program in the form of a summer internship between one’s first and second year. And, while that was an initial appeal, I found the real benefit of that program was meeting my fellow students - some of the most engaging, passionate, and caring people whom I now count as very good friends.

For my internship, I was given a choice between two equally appealing opportunities: one, unpaid, with a popular Toronto city councillor who could have shown me an important side of the politics of planning and connected me to people who could have helped advance my own political aspirations, or another, paid, with the City of Hamilton’s Planning Department that would have ensured I could keep up on my rent, given me a chance to put my skills to use in my own city, and forged connections that could, eventually, lead me to a job. I chose the latter.

It was only once the unpaid position had floated away, I had signed a new lease, and had walked into city hall for my first day of orientation that I learned my summer task would be the City of Hamilton’s “Employment Survey”. I had never heard of the Employment Survey before, though it was apparently a time-honoured tradition in the City (capitalized to refer to the “Corporation of the City of Hamilton”). By sending eager young students out into the field, the city could collect information on local businesses - what those businesses did, how long they had been in operation, how many employees they had, etc. - and then use that data for their economic development goals.

I was handed a blue City of Hamilton polo shirt, a cumbersome laptop, and a series of loosely-defined geographic areas to survey. I had to wander around searching for businesses that may or may not have been on the last year’s list and, with no advance warning, walk in and begin quizzing the most senior person available. I had a City-issued ID, but little else to bolster my legitimacy beyond my blue polo and a handful of business cards on which were printed my manager’s name and contact information.

From late May to early August, 2015, I scoured the city. McQuesten to Inch Park, Dundas to Mount Albion, Westdale to Felker. Step after step after step. Some days, the work was a tedious, amounting to little more than inputting numbers and being told at varying levels of politeness to send an email or come back later. On those days, I’d break the monotony by posting photos of my adventure to Instagram, complete with silly little captions and wistful musings about urban planning.

Other days, I incurred the wrath of business owners who viewed the City with nothing but contempt. For these vocal and often eccentric business owners, I - wandering into their store or office with my City of Hamilton polo shirt and probing questions - was the personification of bureaucratic bloat and corporate waste. I was not an urban planning student performing a task required for my course work, nor was I a helpful municipal intern, there to gather information that could assist their local government plan better in the future. I was the City and they would treat me as they thought I deserved.

An upholsterer in the west end believed I was trying to scam him. One of his near neighbours, the owner of a chaotic surplus store, took scans of all my personal identification and photos of me for later reference. An East Mountain dentist snapped at me while with a patient, who sat mid-procedure, watching the spectacle unfold with a mouth full of gauze. A Concession Street merchant blamed me personally for roadworks occurring on the street. A rather curt staffer at a union office in the east end refused to believe I worked for the city, convinced that I was sent by “the bosses” to undermine their work - a belief that was only slightly abated upon my ability to recite facts about her union and local labour organizing that I had gathered during my previous M.A. in Labour Studies and from years of working with the local NDP.

And then, of course, came the encounter by the bay. The man who lectured me on the wonders of capitalist-libertarianism and made me pledge that I would, at the very least, consider voting for the Conservative Party in the next federal election (I did not, have not, and almost certainly never will), refused to tell me if he was the owner or merely an employee of the marina/marine supply store that has since gone under. I am reminded of his beliefs - that I should be fired along with every other municipal employee, after which point all local politicians would be jailed, the municipality would be dissolved, and City Hall burned to the ground - every time I hear something about the rapidly accelerating “DOGE Coup” that is currently dismantling the United States government to the benefit of sociopathic billionaires.

But there were also good interactions with business owners. Concession Street was one of the areas I was assigned, which gave me a chance to speak with a wide range of businesses (including the owner who blamed me for infrastructure improvements) and to their local representatives at the Concession Street Business Improvement Area or “BIA”. That was one of the most positive experiences I had, learning about what the BIA did and the organization’s long-term goal to create a robust local shopping district for residents.

***

Over the course of my summer internship, I learned two important things. The first was that I wanted to pursue a PhD rather than jump straight into working. That was an excellent decision because now I have a newsletter, tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, and almost no job prospects, so…

Stares blankly into the void, the weight of life’s decisions continuing to slowly crush him.

The second thing I learned was that running a business can be challenging and that even minor changes to the world around you can seem like they might upend your entire way of life.

Because I was a representative of the City, the complaints I got focused on the things the city did. Among the business owners I spoke with, there was the perception that every little thing the city did had an outsized impact on their day-to-day operations. Bike lanes and street parking and one-way traffic and approving new developments and simply existing as a municipality were all, at some point during my conversations, blamed for one business’s failure and credited with another business’s success. Almost all these feelings were based on gut instinct or, if the business owner was even moderately data savvy, based on figures that could only be peripherally connected to their situation.

By the end of that summer, I came to realize that the City was, more often than not, a convenient entity onto which blame could be assigned, whether they had anything to do with what impacted a business or not. But there were other factors blamed for problems and credited with successes. Online commerce, delivery apps, changing trends, corporate centralization, and overall economic fluctuations can (or, at least, appear to) have an impact on a business, as identified by business owners themselves.

But, in the wider community, many have become fixated on the municipality and its role in economic development. Whenever news breaks of another business closing, folks immediately turn to blame the City. And, as of late, there have been a significant number of announced closures.

Ebb and Flow and Co.

On March 15, Locke Street’s artisanal confectioner, Donut Monster, announced they would close sometime in late April. The specialty doughnut shop took over a storefront at 246 Locke South in 2018 after the building’s long-time occupant, florist La Jardinière closed and their storefront-mate, cycling repair shop Bike Locke, relocated around a decade ago. La Jardinière took over the location after the closure of Steve’s Surplus and Salvage in 1997. Run by Bill Van Vliet, Steve’s (named for alliterative, rather than factual, reasons) was credited with helping turn Locke South around after years of decline. Steve’s evidently paved the way for other antique and collectable stores to open on Locke, revitalizing a street plagued by vacancies and frequent business turnovers after the city’s one-way road system made navigating the street a dizzying nightmare for motorists and pedestrians alike (a report to council by business owners just months after the one-way conversion in 1956 indicated that “trade has dropped markedly since the inception of the one-way system”).¹

Donut Monster became a fast favourite among those folks interested in a fancy alternative to the same old Tim’s vanilla dip and old fashioned glazed (and those willing to overlook the American spelling of the word “doughnut”). As reported by local media, the Vanderkwaak family, the owners of Donut Monster, posted on social media that the closure was coming as a result of “a combined series of hard situations.”² One of the situations may have been the distance between the owners and Locke Street; the Vanderkwaak’s relocated to the Nanaimo, British Columbia-area a few years back.

While there’s been a modest amount of support in the community, the comments section of the Spec, where the city’s most bitter souls have found refuge, were shedding few tears over the announcement. “Too expensive,” wrote one commenter. “They priced themselves out of existence,” wrote another. Other commenters were quintessentially online; one irate internet crusader took issue with the Spec file photo of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visiting the store that was included in the article, blaming the closure on him before getting into a fight with other commenters and lamenting, “Cant [sic] believe how many liberal supporters we still have. its [sic] insane.”

Assigning blame for business closures is a favourite hobby of those semi-anonymous trolls who lurk in the Spec’s comments section. Many of the comments below the paper’s articles about recent business closures blame the right’s favourite target: the Ladies and Gays™ on council. Under the story about another Locke Street South closure - the January shuttering of Vintage Charm - a commenter went wide with their blame: “Sad for the brave business owners… It’s all closing!! Thanks to the activist Mayor and Councillors. Restricting traffic, permitting occupation of public spaces, forcing the sale of public parking (StoneyCreek) [sic] over the objections of veterans and medical clinic patients and more…Thanks for reporting it.” It’s worth noting that there have been no traffic restrictions, occupations, or sales of public parking on Locke. But I guess we can excuse their misinformation; they did say “thanks”, after all.

While the crustiest of the chronically-online may blame this council, an article about another Locke Street closure from a few days before the Donut Monster announcement gives us some important insight. Included in the story covering the announcement by Pure Home Couture Apothecary that they would be closing their brick-and-mortar store after 23 years on Locke South is an important quote from the people behind the store: “We have felt the shift in consumer behaviour for a long while now…The new tariffs and economic uncertainty have been the tipping point for us,” along with a note that they actually expect to expand the brand as an online-only business.³

The natural and the human-directed ebb and flow of the free market economy makes it such that, sometimes, businesses will change. Some pivot to selling online, some specialize, some (like yet another Locke South business that recently closed - Diced Ice) trade in their permanent locations for a more nomadic presence as a pop-up shop or mobile store.

***

Business closures, no matter what causes them, impact the community. People develop routines around businesses. They come to rely on them for goods, for services, and for community. They may feel the indirect economic benefits of their presence, may know people who work there, and may work there themselves. Our community directly benefits when small, locally-focused, independent and ethical enterprises work to provide a quality product or service, engage with the community around them, and focus on serving their neighbours rather than maximizing profit. And our community is made more resilient by the presence of a diversity of small, locally-focused, independent and ethical enterprises so that, when one closes or changes hands or shifts their business, they do not leave a void or cause significant damage to the local economy. Corporate centralization and the move toward big box stores and large-scale formats may be more economical for large multinationals and monopolists, but, when they inevitably need to change, the devastation caused by their closure is immense.

Closures and changes and relocations can hurt. Naturally, people want to assign blame. But, in doing so, they ignore the reality that this has been happening for over 100 years in Hamilton. Businesses start, they grow, they change, they are bought, they are scaled down, they move online, they close. Without understanding our history, it becomes easier to blame everyone you hate, and there are so many in this city who have such deep hatred and such directionless anger.

So the only thing left to do is, once again, jump into history to prove that few businesses, if any, are static and unchanging. We may live in a post-truth world, but the historical record is there for everyone to see. Let’s crack open the archive and see what history tells us. But, before we do that, we need to make a detour to understand how to spatially-bound our analysis.

B.F.F.s with the B.I.A.s

Since the early days of the Pandemic, Statistics Canada has performed a regular “Canadian Business Count” and helpfully breaks their numbers down by major Census Metropolitan Areas. In the Hamilton CMA (which includes Burlington and Grimsby), as of December 2024, there were 25,222 businesses listed as operating. That makes Hamilton the 9th largest employment region in Canada, ahead of Halifax, Regina, and St. John’s to name a few. And, contra the claims of the angriest of the news commenters, the number of businesses in Hamilton has been steadily increasing since hitting a mid-pandemic low in June of 2021.

All this is to say that it would be virtually impossible to analyze every business in the city over a large period of time. Narrowing the scope to just those businesses you’d see on a “main street” with storefronts offering goods or services - retail establishments, real estate firms, financial advisors and insurance brokers, hotels and restaurants, and personal services - there were 8,425 operating in Hamilton as of December, 2024. Still too broad a scope for a humble newsletter with a Thursday Monday deadline.

But, lucky for us, there are already pre-defined geographic retailing areas in Hamilton with a special designation that can help narrow our scope.

***

There are currently 11 Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) in Hamilton - seven in the “old city” and one each in Ancaster, Dundas, Stoney Creek, and Waterdown. Rumour has it that there are more organizing that will set up in the coming months and years.

Chances are, you know about BIAs. They’re pretty ubiquitous in this part of the world, doing work like advertising shopping districts, organizing seasonal festivals and/or putting up decorations, hosting civic engagement events like municipal candidate’s debates, coordinating activities with surrounding neighbourhoods, and generally advocating for their business members.

Legally speaking, a BIA is a local board, created by a municipality upon the request of businesses and property owners in a specific part of a municipality, and governed by provincial legislation in the Municipal Act. BIAs are designed to, according to the Act:

• “oversee the improvement, beautification and maintenance of municipally-owned land, buildings and structures in the area beyond that provided at the expense of the municipality generally; and

• …promote the area as a business or shopping area.”

BIAs raise money through a levy on businesses that each owner pays along with their property taxes, though they can also fundraise to put on bigger events or embark on a larger project. These areas are governed by boards comprising of representatives from member businesses and their day-to-day functions are overseen by hired “executive directors”.

What many don’t know is that BIAs are an Ontarian invention. After a group of business owners in Toronto’s Bloor West Village came together to create an ad hoc local improvement organization, Ontario’s PC government under Premier John Robarts responded by passing legislation that allowed municipalities to create formal BIAs, giving them the legal authority to collect money and direct it toward local improvements that would have otherwise been the responsibility of councils. Today, there are around 270 BIAs in Ontario and thousands more across the world, with countries like Japan, Australia, and South Africa adopting legislation modeled after Ontario’s own creation.

Hamilton’s first BIA was one of the province’s earliest, having been established nearly 50 years ago in response to the decline of a stretch of historic shops in the core.

***

Merchants on that narrow stretch of King between Wellington and Mary began worrying about crime and falling sales in the spring of 1975, troubled by reports that their customers were being harassed and attacked - a fear made all the more real by the dramatic knife-point robbery of a hairdresser in early June of that year. Unwilling to ignore the issue, a group of these entrepreneurs organized a meeting for June 23, 1975 with representatives from council, local tourism, and, importantly, from the Bloor West BIA in Toronto.

They named their organization the “International Village Committee”, trying to resuscitate a theme that had been employed in the area off-and-on for the preceding five years. But, after their first meeting, the merchants decided that they would do more than just revitalize the informal brand. Instead, they would take it a step further and formally petition city hall to create Hamilton’s first BIA.⁴

When the idea finally made it to council in the fall of ‘75, most of the King East businesses had expressed their approval for the extra levy and coordination of beautification efforts. Scoring a major public relations win, the Spec cautiously endorsed the idea, saying the concept “has decided possibilities, although so far the progress appears slow.” In response to Mayor Vic Copps’ inquiry at the initial council meeting on the matter - “It sounds good, but how much is it going to cost?” - the groups’ advocates said the levy for each business would be around $150 a year, giving the new BIA around $20,000 for local improvements and that, if it was successful, “The same approach could be used in other areas of the city such as Concession and Ottawa streets and Kenilworth Avenue.”⁵

In 1976, council finally approved the city’s first BIA, though at a deeply contentious time. The BIA launched months before “Phase 2” of Jackson Square opened for business, which spooked the independent business owners and raised the spectre of their being undermined by the appeal of a car-centric downtown shopping mall. A business owner from the International Village told the Spec: “I’ve expressed my displeasure at city hall. It’s really like a conspiracy against the consumer.” The BIA’s merchants fought Jackson Square, adopting the moniker “The Old King Street Business Association” and forging ahead with new International Village branding.⁶

The International Village BIA led the way and, soon after, active improvement areas dotted the city’s landscape. By 1991, there was BIAs on Concession Street, on Ottawa Street, and in Westdale Village - though none on Kenilworth as had been predicted by the International Village boosters in ‘75. Seeing what BIAs could do for other areas, that year, Locke Street’s merchants had, once again, thrown themselves into pitched battle to establish their own. The Locke Street Business Association, formed in 1984 by the street’s relentless booster and barber, “Mr. Tony” Greco, had attempted to create a BIA three times, “only to have a few businessmen jump at the last minute,” he told the Spec, before cheekily noting, “The people who opposed a BIA the last time aren’t here anymore - they’re out of business, so maybe this time we’ll be successful.”⁷ They were not, and it would take until 2007 for a Locke BIA to get up and running.

Sampling the archives

Hamilton’s BIAs help narrow the search parameters, which I further limited by selecting small segments within each business area. I selected three BIA’s - Barton Village, Concession, and Locke South - and took three or four blocks (300 to 400 metres) on one side of the street, bounded neatly by intersecting roads. I then went back through the HPL’s Vernon’s City Directory Archives using current and historical maps, as well as BIA membership lists and old Google Maps streetview selections to sample those sections at regular intervals - every 10 years from 1925 to 1965, and then again from 2015 to the present.

Now, this will just be a broad sample using available data. If I had more time, I would have gone to Local History and Archives and dug out old phone books to collect the data that’s missing between the end of the Vernon’s directories and the beginning of reliable online records (1969 to the early 2000’s). But this is a free weekly newsletter, not a graduate thesis. So I’m limiting myself to what can get done in a short-ish period of time.

The goal here is to show that there’s often significant changeover in the city’s retailing landscape because of a confluence of factors, not just one or two decisions from city council. So let’s take a look at the city’s business landscape over 40 years during the 20th century, and a decade in the 21st.

Barton Village

For Barton Village, I selected the three northern blocks between Victoria and Oak where much of the current “Barton renaissance” has been occurring. This section of Barton East has beautifully well-maintained 1900’s-to-1920’s-style mixed use storefronts with apartments above, frontages flush with the street, and an incredible amount of in-unit adaptability, allowing for businesses of wildly different kinds to set up shop in this area. It’s also easily one of my favourite spots in the city (extending all the way to Sherman to take advantage of local faves like Mai Pai, the Playhouse, Mosaic, Pinch, and a new spot that’s sure to become a Hamilton hotspot, Nanny & Bulls [this isn’t a sponsored post, I just really like these places {I also guess we’re doing brackets in brackets in brackets now}]).

These three blocks cover the addresses 218 to 367 Barton Street East. In 1925, the area was already well-established, having been a part of Hamilton since Confederation. This 1911 Fire Insurance map gives us an idea of just how built-up this part of Hamilton was over 100 years ago and how similar the streetscape was then compared to today.

At the far left corner (Barton and Victoria) is the former Bank of Montreal building. BMO operated in that space between 1909 and 1997 and again from 2007 to 2012 (the period between was the decade during which the Banco Comercial Português briefly maintained a branch at the corner to serve the area’s large Portuguese community). It’s now a La Luna restaurant - a quick stop that’s popular among the folks working at the Hamilton General Hospital across the street.

The building next to it is half-vacant, half-occupied by Fragoso’s Sports Bar. For over 80 years, that was the location of Cody’s, a well-respected local paint, wallpaper, and hardware store that started at 309 Barton East in 1921 and moved down the street to 293 Barton East during the Depression. The company boomed under the supervision of Keith Cody but, after he sold the business to his son in 1995, it began a steep and speedy decline. A splashy profile in the Spec about the business and how it was eyeing a dramatic expansion in January of 1996 was followed rather quickly by an announcement that the company had gone bankrupt by April 30 of that year. A restructuring in ‘97 allowed the company to hold on for another year before, once again, declaring bankruptcy. ⁸

Further down the block at 333 Barton - now the home of Africo Foods - is the former site of another local institution. Osbaldeston’s Furniture and Appliances, which began as Osbaldeston’s Radio and Phonograph Service, opened in 1929 and was run by generations of the eponymous family. Much like Cody’s, the Osbaldeston’s store was passed down through the family until closing sometime in the 1990’s (the records about the store kind of drop off around 1998). The family was filled with notable characters; Gordon Osbaldeston, of the third generation of the family to run the store, veered from the family business, becoming a decorated civil servant, clerk of the Privy Council, and recipient of the Order of Canada. His bother, Bernard, ran the business in its later years, becoming embroiled in controversy over his involvement with an insolvent Ancaster tennis club in the 1980’s before turning to charity shortly before he died in 2017.⁹

Few other storefronts in this section of Barton maintained the same use over time and none were occupied by the same business for as long as BMO, Cody’s, and Osbaldeston’s held onto their stores. 361 Barton Street East, for example, was associated with similar uses over time, but was occupied by a string of different businesses. From 1920 until some time during the Great Depression, it was a men’s wear store, then a shoe store by 1945 and, through the 1950’s and 1960’s, a different shoe store. Other locations along the street varied wildly throughout the years; the original location for Cody’s was a malt shop in 1935, a sewing machine store in 1945, a sporting goods retailer in 1955, and a faith-based outreach centre by 1965.

Notable along this section of Barton and, frankly, across the city, is how the centralization of basic services has consolidated control over essentials in the hands of a few massive corporations and removed locally-focused, independent options for day-to-day goods and services. 100 years ago, there were six grocery stores, two hardware and home goods stores, two pharmacies, and three places to buy assorted clothes in this section of Barton, alone. Today, there are three places to buy some groceries (the large Food Basics on Barton is well outside the BIA - 700 metres to the west the William Carroll Grocery that once served the area from the corner of Barton and Emerald) and no stores for hardware, prescription drugs, or clothes.

This speaks to how the street has changed over the years. In 1925, it was a neighbourhood-focused commercial shopping district where residents from the Keith, Gibson, Landsdale, Beasley, and the North End would go to get their prescriptions filled, grab some groceries, shop for a new shirt, get their shoes fixed, or pick up a new hammer (as one does). Today, the street is becoming more of a “destination” where people go for a specific, specialized purpose. In 1925, there were no bars, restaurants, or “specialty stores” on that section of the street. Today, there are nine.

Around a decade ago, Barton was the subject of notable fascination for Hamiltonians. While the street was at one of its lowest points in terms of commercial tenancy and property values, there was optimism among many in the community that the blight wouldn’t last. In 2013, as part of the paper’s “Code Red” series, the Spec ran a week-long series of profiles on Barton, reflecting the cautious optimism of Hamiltonians about the future of the street. The first piece - entitled “Barton Street’s Lost Promise” opened with the subhead: “It took a generation or two for the street to slide from energetic and prosperous to dilapidated and down-at-the-heels.” The series concluded a week later with a more promising, if not slightly uncomfortable story about the future of the street. Entitled “Barton Street: Our next ‘it’ spot?” included voyeuristic photos of people experiencing homelessness while posing the question: “Can it be a James North or Locke-style success?”¹⁰

In the time since the “Code Red” profile came out, the street has indeed changed. Vacancy is down in the small section I analyzed and, overall, there’s a growing sense of optimism about what can be done to bring small businesses back to serve the community along the street.

Concession Street

The section of Concession Street I considered was the south side from Upper Wentworth to East 24th Street. Of the three BIAs I examined, Concession Street is home to the “newest” buildings, having only really built up after the city started meaningfully expanding onto the mountain after World War I and after the community’s “annexation” by the City of Hamilton in April of 1929.¹¹ While I was able to include fire insurance maps for Barton and Locke from 1911, the Concession maps show almost no development and are a mess of pasted-on buildings amidst wide open, albeit pre-surveyed, subdivisions.

The build-up of the street happened in fits and starts, with considerable growth during the early days of the Depression, a contraction during World War II, and notable growth as the city “suburbanized” in the 50’s and 60’s. Today, the area is holding on thanks to its proximity to the bustling Juravinski (formerly Henderson) Hospital.

In the 1990’s, Concession was struggling. After the BIA was founded in 1984, business owners became skeptical of its use and, in 1992, held a dramatic vote to ask merchants if they wanted to dismantle the organization, inspired by the decision of the Jamesville BIA to destroy itself in the fall of 1991. On March 4, 1992, the BIA members voted 24-to-14 to keep the organization running, with the dissenting faction asserting they would stop paying their levies if changes weren’t made.¹²

Five years later, Concession was the subject of its own Spec profile highlighting the challenges facing business owners on the street due to nearby Lime Ridge Mall poaching their customers and the threat of the closure of Henderson Hospital by Mike Harris’ PC government. Proposals for the street included thinking of Concession like an “urban mall”, retaining a professional “window dresser” for BIA members to use, erecting “tenant directories” along the street, printing a flashy tourism brochure, and expanding the BIA’s boundaries to include more businesses. While not every change came to be, the small changes they did implement seemed to make a difference; by 2001, an estimated 20,000 people attended Concession’s summer street festival and vacancies had declined dramatically.¹³

Change is the one constant on Concession, with only one business in the studied section retaining something even close to its original use from 1925 to 2025 (with a notable gap between 1985 and 2003). That business would be today’s Zoetic Theatre, which has undergone considerable transformation since it originally opened. The building started life as the Lyceum Theatre in 1919 before being rebranded as the Mountain Theatre in 1943, the New Mountain Theatre in 1949, and finally the York Theatre in 1970. The York became famous city-wide for its affordable entertainment and steady showing of sci-fi classics and hits, always offering a double-header for $4. After Lime Ridge Mall opened its movie theatre, the York went into a steep decline. On Friday, April 19, 1985, the York had one last showing - a double-header consisting of the Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer black comedy “Into the Night” and David Lynch’s “Dune” - before quietly closing up.¹⁴

After closing in ‘85, the building housed an evangelical church until the ‘90s when it briefly became The Old Theatre Sports Exchange, a store selling used sports equipment. In 2003, it was purchased by an entrepreneur from Mississauga and restored to its original use as “The Movie Palace”, which showed movies until 2011. Between 2011 and 2013, it was a multi-use venue before briefly closing and reopening at the end of 2013 as The Zoetic, which now hosts special events and shows the occasional movie.

The rest of the street has shown a considerable adaptability based on the needs of individual merchants. Pharmacies became hair dressers, banks became grocery stores, clothes stores became social service providers. All across the street, storefronts have shifted and changed over time. In 1925, the small section of the street that I looked at was home to nine grocers and bakers, which has shrunk to just one today. Contrast that with people offering personal care services, like salons and massages. In 1925, there was only one barber in that section. Today, personal care services are the largest category serving those four blocks.

Locke Street South

And now we come to Locke South where the Donut Monster will soon close up shop. The section of the street I selected here runs from Herkimer to Melbourne along the western portion of Locke to include Donut Monster in my analysis.

Some of the buildings along Locke went up around the same time as those on Barton, but the street was in a constant state of flux during the early portion of the 20th century. The street served as a kind of dividing line between classes, with the middle class and wealthy occupying the part of the city that lay to the east while working class residents lived to the west of the street and near the industrial operations that followed the train tracks west of Dundurn. Light industry was scattered throughout surrounding Kirkendall and the commercial spine benefited from a laissez-faire attitude from city hall, allowing eager merchants to erect buildings on their own terms and in their own way. The City didn’t even bother surveying the street to find its centre line until 1944, explaining why the street actually sways as it progresses from north to south and why there are no unified, straight-through intersections on Locke South between Aberdeen and Hunter.¹⁵

As I noted earlier, the introduction of the one-way street system was cited by business owners as a reason for falling sales and decreased traffic through their stores. While the one-ways may have contributed to the street’s decline, other factors, like overall suburbanization and car-centricity, the opening of Jackson Square, and the changing demographics of the surrounding community were almost certainly also factors. By 1970, there were as few businesses on the street as there were in 1920 and business turnover was a major problem.

Indeed, through the 1960’s to the 1980’s, the whole street was viewed as one of the city’s roughest. A profile on Locke and the wider Kirkendall neighbourhood from 1979 (in the context of Canada’s shrinking social safety net) observed that “the area was plagued by drug and alcohol-related problems, vandalism and motorcycle gangs. The neighbourhood is composed of a large transient population, diverse economic groups, and a high concentration of people on the lower end of the income scale.” Despite that, the article did note that crime in the community was declining thanks, in part, to the social service providers that had come to occupy vacant storefronts along Locke.¹⁶

By the 1990’s, Locke had, in the words of Ann and Bill Manson who wrote a short history of the area in 1999, “gained the reputation of being a ‘funky’ shopping street.”¹⁷ Locke’s long ascendance and the sustained popularity of the surrounding community has allowed the street to boom for the past 25 to 30 years. In the blocks I examined, there’s been low vacancy, regular occupancy, and a few businesses that retained their locations over a couple of decades.

The shops on Locke have changed considerably over the years. The only two of the businesses I looked at in my analysis can trace their lineage back to similar historical uses: the Locke Street Tire and Automotive lot at Herkimer and the West Town at 214 Locke South. The former was a gas station that had a racially-insensitive name for Indigenous people in the 30’s and 40’s while the latter started as a bakery but eventually became a restaurant in the 1940’s.

Closing up shop

So what does this brief study of local BIAs and their businesses tell us?

First, no, the policies of today’s council aren’t causing businesses to close up. In the the 10 blocks I looked at, few businesses stayed in operation for more than a few decades. At different points in the history of these areas, business owners and residents have complained about changes being made but, aside from the data from Locke’s business people in the 1950’s about the impact of one-way traffic, there’s little evidence that one specific thing was the cause of all their woe. While the commenters on the Spec’s online articles may want to blame today’s council for the turnover in the local retailing scene, the reality is far more complex.

That brings us to the second point. We have lost so much local business that’s focused on providing day-to-day necessities. Small, independent, locally-focused operations that sold groceries and filled prescriptions and dealt in hardware have all fluttered away, replaced with salons and restaurants and specialty stores. Those businesses are important as well, but a “main street” that provides all those services allows a community to shop local, buy in their neighbourhood, and increase their resiliency. In 1925, over the 10 blocks I looked at, there were 8 bakeries, 14 grocery stores, and 4 hardware locations. Now there’s a bakery, one furniture store, and 4 places to grab groceries.

Hamilton would be better off with more small, local, independent businesses that serve the community rather than seek out excessive profits. Our “main streets” and BIAs are already designed to accommodate them, having been built with them in mind a century ago.

Now the challenge is creating the conditions where those businesses can set up, grow, and thrive. That’s something I wouldn’t mind being lectured on from inside a marine supply store.

1  _{“Parking On Both Sides of King Gets Approval” Hamilton Spectator, November 20, 1956 (Spec link); Bill and Ann Manson (1999). Up and Down Locke Street South. Burlington: North Shore Publishing; Tom Hogue. “Where Hip is Happening” Hamilton Spectator, February 24, 2004 (Spec link)}

2  _{Fallon Hewitt. “Hamilton doughnut shop Donut Monster is closing” Hamilton Spectator, March 15, 2025 (Spec link)}

3  _{"" “Pure Home Couture Apothecary closing Locke Street studio” Hamilton Spectator, March 13, 2025 (Spec link)}

4  _{Karen Pusey. “‘International Village’ planned for Hamilton” Hamilton Spectator, March 20, 1975 (Spec archive link); Neil Gaddes. “Downtown group wants distinctive ethnic village” Hamilton Spectator, June 20, 1975 (Spec archive link); “Ethnic village group takes ‘first big step’” Hamilton Spectator, June 25, 1975 (Spec archive link)}

5  _{“Facelifting downtown - editorial” Hamilton Spectator, September 6, 1975 (Spec archive link); Paul Palango. “Firms may pay for ‘village’ decor” Hamilton Spectator, September 23, 1975 (Spec archive link)}

6  _{Neil Gaddes. “Oldtimers keep wary eye on square” Hamilton Spectator, June 14, 1977 (Spec archive link)}

7  _{Michael Davie. “New life on Locke Street” Hamilton Spectator, July 16, 1991 (Spec archive link)}

8  _{Michael B. Davie. “A decorative touch” Hamilton Spectator, January 22, 1996 (Spec archive link); “Notice to Creditors” Hamilton Spectator, May 10, 1996 (Spec archive link); Carmelina Prete. “Minding the business is his main investment” Hamilton Spectator, March 4, 1997 (Spec archive link); “Legal notices - In the matter of the bankruptcy of Cody’s Home Decor…” Hamilton Spectator, February 23, 1998 (Spec archive link).}

9  _{“New Radio Service Department - Ad” Hamilton Spectator, December 14, 1929 (Spec archive); Al MacRury. “Refund wanted for part of club dues” Hamilton Spectator, May 5, 1988 (Spec archive); Natalie Paddon. “New home for St. Vincent de Paul” Hamilton Spectator, April 25, 2017 (Spec archive); Dan Nolan. “An honourable man in corridors of power” Hamilton Spectator, April 15, 2019 (Spec archive)}

10  _{Steve Buist. “Barton Street’s lost promise” Hamilton Spectator, May 18, 2013 (Spec link); Jon Wells. “Barton Street: Our next ‘it’ spot?” Hamilton Spectator, May 25, 2013 (Spec link)}

11  _{Jerry Johansen (1994). “Concession Street: In Context” Hamilton: D. G. Seldon Printing.}

12  _{“Concession BIA fate up in air” Hamilton Spectator, January 23, 1992 (Spec link); “Concession St. BIA given a second chance” Hamilton Spectator, March 4, 1992 (Spec link)}

13  _{John Burman. “A new Concession” Hamilton Spectator, March 4, 1997 (Spec link); Tom Hogue. “Confessions of Concession” Hamilton Spectator, June 5, 2001 (Spec link)}

14  _{“Zoetic Theatre” cinematreasures.org (link); Paul Benedetti. “Theatre closes for last time” Hamilton Spectator, April 20, 1985 (Spec link)}

15  _{Manson & Manson (1999). Up and Down Locke Street South.}

16  _{Shirley Sleightholm. “Get ready for flood of problems say experts,” Hamilton Spectator, March 6, 1979 (Spec link)}

17  _{Manson & Manson (1999). Up and Down Locke Street South.}