…but first, get ready for The Incline: LIVE!

That’s right! The Incline is doing a LIVE event! Join me and your fellow Inclineites on Thursday, June 5 at 7:00 PM for a cozy event at King West Books/Mixed Media in Westdale. You’ll hear a fun new story from yours truly with a chance for us to discuss the state of the city, our local history, and who’s in everyone’s Fantasy City Council Lineup for next year’s municipal election.

Space is limited to 25 folks, so sign up now! The event page on Eventbrite lists it as “free” (to get around their pesky fees), but we’re asking for pay-what-you-can donations, either through my KoFi page or in cash at the door with a recommended contribution of $5.

Many thanks to Dave and the folks at King West Books for their support and use of their wonderful venue!

Get your tickets by clicking the button below!

Victoria, Queen of the Gore

Ah, Victoria Day. The unofficial start to summer in Canada. The kick-off to that glorious, hazy, warm time of year where every activity seems pointless when you can be “outside enjoying the nice weather” instead. May as well be out-of-doors, powerwashing your deck or resealing your driveway or sitting on the dock at your cottage! Well, that’s what I’d say if I wasn’t a millennial for whom the prospect of owning anything more than a few houseplants would be an outlandish fantasy, but you get the point.

***

An interesting tidbit of Canadian history is that Victoria Day is the monarch’s “Official Birthday”. King Charles III’s technical birthday is November 14, but, according to the Canadian state, it’s officially the last Monday before May 25. Weird, right?

Around 265 years ago, when Canada’s monarch was King George III (the one who lost the American colonies to that upstart band of rebels down south), there was much celebration and revelry around his birthday. It was mainly military drills and drinking and a momentary reprieve from the worry about death-by-dysentery. As George III’s special day fell on June 4, it was a natural time to hold outdoor festivities and celebrate the summer season.

After the creation of the united Province of Canada in 1841, the newly expanded colony’s leaders had to go through the whole affair of passing legislation to officially designate holidays, among them the birthday of their sovereign, Queen Victoria. In a piece of 1845 legislation, Canada’s parliament limited public holidays to those occasionally proclaimed by the Governor General, as well as Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, and “the birth-day of Her Majesty and Her Royal Successors.” In the case of Victoria, that meant that May 24 was to be an official holiday.

Victoria’s immediate successor, Edward VII, had a birthday in November, so the new Dominion’s parliament stuck with May 24 as a more climatically-suitable day for a regal celebration. But, to carry on with a tradition so many Canadians knew and to recognize the long-reigning and popular monarch, they opted to call May 24 “Victoria Day”.

After the death of Edward VII, the official day bounced around a bit, given the convenient summer birthdays of George V and Edward VIII. The latter, if we remember our 20th century history, gave up the throne not long after assuming it so that he could pursue a scandalous relationship with the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. It just so happened that Edward VIII ended up quitting a few days before the birthday of his brother (and successor), George VI. Sensing how complicated the whole thing would be, Canada’s ever-astute Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, decided that there would be a public celebration of George VI’s technical birthday (December 14) for the year his reign started, but that the official birthday would float somewhere between the end of May and the beginning of June. Parties all around!

In the 1950’s, when Elizabeth II became Queen of Canada, a move was made to standardize the monarch’s official birthday and create a late May summer kick-off holiday. In the spring of 1952, parliamentarians debated a bill that would officially move Victoria Day to the first Monday before May 25. The Progressive Conservatives were opposed, calling the move insulting “nonsense”. The Liberals, on the other hand, were strongly in favour, with one Ontario senator saying the day was most fondly remembered by most Canadians as “the day we used to shed our red woollen underwear.”¹

In a testament to the short-sightedness of Canada’s political leaders in the halcyon days of the 1950’s, the legislation they passed officially designated the day “the Queen’s birthday”. So, when Charles III assumed the throne a few years back, the government needed to issue an official Proclamation in the Canada Gazette officially declaring the last Monday before May 25 as “the Day of Celebration in Canada of the Birthday of the Sovereign,” aka Victoria Day.

***

One of Hamilton’s most salubrious of Victoria Days was May 25, 1908 (back when the holiday could fall on the 25th, presuming it was a Monday). But, to understand the reason why, we have to go back to January 22, 1901.

That was the day that Victoria, who had been unwell for most of 1900, died on the Isle of Wight. By the Spectator’s account, many Hamiltonians were near-sick with grief, standing quietly in front of the city’s newspaper offices and telegraph companies to get the latest updates. “Hamilton citizens,” the paper declared in it’s late edition, “whose love for their Queen has more than a local reputation, were feeling the loss of one who had been to them in a peculiar sense a mother from their childhood to this melancholy day.”²

A few days later, the grief-stricken members of the Women’s Wentworth Historical Society (WWHS) met in the offices of the Board of Trade to come up with a way to soothe their anguished souls. The decision was simple: strike a general committee and individual ward-based subcommittees to coordinate the mass collection of donations that would go towards erecting a statue of Queen Victoria in Hamilton. Right from the get-go, it was decided that the group would solicit donations and that “all men, women, and children should be asked to contribute.” Every Hamiltonian with a couple of spare pennies to rub together would be asked to hand them over to honour, in the words of the Spec’s editorial board the day she passed, “the good Queen [who] was not only blessed beyond measure by the affection of her kindred and loving homage of her subjects; but [also] by alien peoples, civilized and savage, in both hemispheres of the earth.”³  Ooof.

One of the first orders of business for the group was deciding where in the city the actual statue should go. Over a few short days, members of the community made passionate pitches for where the monument should rest. Some suggested it should be placed on the scenic grounds of Dundurn Castle. Others wanted it to loom over the city, arms outstretched, looking down at Hamiltonians from a perch atop the Niagara Escarpment. But the President of the WWHS, Sara Calder - the granddaughter of James Gage, one of the city’s founders - put a stop to any speculation by moving a motion that the statue be located in Gore Park, the beating heart of the ambitious city. It passed with ease.

The Committee then moved on to two other important orders of business: a name and a leader. Both, it turns out, were easy choices for the group. The name they settled on was the rather clunky “Queen Victoria Memorial Statue Committee”. And, for a leader, they needed a visible, capable, and inspiring public face for their efforts. So, naturally, they turned to Mrs. Lena Hendrie.⁴

***

Mrs. Hendrie (as she was at the time - the first part of that name would eventually change, but more on that later) was the woman to know in Hamilton. If there was a committee that needed a chair, if there was a party that needed an appearance, if there was an opening that simply needed to be graced by someone who could get everyone talking, late-Victorian and early-Edwardian Hamiltonians called on Lena Maud Hendrie (née Henderson) to guarantee success.

Lena’s husband, Major John Strathearn Hendrie was one of Hamilton’s favourite sons in his time. Indeed, his popularity was such that, just over two weeks before the Queen’s death, Hendrie won Hamilton’s 1901 mayoral election with 53.1% of the vote, despite no previous experience in politics (though he was, like most of Hamilton’s early movers and shakers, an active member of the Conservative Party).

Born to an upstanding Scottish family in the city (some might know the name of his brother, George, who donated the family’s land in Burlington to the Royal Botanical Gardens, creating Hendrie Park), John Hendrie was shipped off to the prestigious Upper Canada College in Toronto for his education. At age 26, Hendrie joined the military and began climbing the force’s ranks, as was expected of a loyal young man of high social standing. While making a name for himself in the military, Hendrie met Lena in Kingston, and the pair were married in a staunch Presbyterian ceremony in 1895, after which point the ambitious artilleryman and his new wife returned to John’s hometown of Hamilton. An invitation to command an artillery contingent during Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897 was followed by an appointment to the rank of major in 1899.

After leaving the active military (he remained a militia commander until 1909), Hendrie made a point of engraining himself in the social, political, and economic grain of Hamilton as deeply and thoroughly as possible. His involvement with local Tories was merely the requisite affiliation for a man with as many business interests as Major Hendrie, who was, at varying points, involved with the Great West Assurance Company, the Bank of Hamilton, every major local railroad, Hamilton Bridge Works, and his own shipping company, Hendrie & Co.

As impressive as Major Hendrie’s resume was, Lena was not one to be outdone. Soon after arriving in Hamilton as a newlywed, Lena committed herself to every imaginable high-profile board, institute, and committee. While her husband climbed the ranks of local business and politics, Lena did the same with charitable causes. By the time of her husband’s election as mayor, Lena was a coordinator for the local Red Cross, a member of the Women’s Wentworth Historical Society, and held many successful fundraisers for the city’s home for orphaned boys at the Hendrie family estate on the southwest corner of James Street South and Herkimer Street - still one of the most iconic Richardsonian Romanesque buildings in Hamilton (though one they bought from T.B. Griffiths, a manager at the HSR). Any appearance by Lena sent Hamilton’s society columnists into a tizzy, with the write up about her attendance at 1901’s St. Andrew’s Ball (she was, by that time, quite literally the First Lady of Hamilton) noting that her “gown was of ivory brocaded satin, with mink bands finishing the corsage. Her ornaments were diamonds, and she carried a beautiful bouquet of pink roses.”⁵

It’s no wonder that Mrs. Hendrie - First Lady of Hamilton and one of the city’s most prominent society figures - was a natural choice to head up the Queen Victoria Memorial Statue Committee. And Mrs. Hendrie delivered.

***

Under six weeks after the committee was launched, it was announced that they had successfully raised nearly $2,000 for the cause, with another $1,000 promised or en route. The proposal had been endorsed by all the expected groups - the Daughters of the Empire and the Sons of England - and had elicited cash donations from as far away as Winnipeg and Chicago.⁶ Charity concerts were held at the Grand Opera House, proposals were sent to city council for municipal funds, and local businesses jumped on the chance to be part of the cause. Shortly after Victoria Day, 1901, Mrs. Hendrie announced that the committee had received a donation of $17.50 (close to $500 today) from members of Hamilton’s Black loyalist community to honour a woman that “gave [their ancestors] a home in peace when they had nowhere to go, under the protection of the British flag and Union Jack.”⁷

Time marched on, but the Committee refused to relent. Major Hendrie served two successful terms as mayor before moving on to represent Hamilton West in the provincial legislature as a Conservative member (being rewarded with the mostly meaningless title of “Minister Without Portfolio”) and Lena forged on, maintaining her busy social and charitable schedule - the Committee first-and-foremost among them. With her husband at Queen’s Park, Lena swiftly organized a statue-focused “advisory committee” made up of prominent Hamiltonians, convinced the Committee that the statue should be cast in bronze, rather than chiseled from marble, and helped select the exact spot for the monument: the western entrance to the Gore.

By April of 1906, the Committee had raised all the money necessary to construct the statue and had entertained submissions from three prominent sculptors. On the 14th of April, word leaked to the Spec that the committee had made a decision, and the paper speculated that the choice had likely been an artist out of Ottawa. The paper evidently jumped the gun on that call, as the Committee had, instead, chosen Louis-Philippe Hébert, the 56 year-old Montreal-based sculptor who was the first Canadian to win a medal at the Exposition universelle de Paris. Already famous for his sculptures of Sirs George-Étienne Cartier and John A. Macdonald on Parliament Hill, the Committee thought his depiction of Victoria - standing, youthful, looking west - was the most appropriate choice. The Spec had reservations, running the story under the headline “To a Frenchman”, and referenced some vague “criticisms” of Hébert’s vision, though maintained that the Committee’s decision to spend some of the $10,000 raised to send Hébert to England for further study was a good call.⁸

With Hébert off to the mother country, the Committee had the task of quickly making arrangements for the unveiling. Late in 1907, the movement’s members met at the Hendrie estate to fill a sizable copper box - in essence, a time capsule - with mementos. That box would then be sealed in the base of the statue for as long as it would stand. Inside the box was placed copies of each of the city’s three newspapers as well as an edition of the Globe and Mail, photos of Hébert and the alternate submissions, old coins and stamps, patriotic flags, poems, a telephone book, the Bible, and lists of names of members of the Committee, city council, Board of Education, and Hamilton’s provincial and federal representatives. The Committee then dutifully handed the box to Mayor Thomas Stewart, who brought the capsule to the already-placed statue base, and sealed it within.⁹

***

With just days to go before the unveiling, the Hendries scored a major win. Through his political connections, John Hendrie was able to secure the attendance of none other than the Governor General, the Lord Earl Grey, who would be given the honour of unveiling the statue at a ceremony held on May 25, 1908.

Most of the credit for the project’s success, though, lay with Lena. A Spec write-up a few days before the unveiling noted that Mrs. Hendrie “deserves the greatest need of credit, she having been indefatigable in her efforts to accomplish her aim.” The profile detailed the agenda for the day, which included a motorcade parade for the Lord Earl Grey and his wife from the train station to the Gore, another parade of Boer War veterans, a choir of 600 local school children belting out patriotic songs, speeches by the Governor General, mayor, and Mrs. Hendrie, a luncheon for Committee members, and blessings from the heads of all major local Christian denominations. “Hamilton women are becoming renowned all over Canada for their patriotism,” the Spec wrote, proudly asserting that, “One good deed after another is accomplished by the loyal women of the city, and each deed redounds to the credit of Hamilton as a whole.”¹⁰

***

It was a beautiful day. Temperatures in the low 20’s, not a cloud in the sky, and nary a drop of errant precipitation to be seen. It’s no wonder that an estimated 15,000 to 22,000 people crammed into the Gore to watch the unveiling.

Hébert’s rendition was covered by two oversized Union Jacks, connected to simple wires that, upon the Lord Earl Grey’s activation of a switch, would release. After the parades, a few songs from local children, and Mrs. Hendrie’s speech (in which she said her motivation was to honour “the queenliest woman that has ever graced the throne of the British Empire”), the Governor General stepped up to the switch to unveil the new monument to the people of Hamilton. It was then - and only then - that the Committee’s mission faced its first real hiccup.

The Union Jacks were fixed to the top of the statue with lead. Evidently, when the Lord Earl Grey flipped the switch, an electrical current ran through the statue and melted the lead, sending the two flags flying in either direction. The flag on the south side of the statue fell to the ground. The flag on the north slid gracefully off Victoria’s shoulder and rested in the crux of her arm, which was extended and gripping a scepter. The crowd watched as the glittering bronze statue, so muted in it’s tone, suddenly came alive with a pop of imperial colour. It appeared to onlookers like Victoria was cradling the flag of her Empire. The Spec reported that the cheers nearly drowned out the assembled band, which had begun to play Rule Britannia.

When the Lord Earl Grey was given a chance to speak, he laid credit where it was due: “Mrs. Hendrie, I congratulate you and the people of Hamilton on your resolve to honour the memory of your late and illustrious queen, the great and good Victoria…I congratulate you, the ladies of Hamilton, on your action which has identified your beautiful city, not for the first time, with a loyal appreciation of what you owe to the British crown.”

At the luncheons held for the event, toasts rang out to the good health of King Edward VII, to the Governor General, and to Hébert for his striking rendition. Then it was back to the station for the Lord Earl Grey, who was played out of Hamilton to the tune of God Save the King.¹¹

Six years later, the fervent patriotism of the Hendries would be rewarded with more than an acknowledgement by the Governor General or a token cabinet position. Days after the outbreak of war in Europe, Major Hendrie was named Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor. A year later, he was knighted by George V. But it wasn’t just John who received an honour; thanks to her husband’s knighthood, Mrs. Lena Hendrie became the Lady Hendry. For the next few years, the Hendries remained active in everything civic and social. Sir John focused his efforts on helping the war effort while Lady Lena became the honourary president of the Hamilton Golf and Country Club’s Ladies Committee.

In 1923, while visiting Baltimore, Sir John died suddenly. Lena pulled back from social affairs, opting to spend time with her children and grandchildren spread out across the country. In July of 1928, just over two decades after she helped unveil the statue of her beloved queen, Lena had a fatal heart attack while visiting her daughter in Beaconsfield, Quebec. “Despite the high position which the deceased lady had graced,” wrote the Spec in her obituary, “she was of a most unostentatious and simple nature, taking her greatest pleasure in the association with her son and daughter, and their children, and in the discharging of the various benevolences with which she had associated herself.”¹²

***

While the original members of the Committee maintained ritualistic observations on the anniversaries of Victoria’s death and birthdays for the first few years, eventually, the statue faded into the general scenery of the Gore. By 1948, angry letters filled the Spec’s opinion pages, with writers complaining about the sorry state of the statue in Gore Park (which one argued should be renamed “Pigeon Park”) and how it was clear who should maintain it: “It is high time Hamilton’s ‘women’ who originally had the statue erected, in loving tribute to a good Queen, did something about its decadence,” wrote an angry reader who went by the initials “R. J. F.”¹³

The statue soon became a focal point for McMaster’s first-year students, who were subject to what, in the 1950’s, must have passed as a prank. Incoming Mac students were sent into downtown Hamilton to perform “acts of service” to the community, such as invading city hall to shine the mayor’s shoes, clean council member’s desks, and take out the trash. Gore Park was a favourite spot for students and, on any given day in September, they could be seen sweeping the park’s paths, dusting benches, and polishing the statue of Queen Victoria. When McMaster banned initiation pranks for students in 1960, a keen-eyed Spec cartoonist poked fun at the decision, cheekily noting that the Parks Board would finally have to start paying their employees to maintain the statue.

The day the cartoon appeared in the paper, a group of clever Mac students got together to show the community they still knew how to have fun. With a hand-painted sign that read “We won’t let the Parks Board down!”, a group of a few dozen undergrads climbed the statue to clean it, head-to-toe, with toothbrushes, rags, and detergent. Under the watchful eye of bemused Hamilton police officers, the students got Victoria looking like the day she was first unveiled.¹⁴

The statue had other protectors over the years. A Ukrainian immigrant, Ted Lemenec, became the statue’s unofficial guardian through the 1950s to the 1970s, standing guard near the base and occasionally handing out literature on Victoria to passersby, telling a Spec reporter she “represents all the freedom and happiness that I gained when I came to Canada”. He was sometimes joined - though not in any formal capacity - by “Hamilton’s oldest beatnik”, a 60-something Percy Leggett, who wandered downtown in loose khaki shorts sans undergarments. Lemenec, in a suit and tie, would shoo kids off the statue with a stern lecture about Victoria’s legacy while Leggett would sit nearby, leaving little to the imagination.¹⁵ Neither man was able to stop the attack by an unknown vandal in 1967 that left Victoria’s pet kitty Leo - the lion resting at her feet - without a tail.

***

The statue’s placement has been a source of some controversy over the past few decades. After the initial debates over where to place it died down, people in the city seemed to appreciate her perch overlooking James Street from the Gore. By 1967, though, a movement was started to relocate the statue, either to make way for an overall park redevelopment or to give it a more prominent place in the city. An informal poll of people in Gore Park by a Spec reporter in early October of the Centennial year found little support for her relocation, even if the move was backed by a group of downtown businessmen. One pre-smartphone local youth told the reporter they liked the statue where it was as it had become “a handy location for meeting dates.”¹⁶

The redevelopment plans sputtered along before resurfacing in 1984. That year, a Toronto-based architecture firm proposed a suite of changes, including the addition of a three-metre tiered fountain at the base of the statue - a companion to another proposed fountain at the park’s intersection with Hughson Street that would shoot water high into the air. The proposal was scaled back in the months that followed to be little more than a small bubbler poking through a square of polished granite behind the statue. When that proposal reached the excessively dysfunctional council of 1982-1985, it was slammed by sitting aldermen as “goofy”, “conjuring up primordial ooze”, and, upsettingly, as “a urinal for the winos who hang around Gore Park.” By May, council had voted to strip the fountain out of the redesign, as well as permanently close the park’s washrooms under the auspices of “cutting costs” (though members of the city’s queer community will note the less-than-hidden homophobia and overblown fears of sexual activity being a reason for the final closure of the washrooms in the park). Four years later, the benches around the statue were removed on the urging of downtown businesses to “discourage undesirables” but were quickly restored after public outcry.¹⁷ But a full restoration and rededication also happened that year, including a much-needed replacement of Leo’s tail. The original has never turned up.

By 2017, a new kind of focus was being placed on Victoria. With an eye to anti-racist policies and a commitment to reconciliation, a new city policy proposed vetting public art more critically, leading Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel to opine that the statue of Queen Victoria might be “open to potential criticisms, complaints, and calls for removal.”¹⁸ In 2023, signage was placed at the base of the statue with further historical context in English and Indigenous languages. And, last August, the city opened public consultations on the statue and other local landmarks with varied pasts. The process, entitled the “Landmarks and Monuments Review: Honouring Our Indigenous Roots” is presently underway, with updates being posted to the Engage Hamilton website as work is completed.

***

The fate of Hamilton’s 117 year-old statue of Queen Victoria remains up-in-the-air, much like the pigeons of Gore Park that use her as a perch. I’m keen to see the final report on what to do with the statue to, as the inscription on the base reads, “a model wife and mother,” and to see whether the recommendation is to place her in a museum, relocate her to a different spot, or leave her right where she has been for over a century. No matter what happens, when the report is released, we’ll have another lengthy conversation in the community about historical context, monuments, and differing concepts of justice.

Hopefully this little bit of historical context will help inform the conversation. Until then, I’m going to put my feet up and try to enjoy the long weekend, no matter who it’s named for.

Happy Victoria Day May 24.

1  _{“Senate Approves Principle Of Monday ‘May 24’” Hamilton Spectator/Canadian Press, May 7, 1952 (Spec archive link).}

2  _{“Tolling of Bells” Hamilton Spectator, January 22, 1901 (Spec archive link).}

3  _{“In memory of the good Queen” Hamilton Spectator, January 26, 1901 (Spec archive link); “Death of the Queen” Hamilton Spectator, January 22, 1901 (Spec archive link).}

4  _{“Current topics” Hamilton Spectator, January 25, 1901 (Spec archive link); “A statue in the Gore decided on” Hamilton Spectator, January 29, 1901 (Spec archive link).}

5  _{“The New Cabinet Announced” Hamilton Spectator, February 8, 1905 (Spec archive link); “Notice of Intention to Designate - 252 James Street South” Hamilton Spectator, September 20, 1986 (Spec archive link); “St. Andrew’s Ball” Hamilton Spectator, November 29, 1901 (Spec archive link).}

6  _{“$3,000 in sight” Hamilton Spectator, March 5, 1901 (Spec archive link).}

7  _{“Music and drama: Katharine Fisk” Hamilton Spectator, March 29, 1901 (Spec archive link); “Statue Committee” Hamilton Spectator, May 28 1901 (Spec archive link); “Coal stock was down to limit” Hamilton Spectator, February 4, 1903 (Spec archive link).}

8  _{“Brief local items” Hamilton Spectator, April 14, 1906 (Spec archive link); “To a Frenchman” Hamilton Spectator, April 14, 1906 (Spec archive link).}

9  _{“A lot in it” Hamilton Spectator, November 14, 1906 (Spec archive link).}

10  _{“Queen Victoria memorial statue” Hamilton Spectator, May 23, 1908 (Spec archive link).}

11  _{“Queen Victoria statue was unveiled by Governor-General” Hamilton Spectator, May 26, 1908 (Spec archive link).}

12  _{“Lady Hendrie dies suddenly in Quebec” Hamilton Spectator, July 18, 1928 (Spec archive link).}

13  _{“Queen Victoria’s Statue In Gore Park Deplored” Hamilton Spectator, July 7, 1948 (Spec archive link).}

14  _{“Frost Amaze Visiting Hero From Poland” Hamilton Spectator, September 22, 1953 (Spec archive link); “Cartoon Prompts Clean-up” Hamilton Spectator, September 27, 1960 (Spec archive link).}

15  _{“Ted is in love with Queen Victoria but she’s unmoved by the affair” Hamilton Spectator, May 22, 1971 (Spec archive link); Paul Wilson, “Bridge niche ideas include rich, paupers” Hamilton Spectator, August 18, 1986 (Spec archive link).}

16  _{“Gore Park Facelift Favoured But Few Want Victoria Moved” Hamilton Spectator, October 10, 1967 (Spec archive link).}

17  _{Larry Moko, “Council’s nod last hurdle for redesigned Gore plan” Hamilton Spectator, February 23, 1984 (Spec archive link); Bill Johnston, “New heights at Gore Park” Hamilton Spectator, April 13, 1984 (Spec archive link); Michael Davie, “Toilets are done but it’s a go for Gore construction” Hamilton Spectator, May 30, 1984 (Spec archive link); Paul Wilson, “Streetbeat ties up some loose ends” Hamilton Spectator, September 6, 1988 (Spec archive link).}

18  _{Andrew Dreschel. “City statues fail ‘presentism’ sniff test” Hamilton Spectator, September 20, 2017 (Spec archive link).}