Chapter 3Lake Ontario’s “West Coast”
Starting in the west end of Toronto, the Lake Ontario shoreline bends noticeably. From its east–west orientation east of the city, it angles markedly to the southwest, making that section of the shoreline in effect the lake’s west coast. The shore is low-lying and flat. During the last ice age, as the ice lifted from the east end of the developing water body, the bedrock there rebounded, causing the water level at the west end of the lake to rise. As it did, it began to flood the river valleys that had formed as the ice retreated. Such flooding formed several shallow lagoons at the river mouths.
These provided shelter for early vessels, and small commercial harbours developed. West of Toronto these lagoons formed at Sixteen Mile Creek, Bronte Creek, and the Credit River. While all three have their sources above the Niagara Escarpment, only the Credit attains any significant size.
According to Chapman and Putnam,1 the shoreline between Hamilton and Toronto was the result of the earlier and higher Lake Iroquois. The old lake deposited beaches of sand and gravel above the current lakeshore (later used by settlers as building materials). The soil, while light, does not enjoy as long a frost-free growing season as do the lands along the Niagara Peninsula, and therefore tender fruits could not be grown here successfully, though many did try. Apple orchards and strawberry fields, however, were very successful, but in the end could not survive another peril — urban sprawl.
Even as the ports at Dundas and Hamilton were growing and shipping out lumber and wheat, the area between York and the head of the lake remained less developed. Until 1820, the mouths of Sixteen Mile Creek and Twelve Mile Creek remained in the hands of the Mississauga. Only after the Mississauga granted them to the Crown were the vital river mouths opened for settlement.
Although a rough aboriginal trail followed the lakeshore, no route existed for stage travel until 1832, when Ontario’s lieutenant governor, Sir John Colborne, ordered the construction of a road along the shore of the lake. By 1836 the river mouths had been bridged, and stages began rolling between Dundas and York, a journey that could take up to two days.
The entire west coast of the lake is now urban; that trend is not new. In 1855, the Great Western Railway laid its tracks toward Toronto from Hamilton, giving rise to a string of stations only a short distance inland. Following the First World War, as Toronto and Hamilton grew, and traffic between them increased, a new highway opened along the shore, the Hamilton Highway. This hard-surface road spurred more development, and the little ports evolved into summer resorts and commuter towns.
The greatest stimulus to sprawl was North America’s first limited-access freeway, the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), which opened to traffic in 1939. Throughout the 1950s, as car ownership became universal and suburbs took over the farmland, the perils of sprawl and congestion loomed ominously in the future. Today, with no open space left along Lake Ontario’s west coast, and with the QEW almost constantly gridlocked, that future has arrived. Still, within that sprawl and traffic, heritage survives: some of it preserved and promoted; some less obvious, or simply hidden.
Today it is better known as Burlington. In 1798, Mohawk Joseph Brant received a grant of over 1,400 hectares along the shore of Lake Ontario as a reward for his service to the British Army during the American Revolution. Following Brant’s death in 1807, his land was sold back to the Crown. One of the early developers of those lands was Joseph Gage, who named the site Wellington Square, after the Duke of Wellington, hero of the Battle of Waterloo (1815). As settlers began to flow into the region, Wellington Square grew from a cluster of sixteen simple homes in 1817 into a community of four hundred residents by 1845.
With few natural harbours along Lake Ontario’s west coast, the three wharves at Wellington Square were exposed to the waves, as were the individual wharves at Port Nelson to the east and that at Port Flamborough in Aldershot. William H. Smith, in 1851, noted:
Had Wellington Square possessed the advantage of a good and well sheltered harbour, it would have become a place of considerable importance, it being a convenient shipping place for a large extent of back country. As it is its progress is but slow, and property does not appear to have risen greatly in value. For a short time during each spring and fall, while Burlington Bay is locked up with ice, the steamboats run from Toronto to the Square from whence passengers and the mails are conveyed by stage to Hamilton.2
In 1855, the Great Western Railway extended its tracks from Hamilton to Toronto, locating its station several kilometres to the north of Wellington Square. In 1875 the Hamilton and Northwestern Railway laid its tracks right along the beach strip and through the centre of the town, bringing with it hoards of vacationers. Joseph Brant’s house, which was still standing at that time, became a tourist hotel known as Brant House, which offered croquet, dancing, ice cream, and twenty acres of gardens. Shortly after, the Hotel Brant opened next door and outdid the old Brant House by offering fine dining, electric lights, and elevators.
But the rail age also meant that the ships were now bypassing the west coast ports in favour of the larger facilities at Hamilton, thanks in large part to the improvements on the Burlington Canal. In 1873, when Wellington Square incorporated as a village, the name was changed to Burlington, its population having swelled to eight hundred. Among its industrial assets were grain warehouses, a carriage factory, and a wire factory.
Agriculture changed from grain-growing to the growing of apples and market garden crops, all of which could now be shipped by train, year-round, to the growing urban markets of Toronto. The Canadian Canning Company replaced the grain elevators at the foot of Brant Street. A short-lived streetcar line linked downtown Burlington with Oakville and Hamilton, but by the 1930s was gone. The opening of the QEW in 1939 and the post-war boom in suburban growth changed the face of Burlington, from that of a rural community to that of a suburb. The opening of the Ford Motor Plant in nearby Oakville led to more housing, and, in 1974, Burlington became a “city.”
Guests relax on the veranda of the popular Brant Hotel in Burlington. The hotel was one of many that lined the lake in the area of Burlington’s beach strip
Burlington’s heritage preservation has been hit and miss. Brant Street contains a few early buildings, such as the Queen’s Head and Raymond hotels. Halstead’s Inn, now a private home that stands at 2429 Lakeshore Road, may have been operating as early as 1830. And in 1979, a coalition of heritage-minded citizens managed to convince the council of the day to change its mind about demolishing a row of heritage homes along the lakeshore in favour of new development. Sadly, nothing remains of Burlington’s waterfront industries, but the area is now benefiting from a massive makeover that includes new walkways, breakwaters, and businesses.
Situated at the foot of the Guelph Road, Port Nelson offered the backcountry farmers an outlet from which to ship their lumber and wheat. In 1851, William Smith described it as “a mere shipping place, containing about sixty inhabitants, doing but little other business. There are storehouses for storing grain for shipment, and a considerable quantity is exported.”3
The community was so named for being the port of shipment for Nelson Township (which, like Wellington Square, was named for a British war hero, Horatio Nelson.) The Guelph Line road linked the port to communities farther inland, such as the farm hamlet of Nelson on Dundas Street and the mill town of Lowville on Bronte Creek. It was not unusual during the height of the shipping season for grain carts and lumber wagons to line up along Guelph Line, awaiting their turn at the dock. During one busy season the little wharf handled more shipments than the much