Highway 6 dinosaurs headed for extinction? Landmark business up for sale
Hamilton's Hwy. 6 dinosaurs have survived fire, theft, hurricane Sandy, decapitation - even the extinction of Flamborough as a standalone municipality.
But the prehistoric landmark could be history if somebody buys Flamborough Patio Furniture, the Instagram-branded #homeofthedinosaurs and tourist photo magnet that is now up for sale.
Longtime owner and dinosaur daddy Gilles Fortin said he is eyeing a retirement property in Fergus and would like to sell the 10-acre-plus business and adjacent home on Hwy. 6 all at once. And if it happens - a previous effort to test sale interest was disappointing" - Gilles said he will not take any oversized reptiles with him.
Or put another way: if you pay his hoped-for $2.7-million price, you get the drive-by dinosaurs for free."
I'll sell the whole shebang together in one shot or I won't bother," said Gilles, who started the patio business 40 years ago and adopted" his first dinosaur as a birthday gift for a grandson, Brett, nearly two decades ago.
But you know, I'm 70 years old now. Sooner or later I have to get out of here... My wife, she wanted me to retire long ago."
Gilles bought his first 12-metre-tall dinosaur from a Quebec manufacturer - a fiberglass-and-steel Tyrannosaurus Rex - as a joke birthday gift in 1993. It was just a fun, stupid thing that was in my mind, so I did it," he said. And then things just kept growing."
By the mid-2000s, seven different dinosaurs loomed over Highway 6 north of Clappison's Corners, including a second T-Rex than doubled as a colossal piggy bank, a raptor purchased to cash in on the popularity of the first Jurassic Park movie and a monstrously popular four-storey tall Brontosaurus.
Gilles, his family and employees dressed up in Flinstone-esque costumes to celebrate the arrival of the long-necked thunder lizard - who lost his head on four separate occasions, once to the windy remnants of hurricane Sandy.
A $500,000 fire that destroyed Gilles' production shop in 2017 spared his dinosaurs - although not his oversized Superman and Captain America statues.
But the prehistoric stable has over time shrunk to just a single store-branded T-Rex and a smiling pterodactyl (technically a flying reptile, not a dinosaur.)
A final weather-related decapitation recently prompted Gilles to sell the beloved Brontosaurus back to its creators after his insurance company declined to cover yet another surgical repair. (It's now retired" in a small dinosaur display in rural Quebec.)
He has also sold a fair number of his life-sized lawn ornaments, too. That includes a T-Rex to a Gravenhurst resident, a moose to a Niagara Falls winery - and most recently, an infamous elephant with only one tusk to a longtime admirer from Mount Forest.
A confused thief memorably stole the definitely-not-ivory" tusk in 2016, prompting an irritated Gilles to offer a $200 reward no one ever claimed. Amazingly, that remains the only theft to trouble the unfenced monster menagerie in nearly two decades.
Sometimes I come out and find some family trying to ride the elephant or whatever, you know? Just for pictures. But people have been pretty good."
Gilles said he'll hang on the business if no buyer is immediately interested in paying what he feels the land is worth. If it doesn't happen today, it will happen tomorrow," he said, pointing to the development frenzy in nearby Waterdown.
But FYI: T-Rex is still separately up for grabs for the prehistoric price of $22,000.
Matthew Van Dongen is a Hamilton-based reporter covering transportation for The Spectator. Reach him via email: mvandongen@thespec.com