‘Hamilton Mountain’ is a sign of our passion to exaggerate

I read with interest about a movement to change the name of Hamilton Mountain to Uptown' and finally admit that while our city has a lot of wonderful attributes, a certifiable mountain is not one of them.

In his Nov. 23 Spectator column, Scott Radley chronicled a growing usage of the new place name. He explained the view by some that many cities use downtown-uptown terminology as a basis of local geography, so maybe Hamilton should do the same.

But I, for one, would not like to see this drift into urban conformity.

Yes, we did go over the top with this Hamilton Mountain thing. But it's too late to turn back now.

We have been down this road before. Seventy years ago, there was an ill-fated attempt to call the upper city Hamilton Heights,' but the idea was shouted down faster than a pass interference infraction by a Toronto Argonaut linebacker.

It begs the question: Where did it all begin? Did someone figure the 450-million-year-old, 100-metre-high escarpment would grow into its overblown designation in Hamilton, like a kid whose hockey skates are too big?

I think we can trace the word Mountain back to the ignorance of the early settlers who perceived a high elevation or ridge as a mountain and knew nothing of the geological structure of the area," says Bob Williamson, who writes a Mountain Memories" column in the Mountain News.

The term then influenced all future thinking and naming of features and place names such as the community of Mount Hamilton, John Street Mountain Road, Mountainview Hotel, Mountain Drive Park, Mount Hamilton Incline Railway Co., Mountain Boulevard etc.," he says.

Bill King, another local history expert with a particular interest in the Mountain, says the name can be traced to the mid-1800s, arising from a sense that the elevated land was an obstacle to be surmounted. Certainly when you are trying to build a railway up the ridge, it looks a lot more like a mountain.'"

Back in 1959, Maclean's magazine took a hard look at Hamilton's Marvellous Mountain," with a lengthy article that included a telling anecdote from 1935.

A visiting federal politician named H.H. Stevens was in town, and controller Norah Frances Henderson was showing off the city. She pointed to the Mountain that was in beautiful spring foliage at the time.

The visitor chuckled, noting he was from British Columbia, and was well aware of the beauty of mountains.

My dear Mr. Stevens," she interrupted, you are no doubt thinking of mere mountains. I speak of The Mountain.'"

And that, I think, gets to the heart of the matter. Hamilton Mountain is part of our delusional inventory and may even be a sign of collective neurosis.

Clearly, we like to exaggerate and it's not usually clear whether we believe our embellishments or if it's just bluster.

I think it comes from the city's little brother relationship with Toronto. We never got over the fact that a city that was a little bigger than us 170 years ago grew so much faster than we did.

Now the bursting metropolis of the Greater Toronto Area is knocking at our door, with its ex-pats buying up our relatively cheap real estate and wondering about our quirky tendencies.

What will they do next if Uptown' gets the thumbs up?

Well, I hear a lot of snickers about Cootes Paradise being a little preposterous. And that was even before 24 billion litres of sewage was dumped into it.

Another city would have called it a park or a nature refuge. But not Hamilton. That wasn't good enough.

Nope. We had to crank it up and call it paradise.'

And they got so excited about the term, a Paradise Road" was created to go along with it.

Then the Piece de resistance: They came up with a Upper Paradise Road" on the Mountain.

So, as I noted in my 2019 Hamilton Fringe Festival Play Hamilton for Beginners," we have a Mountain that isn't a mountain with a street called Upper Paradise that is just like any other street.

This is not something that normal cities do.

And then, of course, there is Dundurn Castle.

It's a nice house - a mansion, for sure. But the term castle is pushing it. Where is the moat and the drawbridge?

Do you think we might need some therapy?

markflashbacks@gmail.comCheck out my song video Land of the Holy Mackinaw" on thespec.com where I further explore Hamilton's hyperbolic tendencies.