‘All roads lead to Dundas’: New guidebook, exhibit celebrates the ‘Valley Town’
There are really two local history museums in Dundas.
The one is in a well-kept building on Park Street West that has been storing and displaying local artifacts since 1956. And the other can be found on the streets around it.
So much of the 1800s architectural heritage in the area has been preserved, that a leisurely walk can seem like stepping into a time warp.
Today, a look at both the outdoor and indoor museums with a delightful new book called My Walks of Art. A Walking Guidebook of Dundas, Ontario" and a clever exhibition at the Dundas Museum and Archives called All Roads Lead to Dundas."
They were put together separately, but they celebrate the same thing - the history of Dundas. And they lay out unique pathways to discover it.
First, the book.
Fine artist Danuta Niton has been sketching and painting buildings in Dundas for more than 20 years, but when COVID hit last year, she decided to go at it more extensively.
She went on daily walks, taking photos of houses and other buildings that caught her eye. Later she would sort through the images looking for ones that inspired her to take out her watercolour brushes.
The illustrations would take two or three hours to complete and then she would upload them onto Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites with a note asking people to share what they knew about the buildings.
As the months went by, Niton found herself with a trove of 300 pictures and all kinds of information from people who lived in the houses, used to live in them or had some other connection. She collected comments about everything from special family moments to unique architectural features such as secret passages.
To augment the reminiscences, Niton reached out to folks at the Dundas museum and local historian Stan Nowak.
At some point she realized there was enough material for a book. She just needed a way to present it.
Working with her daughter Kasia, a graphic designer, she plotted six walking tours with 130 of her illustrations and accompanying stories. (Owners of the buildings signed waivers to allow their properties to be featured.)
In late November she launched the book at the Dundas museum with an event that included a guided tour by Nowak. He used one from the book - Route No. 2, West of Sydenham, 1.8 km (approximate walking time 25 minutes)."
The walk started at the museum featuring the Gothic Revival 1848 Dr. Bates' Office" that is on the property. The compact wood structure was the first building in Dundas to be designated under the Ontario Heritage Act.
In addition to several houses from the mid to late 1800s, the tour included two historic churches on Melville Steet, St. James Anglican in the west and St. Augustine's Roman Catholic in the east. There was a stop in front of one of the oldest primary schools in Hamilton, Central Public School at 73 Melville built in1857.
At 39 Elgin, the circa 1860 two-storey Gothic Revival house with gabled porch supported by light octagonal columns, steep roof pitch, tall double-stack chimneys, with eye-catching ornamented tiles at the legible peaks" was the home of Thomas Wilson who was a former mayor of Dundas. (The house is listed for sale online for a whopping $2 million.)
The tour ended at Nowak's home on Park Street West that he and his wife Sally call Basil Cottage." It's named after their yellow Labrador retriever, Basil.
The original house, built circa 1860, consisted of a living room and two bedrooms. What is now our dining room was added in 1872-73. The kitchen and bathroom were added around 1935 with a sunroom finishing the home in 1990...we still have the original pine flooring from 1860s/70s," he is quoted as saying in the book.
Standing out front of the house, wearing a black pork pie hat, Nowak said with a big smile: I just love living in Dundas...There is so much heritage in this town. When I look at photos from the mid 1800s in Dundas, I know exactly where they were taken because the buildings are still standing."
Austin Strutt, the exhibitions co-ordinator of the Dundas museum, says the All Roads Lead to Dundas" exhibition arises from the longstanding joke in the community, that wherever you go, you will run into somebody from Dundas."
And it also finds connections between people from the former town and major events of history that include the First and Second World Wars as well as the Crimean and Boer War.
The Cowper Telephone," - named for R.F. Cowper, who owned the device - is on display. It was one of the world's first telephones and was installed in Dundas in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father.
Canada's first Black medical doctor, Anderson Ruffin Abbott (1837-1913) is celebrated. The physician - who is reputed to have given medical assistance to dying U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 - lived in Dundas for eight years in the 1880s.
The exhibition also features a snuffbox once owned by the iconic Scottish poet Robert Burns. It found its way to the Dundas St. Andrew's Society and was eventually donated to the museum.
A poem called Dundas" by R.K. Kernighan (1854-1926) - who wrote a regular column more than a century ago for The Spectator under the pen name The Khan" - is quoted at the entrance to the show.
...If all the old Dundasites would come back and settle here the old town would overflow to Hamilton, and squeeze it like a lemon. It would reach as far as Copetown, it would spread as far as Waterdown, it would fill the valley full and crowd the heights..."
And former residents would also find that much of Dundas is remarkably unchanged.
End of an Era
One of the last survivors of the bitter 1946 Stelco strike, has died.
Lino Trigatti, 94, was featured in a July Flashbacks column about the 75th anniversary about the 81-day labour dispute that led to the recognition of United Steelworkers Local 1005 and helped define Canada's post-war labour movement.
Trigger," as he was known, died Nov. 27 after suffering a stroke. His funeral mass took place Dec. 1.
Book and Exhibition
My Walks of Art" by Danuta Niton
80 pages, $45
Available through artofdesign.ca and the Dundas museum, 139 Park St. W.
All Roads Lead to Dundas"
Dundas Museum and Archives
dundasmuseum.ca/exhibitions/current
Until Jan. 15, 2022