Continued....
In 1907, the Ontario provincial government struck a special government for the beach strip led by a three person commission, to establish and administer health, park development, policing, public utilities and other regular municipal policies in the area (McCowell,et al, pp. 16 -30). xxv Its development of parks land represented a significant recognition of the public's right to the benefits of the beach strip. Noulan Cauchon's 1917 town plan for Hamilton supported the struggle for beaches and parks open to a wider public. He considered the beach strip to be one of Hamilton's "jewels in the gift of nature awaiting acknowledgement by the hand of man" (Cauchon, p.55). The final shape of that public space designed at that hand, however, appears to have been consistent with an older vision of what were considered to be the beach's recreational purposes. Rather than provide facilities for informal, inclusive activities like picnic grounds, ice cream stands, baseball diamonds or an amusement park the new park featured more sedate amenities like an elaborate promenade lined with street lamps and little pagodas, so that pedestrians could sedately rest and contemplate the nature around them.
Yet the future of the beach as a recreational space would be dramatically altered in the years to come. Increasing levels of water and air pollution, and the use of the beach strip as an automobile transportation corridor between the Niagara peninsula and Toronto, severely threatened to close the heritage of the people against them. Undrinkable even after being treated, the water had pollution levels that undermined even water based recreation. Because Lake Ontario frequently was quite cold, the warmer waters of the bay always had been more attractive for swimmers. By 1925, beach residents complained that oil from automobiles ruined their bayside swimming. A 1923 study of the impact of sewage disposal on the bay found a count of 300 coliform organisms per 100 millilitres of water near the canal. xxviii After the industrial boom generated by World War II, these numbers rose to unacceptable levels. In 1947, more than 2290 per 100 millilitres could be found, and, by 1958, this rose to 11,500 per 100 millilitres.
With its appeal as a vacation spot by the water's edge waning, the beach emerged as an attractive spot for permanent residences, particularly during postwar housing shortages following both World Wars (MacDonald, 1992). People of modest means winterized existing cottages, attracted by the fixed tax rate and low assessments of the area. The permanent beach community, which likely never exceeded 200 people during the nineteenth century, rose to over 1000 immediately after World War I, and to 2000 after World War II. By the early 1950s, its population rose to over 3000. By then, an estimated 2000 cars and trucks crossed the narrow beach strip road every hour during the summer months. This caused tremendous bottlenecks for Niagara * Toronto traffic. The development of the automobile thus altered people's perceptions of the beach strip and stimulated new kinds of activity in that community. Heavy traffic required the building of the first Burlington Bay Skyway Bridge, officially opened in 1958, for which 93 homes were expropriated and demolished. A second bridge followed in 1985. Both bridges enabled large ships to pass from Lake Ontario into the Bay without disrupting traffic.
In just thirty years then, a region whose recreational purposes had been long contested, ceased to be perceived as a significant recreational space at all. When elite and middle class vacationers abandoned the beach,they left behind a marginalised, increasingly working*class community. Few thought of the beach strip as a healthy or restorative area * after all, who wants to live under a highway or so close to dirty, grimy steel factories? By the 1960s, local community groups like the Burlington Beach Property Owners Association began documenting the industrial fallout that seriously damaged their homes and health (McCowell et al, 32). In 1973, flooding from Lake Ontario severely damaged some beach homes, and local health authorities ended up condemning many of them (Mooreet al, 1987). xxxii Believing the area to be unsuitable for a residential community, the local Conservation Authority aimed to transform the beach strip into one large recreational space. xxxiii It bought people's homes and properties and began razing them to make way for park land.
By 1980, just a century*or*so after the city of Hamilton first endeavoured to transform the area into a waterfront landscape for the industrial city, the history of the beach had turned a full circle. Once again, the city neglected the property rights of beach strip dwellers, marginalizing them in the pursuit of waterfront parks development. xxxiv But this time beach dwellers, like members of the Hamilton Beach Property Owners Association, openly and successfully resisted and challenged the city's plans. They suggested an alternative vision of their community. Rather than creating a parkland devoid of human habitation, local residents insisted that the city explore ways to revitalize recreation and ensure public access to the beach, but also to sustain the small but vital permanent community that continued to call the beach home (Ames et al, 1982). Recently historic plaques have marked the history of the beach strip for the Hamilton Beach 175th Anniversary Project. They show a spirit of cooperation between the parties involved. Visitors to the beach strip today are welcomed by little flower gardens along the streets, created and maintained by members of the Hamilton Beach Garden Club, who aim to keep the beach a place of beauty. As one Spectator reported noted, the
beach strip, which had been, "for many years, an endangered species, living under the axe of city plans" is beginning to blossom once again as a recreational waterfront landscape.
http://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/unescol...IKSHANKKen.pdf