74. Before we leave Dundas, here’s a coda to the previous episode. This cabin (ca. 1792) of hand-hewn white oak logs is one of Ontario’s oldest surviving structures. It was built by the Queen’s Rangers, who used it for accommodation as they constructed Dundas Street. Until 1999, it was located at what is now 1141 Governors Road, that is, on the north (Flamborough) side of the Road about 900 metres east of Binkley Road. Then it was loaded onto a truck and shipped to Westfield Heritage Village in Rockton, where it now sits as the oldest resident among the 40 historical buildings onsite. Strangely, there’s no plaque on it to identify it and attest to its long history.
Map 7. From Binkley Road to about 2 km west of Copetown. All this area is within the City of Hamilton.
The Hamilton to Brantford Rail Trail, on the route of the TH&B Railway, makes a half-circle marked by blue dots in the lower right of the map. This suggests the very indirect way taken by the former rail line as it mounted the Niagara Escarpment. Copetown, a hamlet with a population of about 130,* is left of centre. The Dundas Subdivision of the still active CN Railway tracks is marked by a thick alternating black and white line. There are two sections of “Old Governors Road” and one of “Old Highway 99” east of Copetown, marking the route of Dundas Street before later realignments. Highway 52, intersecting Governors Road at Copetown, is a busy road that connects Ontario Highways 5 and 8 to the north with 403 and 2 to the south. West of 52, Governors Road is not very busy at all, as most east-west traffic takes Highways 403 or 5.
*According to Wikipedia, with a note that says “needs update.” See note at #95 below.
75. Binkley Road north of Governors Road used to connect with Middletown Road and offer a through route to Highway 8 and beyond. Now a pompous gateway blocks through traffic. It appears that a private owner has bought a piece of land that included a section of Binkley Road, built a house, and blocked the public road off in both directions. How could such a thing have been allowed to happen?
Let’s speculate. All this area has been within the excessively overbounded City of Hamilton since the “amalgamation” of 1 January 2001. The total length of roads maintained by Hamilton amounts to 6,500 km. The City of Toronto, by contrast, with 4.5 times the population of Hamilton, maintains “only” 5,397 km of roads. In short, Hamilton has far too many roads to maintain adequately. So it’s happy to sell bits of them off to the highest bidder!
76. (Top) Here where the Hamilton to Brantford Rail Trail runs closest to Governors Road, you can get a sense of what this area of the Upper Dundas Valley looked like back in the day. It was, and mostly still is, densely forested …
(Bottom) … with patches of marshland, swamp, and bog. Governors Road was a corduroy, then a plank road in the early days, which made for rough travel. The well-drained gravel surface of the Rail Trail today, a legacy of the railroad engineers, is a great improvement. Because of the gradual and consistent gradient of the former TH&B rail line as it crossed the Escarpment, you can get on a bike at the Summit near where the Rail Trail meets Hwy 52, and practically coast more than 10 km down into west Hamilton.
What did Dundas Street look like in the 19th century? “At first it was just a trailfull of tree stumps, then as it rotted it was improved with corduroy (crosswise logs), ditches, and culverts. Then the Paris and Dundas Plank Road Co. further improved it by paving it with three inch planks, but the planks warped and rotted. The County put stone and gravel on the soft parts, and then macadamized it.” (Mrs William K. Dunham in Woodhouse, Ancaster, 127)
77. A corduroy road is one on which logs were placed together at right angles to the direction of travel, making a ridged surface like corduroy material. This kind of road was hazardous for horses, as logs would roll and shift leaving leg-breaking gaps between them. Above, a corduroy section of the Bruce Trail through a swampy area in Bruce Peninsula National Park, suggests just how uncomfortable for passengers a wagon ride over a corduroy Dundas Street must have been.
78. A plank road, usually made of flat pine boards nailed between stringers, was a great improvement. It made the going much smoother, and riders could average 8 mph / 13 km/h on a plank road in good condition. Upper Canada was known for its plank roads, thanks to the huge amount of timber available in the vicinity. Above is a pedestrian boardwalk, constructed on a similar principle, on the Lafarge Trail through the notorious Beverly Swamp about 20 km north of Dundas. Back in the day, though, plank roads were usually covered with earth to protect their surfaces.
The era of plank roads was short, as the planks would rot away after a decade or two. Then Dundas Street would have been macadamized, a technology developed in the 1820s and named for its inventor, the Scottish engineer John McAdam. It involved laying a 20 cm base of stones on bare earth, adding to it a layer of smaller stones, and surfacing it with smaller stones still, ones less than the width of a wagon wheel. A macadamized road would need only a 7.5 cm camber to shed rainwater into ditches at the sides of the road. Such roads were hard work to build: rocks would have to be broken into three different smaller sizes by men with sledgehammers. But the pressure from traffic on such roads caused their surfaces to harden without the need of a binding agent. Only after the advent of motor vehicles were road surfaces bound with tar – tarmacadam or “tarmac” – to keep down the dust.
Before we get to Copetown, let’s check out those former sections of Dundas Street now called Old Governors Road and Old Highway 99.
79. Old 99 Farm at 1580 Old Highway 99 is an organic permaculture operation. The farmer refers to himself as a “farmer-postdoomer-boomer, downwardly mobile, neopeasant cognoscente.” He and his wife sell a variety of greens grown in his Hobbit-style greenhouse built into a hillside, as well as meat and eggs from Canadian Lineback cattle, Tamworth hogs, and chickens. Check out the operation here.
80. The entrance to Imagine Metal Art at 1706 Old Highway 99. Here they make metal into art “for gardens, funerals, fire-pits, plaques, business signs, sculptures, center pieces, car-grills and much more. All made from Canadian steel.” Check out pix of their spectacular products here.
81. Here at 1885 Old Governors Road is a firewood storage shed that resembles a log cabin, sporting windows draped with lace curtains.
82. The eastern edge of the hamlet of Copetown. This place was first settled by the long-lived William Cope (1719-1813), who arrived here in 1794 with his wife Phoebe, five sons, one daughter, and his even longer-lived mother, who died here at the age of 107. Cope had been born in Scotland and fled to Germany after the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Later he moved to Pennsylvania, then to Long Island, then to Fishkill in the Hudson Valley, New York. As an Empire Loyalist he was forced to move to British North America in 1785, where he stayed in Fort Niagara for nearly ten years. Then he and his family settled here, just above the Escarpment, near where an Indian trail met Dundas Street, to avoid the rattlesnakes and the mosquitoes of the Dundas Valley.
“Their first occupation was to build a home. The only implements available were an auger and an axe, but with these they raised a cabin whose roof was made of basswood bark, and whose chimney was a hollow log, lined with clay. They cleared a small place to plant corn, hunted wild pigeons, and deer which they salted down and smoked for future food. The settlers were harassed by wolves and bears which found domesticated animals easy prey” (Woodhouse, Ancaster 96).
Until recently, the Lions Club sign above noted, tongue in cheek, that Copetown was the “Hub of the Universe.”
83. The Great Western Railway came to Copetown in 1853. The line here was constructed by an army of 2,000 navvies using only picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. It temporarily boosted the population of Copetown to a level never seen since. Five hotels had to be built to accommodate them! Because the height of the Escarpment had to be surmounted, mule trains were used to bring in the rails and ties from vessels in Hamilton Harbour. Just east of Copetown there was a tamarack swamp and quicksand that made railroad construction a nightmare and that swallowed one engine. Once the line opened in 1854, the vast majority of the navvies moved away and the hotels were torn down. The Grand Trunk Railway doubletracked the line in 1904-5. Now this is a CN mainline connecting Toronto, London, and Windsor / Detroit. It’s also used by VIA passenger trains on the same route, though they don’t stop at places like Copetown any longer.
(Top) The bridge over the tracks at Inksetter Road, Copetown. It was originally a wooden bridge, and had to be carefully checked for hot coals shed by each passing steam train that might cause it to catch fire. It was replaced by a steel bridge in 1923. Then in 1995 CN announced that the bridge no longer met safety requirements and would be taken down, making Inksetter Road a dead end. Local residents protested strongly and so effectively that in 1998 this new bridge was constructed. Warning signs indicate that the bridge has a weight limit of 14 tonnes and is “not suitable for tractor trailer combinations.”
(Bottom) Viewed from the bridge, a CN freight train starts on the long descent towards Lake Ontario.
84. Copetown Cemetery at 1922 Governors Road. Its earliest burial is dated 1826. An old fractured gravestone there bears a message harsher, but more realistic, than can generally be found on markers today:
“Stay and reflect as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I,
As I am now so you must be,
Prepare in time to follow me.”
As for what happened to the original Methodist Church on this site, see #90 below.
85. Oak Hill Academy at 1886 Governors Road describes itself as Hamilton’s Classical Christian school. Currently offering Grades 9-12 with an ambition to offer K-12, tuition is currently $17,750 p.a. per student, uniform and school trips not included.
(Top) The building (1956), was formerly Queen’s Rangers School, an elementary public school named for the soldiers who opened up Dundas Street in 1793. In 1995 the school had 219 students and serviced an area between Highways 2 and 5. It was declared “surplus to the needs” of the Hamilton Wentworth School Board in 2021. A petition to keep it open went unheeded, and public schoolkids in the Copetown area now have to travel 10 km to Ancaster. It’s a pity the school’s old name, so historically significant, wasn’t retained. (Bottom) Traces of the old name are visible under the new one.
86. Unlike many similar small communities, Copetown boasts a busy convenience store. The current store at 2012 Governors Road was established in 1984 by the Chungs, a couple from Korea, and has survived by adapting to changing times. Open seven days a week, it’s no longer a post office or a video rental outlet, nor does it sell fresh produce. It carries what its customers want: a huge range of alcohol, soft drinks, and snacks, as well as dew worms and lottery tickets. Hanging baskets and bedding plants for sale make a colourful splash in summer.
87. I get the thumbs-up from a pair of weed-whacker wielders on Governors Road at the Highway 52 light.
88. West of 52, traffic on Governors Road is light all the way to the outskirts of Brantford.
89. (Top) The tall structure is a concrete grain elevator by the CN tracks at what used to be Copetown Station. There was a fully functional feed mill here from 1909 until it burned down in 1947. The older structures in the picture were saved by firefighters.
(Middle) On the site of the former feed mill is Quick Feeds, a feed store here at 2 Station Road, just off the north side of Governors Road. Widely known in the area, it specializes in bulk feed for domestic animals, including horses, dogs, cats, and birds.
(Bottom) A freight train runs by the feed store’s parking lot, where a horse snack is being loaded into the back of an SUV.
90. (Top) Copetown United Church at 2218 Governors Road is a local landmark, a huge structure for such a small settlement. Its tower can be seen for several kms by traffic heading east along Governors Road.
(Bottom) There’s a plaque in the parking lot that goes into unusual historical detail. To what’s on it, we might add that Conradt Cope, William’s third son and the father of the Copetown congregation, died at the age of 96 in 1861, having outlived all but two of his ten children.
Why are the church and its cemetery (#84 above) more than 1 km apart on opposite sides of Governors Road? “In 1854, the Copetown Congregation complained about the unbearable noise of the trains on the recently completed Great Western Railway, and the unsightliness of the railway excavation in front of their property. They failed to collect any damages from the railway company, so they decided to move” (Woodhouse, Ancaster 193). They bought land here to the west, and built their first brick church on it in 1859. The current, much larger church was built in 1908.
Map 8. A dead straight stretch of Governors Road leads to the village of Lynden.
91. Technically, we are still in the City of Hamilton, whose downtown is 26 km to the east. But with the Dundas Valley behind us, we’re now deep into an agricultural area. There’s open, rolling farmland on both sides of the road, and the skyscape is at least as attractive as the landscape on a warm sunny day.
92. There’s a candidate for the City of Hamilton’s Most Photogenic Derelict Barn Award on the north side of Governors Road between Orkney and Woodhill Roads.
93. A hundred metres or so west of the barn above, there’s an old family cemetery (1832) on the south (Ancaster) side of the road. There is only a handful of standing gravestones remaining, but there are traces of the graves of about ten members of the Dyment family and four members of the Liddycoat family. Patriarch of the Dyments was John (1800-78) who emigrated from Devon, England first to Beverly Township in 1833 and then to Ancaster in 1849. He and his wife Elizabeth had thirteen children, and one of his descendants became known as the Lumber King of Barrie, Ontario. John’s daughter Eliza married Edward Liddycoat, of a family which, originating in Cornwall, England, goes back to at least 1835 in the Ancaster area.
94. Woodhill Road (to the north) and Field Road (to the south) intersect Governors Road 2.5 km east of Lynden. The CN tracks cross Woodhill Road about 750 m north of Governors, and the road narrows to one lane as it passes under the low ceiling of the subway. See the scars around the 3.6 m headroom sign? Truck drivers may be tempted to use this road to avoid long waits for endless freight trains at level crossings. If they do, they are likely to rip off the top of their trailers passing through here.
95. The eastern border of Lynden (pop. ???)* on Governors Road.
The settlement grew around the crossroads in the 1840s, and was first called “Vansickle’s.” Then in 1854 a local man suggested calling it the more euphonious “Lynden,” after a small town (actually spelled “Lyndon”) in Vermont where his family had originated. “In the first half of the nineteenth century the nearest post office was at Ancaster Village or at Dundas, consequently Lynden settlers got few letters, and postage rates were so high that they sent few. The only news that reached them from the outside world was what they learnt in the taverns from the occasional travellers, or from the stage drivers” (Woodhouse, Ancaster 127).
*You’d think it’d be easy to determine the population of an isolated village like Lynden. But because it’s now considered a “neighbourhood” of the City of Hamilton, and Hamilton only counts the population of its wards, not its constituent towns and villages, you simply can’t get an official figure. We know from an old Wentworth County directory that Lynden’s resident population in 1867 was 500. But when you ask AI today, “What is the population of Lynden, Ontario?” all you get in reply is, “Lynden Ontario has fewer than 500 residents.” So much for progress!
96. This fine house (1875) stands at the southwest corner of the intersection of Governors Road and Lynden Road. And look at those green road signs: the nearer one has picked up the apostrophe discarded by the farther one!
97. (Top) Lynden Cemetery, with the bell tower of Lynden United Church at 3989 Governors Road visible in the background.
(Bottom) When you see epitaphs like this, you are reminded how much you and your family’s health owes to modern medicine. And you wonder, What can those parents today be thinking, who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against deadly diseases?
98. A stump fence at 182 Lynden Road.
“When the pioneers were clearing their land they had two prime problems: what to do with the trees they had cut down, and what to do with the stumps. Since there was no market for the trees, they burned them, and since it was hard to dig out the tree stumps, they left them to rot and cultivated round them. In time they realized, however, that pine stumps would apparently neither rot nor burn” (Woodhouse, Ancaster 179-80). There were once great pine forests in this area, During the period 1840-70 they were mostly cut down, leaving thousands of pine stumps that had to be got rid of. Extracted by screw mechanisms attached to tripods, the stumps made for unusual fencing material. Few of these traditional fences remain.
99. Riwotsegya Throma Buddhist Institute at 95 Howard Street in the former Lynden School building. It’s no anomaly: many Asian religious institutions have established themselves in small Ontario towns in recent years, a heartening example of the potential benefits of multiculturalism.
From its website: “Our lineage and meditation practices come from a cycle of teachings first revealed by the great Nyingma master and tertön Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904) called Throma Toeluk. This cycle of teachings offers a complete vajrayana path to realization, including Ngondro (preliminary practices), Chöd, Phowa, Nang Jang, Trekchod and Todgyal. One of the main practices in this lineage is a Chöd practice based on Tröma Nakmo a wrathful form of Vajrayogini. While Tröma may seem scary, her wrathful appearance is merely meant to represent the ferocity sometimes needed in order to cut through our ego and attachment which cause us so much suffering … If you come to any of our centres or events some form of Chöd will most likely be on the menu and all are welcome to participate. Chöd practice is both a powerful and fun way to connect to the dharma and the blessings of the lineage.”
100. Lynden General Store at 128 Lynden Road just south of the CN tracks, offers booze, snacks, lottery tickets and an ATM. And there’s even a public phone on the outside wall! If this place doesn’t have what you’re looking for, well, the nearest supermarket is also on Lynden Road … in Brantford, about 15 km away!
Part 4 coming soon
Holmström Ruddick 