Brian Roulston
Hello everyone, since 2015, I’ve been lucky to be among the many great volunteers and writers at the North End Breezes. It’s been fun researching and reading about our North End and the city in which we live, Hamilton, Ontario.
Gas Lighting In Hamilton
By Brian Roulston Today, we often take for granted that our brightly lit streets or sidewalks have been around forever. Like many cities Hamilton’s first foray into lighting our streets and our homes came as a byproduct of burning coal. Candles and kerosene were...
Burlington Heights
By Brian Roulston There was a time when there were no cars or roads, only a trail left by horses through the dense forest. On a clear sunny day, the sky would be a heavenly blue. Free of smog and pollution which would not become a thing until the latter part of the...
The Boathouse Community of Cootes Paradise
By Brian Roulton Sometime during the early 1900s, a community with about 100 boathouses made mainly of tar paper and corrugated iron in various shades of decay popped up along the south shore of Cootes Paradise, not much more than a stone's throw away from Burlington...
ICE HARVEST ON HAMILTON BAY
Cutting Ice On the Bay Image courtesy of Local History and Archives, Hamilton Public Library By Brian Roulston Hamilton Bay has played an essential part in Hamilton’s economic and recreational wellbeing since the 1700s, mainly in the moving of goods and people during...
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
By Brian Roulston Many of us will be turning to the internet to do some or all of our Christmas shopping this year, partly due to the pandemic and a trend that has emerged worldwide over the past decade or more. It might be fun to travel back to a time when there were...
A History Lesson: The Spanish Flu
By Brian Roulston The First World War saw Great Britain mobilize almost nine million men and women for the first time against the German’s between 1914 and 1918. As one war was winding down, another war was just beginning. An unknown disease was claiming the lives of...
Hamilton Highlights…..Did you know?
Submitted by Brian Roulston 1960– Barton Township annexed by the City of Hamilton and the township ceased to exist. 1960– CHCH Television Tower is a 357.5 metre-high guyed TV mast in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada which is the primary transmitter for television station...
International Harvester
Submitted by Brian Roulston Today, Fluke Transport Group is one company operating out of the property of what used to be a sprawling 81-hectare agricultural facility International Harvester dubbed ‘Harvester City’ located along side Burlington Street, in the Lansdale...
Hamilton – The Electric City
Submitted by Brian Roulston On the corner of Wellington and Ferrie streets is a mural of Nikola Tesla that was painted by local artist Lester Coloma. The mural of the Serbian-American inventor is on the north and west walls of the former Gold Book Business Directory...
FIRESTONE CANADA
By Brian Roulston Thirty-four years ago, in 1986, some two thousand workers grabbed their lunch buckets and punched out for the last time at the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company of Canada. This huge plant founded in 1919 started out with a little more than 500,000...
