Bonus Features

Hamilton, ON -- Dundurn Castle Postcards

Valerie: … postcards, which is part of a collection put together by Tom Minna, who is a Dundurn buff. And there seem to be quite a few of you! Why are so Hamiltonians so attached to this?

Collector: Well, for at least the past hundred years Dundurn has been pretty much the focal point of local pride for Hamiltonians who like to bring their visitors from other parts of the world to see Dundurn. It’s really just part of who we are as Hamiltonians.

Valerie: Now tell me about these postcards.

Collector: Well, they’re from primarily the early part of the history of picture postcard making, from about 1905 until I’d say, the 1920s. This is the anomaly at the top here, the top right.

Valerie: That one is an odd one because it looks like, I mean, Dundurn Castle there is almost unrecognizable from what we know. It looks like it grew a beard or something.

Collector: That was in 1960s.

Valerie: So what? Nobody was really looking after it then, or it was before it was really taken over by the city of Hamilton and created as this National Historic Site?

Collector: It was at the time when people thought it was romantic to have the place covered in ivy and but not, believe it, now but it’s had it. So when the restoration was undertaken in the 1960s all that was removed.

Valerie: But the other postcards are from the earlier part of the 1900s.

Collector: Yes.

Valerie: Showing this as just a gracious and elegant home.

Collector: Very much so. Very much a gracious and elegant home in McNabb’s time, referred to as the home in Upper Canada when it was built in the 1830s until well into the early Twentieth Century it was still the largest home in what we now call Ontario.

Valerie: What are all these mass bands doing in that postcard?

Collector: Very much part of the history of Hamilton are the local Regiments coming out to march, to play music – we even have them to this day in the park, you can come out in the summer and see a military band concert.

Valerie: And the winter activities as well because it is kind of a public park, has been for a long time.

Collector: Very much so for the past hundred plus years. I remember my father bringing me as a boy over to toboggan on the hills here.

Collector: Really? Of Dundurn Castle. Well, it’s a lovely collection. How many do you have in total?

Collector: Oh, well over a hundred.

Valerie: So, this is just a small sampling.

Collector: Yes.

Valerie: Well, thank you for bringing them in.

Collector: You’re very welcome. Thank you.

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