I can see now why I may have put this story about my community off. It seems the more I write about my travels through these neighbourhoods, and imagine the places I may have missed along the way, something else pops into my mind.
First, I left out the Indian Friendship Center on Ottawa Street. I’ve been to a couple of events there included bringing my girls to an evening of food and dancing once. The connections I built with our Indigenous neighbours are among my most cherished moments of my tenrue as school trustee and commnity volunteer. I found great peace in our society making these meanningful connections to the oldest-known traditions and languages of our country.
Across the street, there is Memorial City School. I guess we can drop the city part now that there is no longer a Memorial Stoney Creek. I spent a lot of time in this school as they discussed upgrades to their playground, or as the school went through their boundary review. I spoke at Rememberance Day ceremonies and graduations, and attended other events there like holiday craft sales. I also had thepleasure of meeting Principal Buttle, who had a great passion for the school and it’s community. He took me for a tour early in my enture as trustee, where I got to see the former gun range and the dirt running track in the basement. When my friend-turned trustee passed in 2019, I took a picture of the flag out front of Memorial at half-mast.
Most of all – out of all the sites and my own personal connection to them – Belview Park carries great significance for our family. I would hold it right up there with Ellis Avenue, when I think about the magnitude of the memories my family made within this community.
Belview Park is a hop, skip and a jump from our house so the girls played there quite often when they were younger. From pushing them on the swings to cooling off at the splash pad in the summer, my girls have made good use of this park over the years. Both my girls learned how to finally ride a park along the paths that stretch from Belview to Belmont, and they also learned a different kind of freedom, as we slowly allowed them to go to the park by themselves to play with the neighbourhood kids or equipped with blankets and food for a picnic.
I won’t get into the history of Pumpkin Prowl – an event I started in 2014 when I realized I wasn’t going to have my girls for Halloween – but for 5 years, we held a community event that started in this park, and filtered through the neighbouring streets. The event was geared for separated families like mine, but was open to all. In 2019, we had pieces written about our event in The Globe and Mail, and Hamilton Spectator, with attendance hitting close to 300 guests that year. What a feeling it was to wander this park, seeing all the happy faces and knowing that more families had an opportunity to share in a Halloween-like experience with their kids.
For a couple of years, I also ran the outdoor ice rink in the winter at Belview. It became harder to find volunteers post-pandemic and winters in Hamilton aren’t exactly months of deep-freeze, so maintaining them is difficult. There was nothing I enjoyed more during those two winters though, than late-night floods and warming up with a hot chocolate in the hut. It was quiet, peaceful, and a great time to reflect on life and take a deep breath.
The old Holy Name of Jesus school was still in existence when I moved into the neighbourhood 17.5 years ago, so just seeing the transfermation with the new school and revilatled park, has made these lands a wonderful beacon of revitalization, with a focus on the youth in our communities.
We’ve voted at Holy Name in many elections, and the park paths have also served as a welcoming gateway between home and Tim Horton’s Field on game nights. I can hear the children playing at recess and lunch in warmer weather when my office windows are open, and the sound of the period bells often brings me back to my own youth; reminding of the excitement as the sounds echoed through our classrooms and down the halls signalling that it was time to play with our friends.
Belview Park is a wonderful hub within the Crown Point West community, and has given so much back to our family over the years.
I think that’s it? That just about covers it all. There are many shops and restaurants I could add of my own liking from Gage Park Diner and Hammerheads, to Nerdcore and Simply Zen to name just a few, but I have to leave a little something for you to boast about.