Things to do in Hamilton

Nature · Spencer Gorge, north-west of the city

A limestone lookout over the Dundas valley with a 22-metre curtain waterfall a short walk away — the best-known two of the hundred-odd waterfalls the escarpment drops through inside the city limits.

Local tip: It is popular enough that access is managed and parking must usually be reserved in advance in the busy seasons — check before you drive out, because turning up on an October Saturday without a booking means being turned away. Go on a weekday in early spring when the falls are at full melt volume and there is nobody there.

Neighborhood · Lower city, between the GO station and King

The street that changed the city's reputation — galleries, studios, Portuguese bakeries, cocktail bars and the monthly Art Crawl that grew into the Supercrawl street festival every September.

Local tip: Come on the second Friday of the month when every gallery and studio opens late. It is also worth understanding as a housing signal: this street is the reason lower-city rents rose, and the LRT is planned to run one block over on King, which will not make it cheaper.

Food · East end, below the Mountain

Blocks of fabric and textile shops selling cloth by the metre, alongside Balkan, Portuguese and Caribbean groceries — and the corner where the first Tim Hortons opened in 1964.

Local tip: The fabric district is a genuine survival of the city's industrial retail economy and there is nothing else like it in southern Ontario. Go on a Saturday morning, do the farmers' market at the end of the street, and treat the Tim Hortons as a footnote rather than the reason.

Nature · North end, on Hamilton Harbour

Reclaimed industrial land turned into a headland park on the bay, with a trail running west to Princess Point and Cootes Paradise and east towards the working port.

Local tip: It is the clearest single view of what this city has been doing for thirty years — you are standing on filled industrial land looking at a working steel port on one side and a restored marsh on the other. Go at sunset, and go in winter when the bay ices over and the whole north end is empty.

Culture · Sherman Avenue North, east lower city

An 1900s cotton mill converted into studios, workshops and event space for a few hundred designers, makers, photographers and small manufacturers.

Local tip: This is the most concentrated version of the thing Hamilton actually did with its industrial buildings, and it is a working building rather than a museum — check the open-studio dates or an event listing, because otherwise you are walking into somebody's office. It is also the fastest way to meet people if you work in anything creative.

Landmark · York Boulevard, above Cootes Paradise

An 1835 Italianate villa built for Sir Allan MacNab, later a premier of the Province of Canada, on the bluff above the harbour — forty rooms staffed as they were in the 1850s.

Local tip: The kitchen and servants' quarters are the good part, not the drawing rooms, and the interpreters actually know their material. It sits at the top of Cootes Paradise, so pair it with a walk into the Royal Botanical Gardens' marsh trails rather than treating it as a standalone hour.