This particular museum collects and restores old trains (freight and passenger carriages and engines) and provides tours in the summer months. Seeing as how we don’t really enjoy tours unless they are of power stations and whatnot we opted to go one warm winter afternoon. No one was around except for some workers who we took care to avoid. One can find everything here from subways to wooden passenger cars. Nice relaxed atmosphere more photogenic then anything else.
Last week’s entry for Firestone has all the required history you need on the Firestone Complex. These photos are supplied from the six story steam/boiler house complex next door that supplied steam for the 500,000 sq. ft building next door. No longer accessible, it has had huge boilers salvaged long ago leaving gaping holes in the corner of the building. Between pools of mercury glistening on the floor around the control room to consoles oozing black sludge everywhere, it’s probabily not the best place to hang out for long or to have your lunch.
Firestone’s mammoth warehouse complex in Hamilton is one of the largest facilities in Canada we have been in. Most of the plant is currently used by the city of Hamilton for garbage sorting/recycling. A couple of buildings totaling more than 500,000 sf feet close to part of the Hamilton harbor and are abandoned. Many people dismiss the location as boring because there is no machinery present . It was removed long ago. The site does offer the best view in Hamilton to peer into the still active Hamilton heavy industry next door, National Steel Car and Dofasco’s steel plant further along the harbor. Firestone was next door neighbors with the great Stelco Rod Mill but that has since been torn down. It is one of the few places you can wander around in for hours and always find something new to look at in a relaxed atmosphere.
The Firestone plant in 1924.
Firestone’s history goes back to 1919 when Harvey S. Firestone was drawn to establish his first international manufacturing facility in what was then the township of Barton to manufacture tires for the Canadian marketplace. Hamilton actually annexed this particular area from the township of Barton. Harvey also created an industrial neighborhood called “Firestone Park” around his manufacturing facility bordered by Burlington Street, Beach Road, Kenilworth Avenue, and Belfair Avenue. The first tire rolled off the line in 1922 and the materials were mostly supplied from Drummondville, Quebec. In 1928 the plant further expanded and had 1,100 employees.
Firestone mostly manufactured tires for cars and farming vehicles until WWII when they won a contract to manufacture tires for military vehicles. By the end of the war, Firestone had 1,400 workers. Firestone had two 17 week long strikes where workers gained the right to a 40 hour work week and the first non-contributory pension in Canada. The company further expanded in 1953 and they expanded to make all types of products. Further expansion in the 1960’s greatly increased the size of the plant. Firestone’s 1,800 workers now made over 1, 000 different types of tires. In 1973 Firestone recognized it would have to start switching over production to radial tires and in 1974 opened a dedicated plant in 1974 in Whitby, Ontario. A lengthy 8 month strike followed in 1974 however Firestone enjoyed good fortunes into the 1980’s when they had 11 plants in Canada.
In 1982 Firestone received a grant to modernize the plant for $15 million however this could not prevent the plant from closing as demand for bias-ply tires happened very quickly. Firestone went through some restructuring in 1987 and three US plants were closed and the large Hamilton plant closed along with the nearby Stoney Creek warehouse. Firestone was taken over by the Japanese firm Bridgestone in 1988, and the head offices moved from Hamilton to Mississauga, located about 30km nearby. The plant was used as storage for a few years, but was later purchased by the city of Hamilton and partially turned into a garbage facility.
Upon first glance, an abandoned kid’s camp sure doesn’t sound exciting, especially considering the sleepy town it was located in. However once we arrived and realized how old and extensive the place was we spent two whole days there. This camp must have been a pleasure for city kids to visit while it was operational from the 1930’s onward. It’s actually for sale, and it’s to be hoped that it doesn’t see much traffic other than the local juvenile vandals we ran into who were smashing windows.
Its located on a 340 acre site of varying topography with a water feature for teaching kayaking and swimming. It’s fairly hilly with about a 500 ft elevation change from the top near a recently built school which is now decommissioned, to the lower camp section with 32 wooden cabins, a large main lodge with dining area and auditorium, a repair shop, a caretakers house, a gym and large pool. There are other buildings used for training and dining. The school alone is over 10,000 sq. ft.
Map of school and Camp.
We found the kitchen and the dining hall to be the most interesting spaces, since they contained complete kitchen facilities and the tables and chairs for the eating areas. Additionally there were the old pan-abode cabins which still had odd prizes and trinkets lying around like plastic “champion trophies” and dolls awarded to studious kids who were “model campers”.
It was quite surprising that the buildings were almost all open and accessible. Sadly this gave an opportunity to some ‘kids’and the kitchen and mess hall area were totally trashed between our two visits, probably less than two weeks apart.
It was an enjoyable visit because it provided a nice break from the usual urban hustle and bustle that summer. This is what the children who were selected to be campers experienced. This camp provided that “ outdoor camp experience” for over 70 years for Toronto children who couldn’t go up to the cottage areas like the Muskokas and Kawarthas during the summer holidays.
Considering it sat idle for more than a decade, it’s truly amazing that it managed to stay in the overall good condition it was in. This is most likely due to the fact that no one knows it’s there, so there is no vandalism attributable to “visitors”
Things have been super busy around here. Between all the work involved for the book to general life ’stuff’ we just don’t have the time to put out some of our better entries, so to appease the masses we decided a small entry of recent images to a visit to Toronto’s Centerville islands would lighten things up around here between the power stations and steel mills we have coming up, to say nothing of the places we have recently visited. Expect a few more image heavy posts, CF stuff and a huge entry on a certain steel mill no longer around this summer.
These images were taken this past month on a visit to the Toronto islands where I poked around a bit in the miniature village and related farms (haunted barns) nearby. I missed the chance this past summer to visit the islands which are normally packed with people with Capt.Canada who wanted to go out via boat taxi, but we never got around to it, as we were busy doing other things. Winter is a good as time as any to avoid the masses, as the only people on the islands are those who live on Wards Island and the maintenance and water treatment plant workers who work at the island all year.
If you ask me, nothing is more relaxing then heading down here to the boardwalk and listening to the soothing sounds of water crashing into shore. Check it out sometime, ‘exploring’ is about alot of things, even if it’s lame sometimes.
A little design change here to make reading/navigation better. We will be uploading some new sites and old power station we somehow never got around to, including a larger multi-entry report on a huge steel mill. Its also shaping up to be a busy summer.
