A Brief History of the Long Struggle for the Incorporation of Dundas

by Stan Nowak
This article was first published in two parts in the July 28th, and August 4th, 2006 editions of the Dundas Star News. Reproduced with permission of the author.

The Village of Dundas was finally elevated to the status of Town when the Act of Incorporation, enacted by Parliament, received Royal Assent on July 28, 1847. This was successfully achieved after four previous earnest attempts to do so failed, due to a variety of untimely circumstances between 1793 and 1847.

Even the first municipal election held in October 1847 was fraught with ill luck, and declared null and void due to discrepancies with the Act of Incorporation. On March 23, 1848, an Amendment to the Act was passed (11 Victoria, cap. Xii), and the subsequent election saw James Coleman, Robert Holt, Hugh McMahon, and Robert Spence elected as councillors. At the first meeting of the Dundas Town Council in downtown Dundas on April 23, 1848, a fifth councillor, John Paterson, was appointed by the others and elected ‘President of the Council'—effectively, our first Mayor. The business of being a Town was finally underway after the long efforts of becoming one. When the earliest natives occupied the valley, it was a hunter's paradise. An abundance of game and fowl nestled in the shelter of the great forested escarpment. The valley itself is a product of the Ice Age, formed by retreating glaciers more than 25,000 years ago.

The first European settlers in this area were Anne Morden and her family, in 1787, followed by Michael Showers, an elder member of Butler's Rangers, and his family, a year later. One of the earliest white settlers, Captain Coote of the 8th King's Own Regiment, relished the legions of waterfowl in the marshlands of the valley. He spent all of his spare time hunting the multitudes of wild ducks and geese that stopped to rest and feed during their annual migrations. It was because of Captain Coote's presence in the marshlands, that the marsh, and later the abutting settlement, gained the name of Coote's Paradise.

The initial attempts at incorporation took place in 1793–96. Coote's Paradise was part of the province of Upper Canada, formed in 1791. In March 1793, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe ordered the construction of Dundas Street (now Governors Road) to run between Coote's Paradise and Oxford (present-day Woodstock). Simcoe, perhaps wary of potential expansionist desires of the United States, planned to strengthen Upper Canada's defences against American invasion. Coote's Paradise was to become a garrison town that would guard the Lake Ontario node of his military road. The Governor's Road was completed in 1794, but by September 1796, Simcoe had left Upper Canada before his plans for Coote's Paradise could be realized.

Between 1796 and 1808, Coote's Paradise began to grow and mature as a community. Industrialist Richard Hatt built his Dundas Mills and started establishing his enterprises. In 1800, Hatt claimed the first land in the yet-to-be surveyed Town Plot, which was completed in 1801. Between 1808–11, written attempts were made to establish the Town Plot Reserve as County Town of the proposed Gore District. As luck would have it, these submitted petitions by Richard Hatt and others were shelved due to the outbreak of the War of 1812.

After the war, the village Post Office was opened, and the name ‘Dundas' was chosen for it, in keeping with Simcoe's Dundas Street and Hatt's Dundas Mills. It can be argued that Coote's Paradise started to become known as Dundas at this point. In 1816, Upper Canada was divided into four districts, one of which was Gore. These districts were divided into counties; Gore included Wentworth and Halton County, which formed one municipality. Petitions for incorporation and a campaign to establish Dundas as a county town was renewed, but were again unsuccessful, as Barton Township (Hamilton) was chosen as the County Town for the new Gore County.

Between 1816 and 1837, as the village matured, three significant events affected Dundas critically in its efforts at Incorporation. Two of these events were major setbacks—the sudden deaths of Richard Hatt in 1819, and businessman Peter Desjardins in 1827. It can be argued that with the untimely deaths of these progressive and influential entrepreneurs, their visions for an incorporated town died along with them—or at the very least, delayed it substantially.

The third major event, an overwhelmingly positive development, was the construction of the Desjardins Canal, starting from 1827 to its completion in 1837. The new canal allowed for easy and cheap import of goods from Lake Ontario into the village and, subsequently, to the rest of Upper Canada. For inland communities like Brantford, Galt, and Waterloo, the canal became the obvious outlet for the export of their products to other markets. The Desjardins Canal, located at the head of navigation on Lake Ontario, became a major focal point of trade and shipping, and Dundas was on the threshold of an era of commercial and industrial prosperity.

By 1837, public interest for the incorporation of the Town of Dundas was renewed as the population increased rapidly (to 711 in 1835). An Incorporation Committee was established, and petitions were again submitted to the Government. But, by late 1837, with the unstable political situation of the day occupying the attention of the Government, the Dundas incorporation petition was once again forgotten. The situation culminated with the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion in December of the same year, resulting, in part, with the cessation of the publication of many newspapers, including the Dundas Weekly Post. There would be no local newspaper in Dundas for almost ten years.

In the decade following Mackenzie's Rebellion, a United Canada Parliament had ushered in the rudimentary beginnings of responsible government, and Dundas, now with a population of nearly 2,000, was enjoying a period of solid economic prosperity. Existing businesses thrived and expanded, and many others were set up. In 1846, a new local newspaper, the Dundas Warder, was established and immediately waged a renewed campaign for incorporation.

"Dundas has lost its village appearance, but it still has that patriarchal mode of government which prevails in small settlements, and in which former days kept little boys in order. We have the prosperity and the population, but we need the means of keeping good order. Our Town is a family without a head. We need a corporate body. Now is the time."
—Robert Spence, Editor, Dundas Warder, July 3, 1846.

In October of that year, another petition was submitted to Legislature for an Act to incorporate the Village of Dundas. A Bill of Incorporation was drafted by a town committee. Town limits were defined, four wards and a municipal council system were established, and a tax structure was agreed upon. The final draft was submitted to Parliament in May 1847. Editor Spence's words were prophetic this time, as the petition would prove to be fruitful. The Act of Incorporation (10/11 Victoria, Chapter xlv) was legislated by Parliament, received Royal Assent, and after more than half a century, the Village of Coote's Paradise became the Incorporation of the Town of Dundas—population 1,925—on Wednesday, July 28, 1847.

For a most entertaining and enlightening read on this subject, I highly recommend T. Roy Woodhouse's booklet, The Birth of Dundas. It's available at the Dundas Museum for a real deal at $3.00, or you can borrow it from the Dundas Library.

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