From This to a Parking Lot

The Grand Trunk station was a historic railroad station in Hamilton, Ontario, which was located on Stuart Street, at the beginning of Caroline Street North. In 1885, an effort was made to beautify the area to the east of the station itself with ornamental gardens.

You can see the results of that effort in the picture on the front of the post card. The embankment along Stuart Street provided an opportunity to let passengers passing by to know exactly what city they were in, with the word "Hamilton" written with white stones. If you would like to see what it looks like today (see title of this post,)the GPS coordinates of where the station was located are: 43°16′05″N 79°52′20″W Michael Willson Browne, one of the pioneers of the shipping industry in Hamilton, moved to Hamilton in 1836, and entered into a partnership with Daniel Charles Gunn, who retired in 1847. Mr. Browne became manager of the Grand Trunk Railway's office in Hamilton in 1864. The company was incorporated on November 10, 1852, as the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada to build a railway line between Montreal and Toronto. The charter was soon extended east to Portland, Maine and west to Sarnia, Canada West. In 1853 the GTR purchased the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway from Montreal to the Canada East – Vermont border, and the parent company Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad through to the harbour facilities at Portland. A line was also built to Lévis, via Richmond from Montreal in 1855, part of the much-talked about "Maritime connection" in British North America. In the same year it purchased the Toronto and Guelph Railroad, whose railway was already under construction. But the Grand Trunk Railway Company changed the original route of the T&G and extended the line to Sarnia, a hub for Chicago-bound traffic. By July, 1856, the section from Sarnia to Toronto opened, and the section from Montreal to Toronto opened in October of that year. By 1859 a ferry service was established across the St. Clair River to Fort Gratiot (now Port Huron, Michigan). GTR underwent serious financial difficulties as a result of the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and its shareholders, primarily in the United Kingdom, were determined to prevent the company from being nationalized as well. Eventually on July 12, 1920, GTR was placed under control of another federal government Board of Management while legal battles continued for several more years. Finally, on January 20, 1923, GTR was fully absorbed into the CNR on a date when all constituent companies were merged into the Crown Corporation. At the time that the GTR was fully merged into CNR, approximately 125 smaller railway companies comprised the Grand Trunk system, totalling 12,800 kilometres (8,000 mi) in Canada and 1,873 kilometres (1,164 mi) in the United States. I googled the location of this train station to see what it looks like today - IT IS NOW A PARKING LOT!! The back of this post card tells me that Canadians have been polite for a very long time. I have three post cards with this picture on the front.

The back of one of them tells me that it was mailed on December 8th of 1906. That is 114 years ago.

If you look in the upper right hand corner of another one of the post cards, where the postage stamp is to be placed, you will see the traditional rectangle to visually show you where the stamp goes. The words in the rectangle say, "Postage stamp should be affixed here." How polite is that?!!! .....on the other hand, if you look at the rectangle on a post card from the United States that is contemporary to our Hamilton Station (both approximately 1908) you will see that the message is much more directive, "Place Stamp Here".

I love being Canadian!