Doors Open Ontario is a province-wide heritage tourism program that gives the public free access to explore fascinating heritage properties across Ontario. It showcases the buildings, natural spaces, infrastructure and cultural landscapes that shape and define our communities.

Hosting Doors Open Ontario in your community celebrates its identity, generates volunteerism, builds interest in Ontario’s heritage and drives cultural tourism and economic development opportunities. Participating sites offer free admission to the public and can include museums, places of worship, public, cultural or institutional buildings, private businesses, trails and natural areas.

In 2023, the province-wide theme is Food – exploring Ontario’s historical traditions of food production as well as the spaces that shape and define our culinary traditions today. Hamilton’s architecture was also featured.

We were able to tour historical buildings that are being re-imagined as new adaptive reuse spaces. Venues that were once derelict are being transformed.

Having lived in Hamilton for the past fifty years, I was thrilled to go with my sister, Shirley, and her husband, Edward to visit the sites presented in this book. Gage House and Battlefield Park is a Canadian National Historic Site which commemorates the Battle of Stoney Creek.

Included at the site is Grandview – Nash-Jackson Home; Gage Battlefield House; the Peace Monument; and Eagles Among Us sculpture. The Hamilton Museum of Steam & Technology is the site of the original 1859 Hamilton Waterworks, providing fresh water to the City of Hamilton.

The Lister Building has an exterior design in the Classic Renaissance Revival style with a series of white terracotta pilasters on the first floor with an entablature at both the third-floor level and at the top of the building. The building has been renovated for multi-purpose use.

Whitehern Historic House was built between 1848 and 1850. It is now a historic house museum.

It showcases three generations of ideas and possessions of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian influences. Central Presbyterian Church - The Beaux Arts system of design is seen in this Georgian style building which is symmetrical and well-proportioned.

It has semi-circular stairwells at the ends of the transepts, an elegant open-arch tower, and a tapering octagonal spire, to offset the flat wall surfaces. There are many beautiful stained-glass windows.

Other sites throughout Hamilton, Dundas, and Ancaster are also featured in the latter part of the book. .