Stoney Creek's Downtown: Part Three, The Past & The Present

I was raised in Stoney Creek. I spent most of my first 20 years there; eight of my first years were spent one block from ‘the downtown’, and then seven later years spent a little farther east.

I remember watching soap box derby races down Mountain Avenue South on Flag Day. I remember Saturday morning league bowling at BarDon Lanes. I remember matinées at The Fox, the local 'nabe', as well as brilliantly azure-sky’d evenings at The Skyway Drive-in, both within walking distance from our apartment building.

I remember trips to the Stoney Creek Dairy, I remember swimming lessons at Green Acres Pool, I remember accompanying my brother to the Hamilton Spectator depot situated in the basement of a building down King between New Mountain and Elm, then helping him deliver them, then walk the route around to the houses when he 'collected'. I remember playing at The Devil's Punch Bowl, wading through the actual creek the town was named after. I remember Chippy’s being on the corner of Mountain and King and being the one to retrieve our wrapped-in-paper dinner, I remember having lunch a the counter in Ann's Coffee Shop and swivelling on those clunky bar stools, I remember the ‘other’ fish-and-chip shop burning down on Lake Avenue in the summer of ’66 or ‘67...and I remember the old IGA grocery store and its wonky, inclined floors.

Back then...let’s say from the 60s through the mid-80s...I don’t remember the downtown undergoing much change.

That’s not to say it didn’t change...more that its critical mass remained pretty much the same.

To wit, here’s what we had ‘back in the day’:

A florist’s, a grocery store, a movie cinema (later to become a Royal Canadian Legion), a coffee shop/diner, a real estate/professional building, two banks, a general store, a gas station, a hardware store, a bakery, a gas station, a dry cleaners/laundromat, a television/stereo/electronics store, a barber shop, a variety store, a fish&chip shop, a bowling alley, two furniture stores, an old-style, bricks-and-mortar post office, a butcher, a jewellery store, a sporting goods store, a tailors and a haberdashery shop...and a car mechanic’s garage.

It sounds like a lot within a two-block stroll, doesn’t it? Maybe it was. And it was ours. It had its own critical mass, at least sufficient to support walk-in trade, close-knit patronage, allegiance. So much so that when Eastgate Square opened in 1973, I don’t recall there being a catastrophic effect on the King Street merchants. Surely, some were hit with revenue drop-offs, some businesses moved, some died off over time, but I don’t remember there being an instant rash of closures. (I'll address this issue, regarding a town's vibrancy, its resiliency, its 'ooomph' factor, in an upcoming part of this series.)

What’s changed...and how does today’s downtown compare?

Well, no more hardware store; there’s now a spa in its place. The Royal Bank moved from its corner spot at Mountain South and King and built a new facility a few doors down; its original location is now a stationery shop-cum-post office depot. We lost Ann’s Coffee Shop...but gained a restaurant, a sports bar and an off-track betting facility. There’s no gas station; in its place, we have a drug store. The corner general store is long gone; in the recent past it was a pub, but now sits empty. No more Mather’s Jeweller’s...but now we have a pet grooming service. No more sporting goods shop, no more bakery, no more furniture stores, no more home entertainment store. But then we do have a women’s clothing boutique, a salon, a spa, a doughnut shop, a denture specialist, a footcare and orthotic practitioner, a purveyor of cupcakes, an abuse-counselling service, we still have a downtown florist, a grocery and deli and baked goods place, a comic shop, a C.A., a pizza joint, a Thai restaurant, another hair stylist, a travel shop...and a handful of businesses that have been here all that time: a lawyer, a barber, a hair salon, a tailor, an insurance broker, a dry cleaner, the Legion and a car mechanic’s garage.