26 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
REMINISCENCES OF ANCASTER AND DUNDAS. 
Note 14, page 9. 
We find in ‘ Picturesque Canada,” vol. 2, pp. 450-452, the following 
pleasing account of these old places in Wentworth, by J. Howard Hunter, 
M.A. : — 
“Dundas was the most dangerous rival of Hamilton in the race for com- 
mercial preéminence. But Ancaster was still earlier in the field, and at one 
time was the centre of commerce, manufactures, and postal communication 
for the whole district. In his pedestrian tours through the Western Penin- 
sula, Governor Simcoe would extend his already prolonged march in order 
to enjoy the cheer and bright ingle-side of his Ancaster inn. As the fruit of 
Simcoe’s tours, we have the great military highway which he drew and 
intended to open from Pointe au Baudet on the St. Lawrence, through 
Kingston, York (Toronto), the Head of the Lake (Dundas), Oxford (Wood- 
stock), London, and so to the River Detroit. This great road he named 
“Dundas Street,’ after Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, who during Simcoe’s 
governorship was secretary-at-war in the Duke of Portland’s cabinet. From 
this street, which still at Dundas is called ‘ The Governor’s Road,’ the town 
took its present name. The vast marsh, which occupies the lower part of 
the picturesque Dundas valley, was a noted resort for water-fowl, and the 
military officers stationed at York (Toronto) revelled in the sport that it 
afforded. Harly in the century, Captain Coote, of the Eighth or King’s Regi- 
ment, devoted himself to this sport with so much enthusiasm, that, by a 
well-aimed double-barrelled gun, which brought down at once both the water 
fowl and the sportsman, the marsh was nicknamed ‘ Coote’s Paradise.’ By 
extension, the name was applied to a village that clustered around the upper 
end of the marsh, and thus in our earliest parliamentary records we encoun- 
ter petitions from ‘ Coote’s Paradise,’ and legislation based thereon. 
‘Recent geologists tell us that some æons ago the water of the upper 
lakes discharged, not over the precipice at Niagara, but swept in a majestic 
tide down the strath of Dundas; and that the great marsh and Burlington 
Bay are but the survivals of this ancient epoch. Among the early burgesses 
of Dundas was one Pierre Desjardins, who, like the mighty canal-digger, 
Lesseps, did a good deal of original thinking for himself and for others. He 
saw the trade of the Western Peninsula falling in a thin cascade over the 
mountain at Ancaster, Grimsby and the rest; ch bien, mes amis, why not 
turn the whole current of that trade down this ancient water-way of the 
Dundas Valley ? ‘So Peter went to work, dug his canal the whole length 
of the marsh, and wound it around Burlington Heights, which was easier 
than carrying it through. The Great Western Railway presently began its 
embankments, and, by arrangement with that great mound-builder, the 
Desjardins’ canal pierced the Heights. The remains of a mammoth were 
disinterred, startling the Irish navvies with the consideration, ‘What game- 
bags the sportsmen in the ould times must have had ! ’ 
“With the opening of the Desjardins and Burlington Canals the keenest 
rivalry began between Dundas and Hamilton, old Ancaster looking down 
amusedly at this race from her seat on the mountain. The odds seemed in 
favour of Dundas until the opening of the Great Western Railway, with 
