very nice little town. i've never been to chatham. where how far is it from hamilton?
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It's nearly 3 hours south west of Hamilton, I was visiting my hometown (which is near Chatham) over the weekend.
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Chatham
I never realized that Chatham was so nice looking. I always imagined it to be like Windsor (running for cover now) with its desolate nature and reliance on Daytrois.
I guess all your snow has gone. Here in Ottawa, things are still pretty snow covered. |
why did i think chatham was a dump? as a hamiltonian i should know better than to judge a town without seeing it first. looks pretty damned good.
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nice photos of a fairly under-represented city.
i have to admit that my opinion of the city was kind of based what i saw while passing through on the train to windsor... which was pretty crappy. the VIA station out on the fringes of town is an absolute joke and pressed up against a refinery or something of the sort. it's pretty bleak. but it looks like chatham is actually pretty charming and has a lot of really nice old building stock left... which is something that its southern neighbour (windsor) certainly can't say. |
I think Chatham has improved in recent years, though it's still not growing. There are some really dumpy residential and industrial areas though.
EDIT: And yes, winters are pretty harmless in this area, they only had one significant snowfall this year. |
wow...friggin sweet.
I LOVE that first hotel. Hamilton needs one like that. Love the theatres and the proper main street 1-lane each way with parking and lots of trees. Can anyone say 'Barton Street's potential'?? |
It has a well-preserved downtown core, the rest of the city could use some work but it's hanging in there.
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Looks like London divided by ST. Mary's and mutiplied by Stratford.
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Great tour Flar.
Chatham falls into the Midwest portion of S. Ontario. Does anyone else see the tranformation from about London going west? Sort of like Ohio towards Michigan? |
Those old houses are absolutely beautiful.
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Why didn't MTO build a 401 interchange at Charing Cross Rd? You'd think the most direct route to downtown would be the first to get an interchange.
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Nice pics
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^^Well, there's a strong American influence, partly because Detroit media dominates, but also because of social ties with Americans. Workers in Wallaceburg, for instance, remain part of the UAW rather than the CAW. You can see an American flag even in the pictures above. The people are maybe a little more conservative in some ways--there's a very rural attitude. A lot of farmers, and hunting and fishing is popular. Probably a stronger sense of individualism and emphasis on individual responsibility than many other parts of Canada--more like Alberta in this regard. The way of life is slow paced and almost everyone hates Toronto (Torontonian is a derogatory term, especially when it's mispronounced). In terms of the built environment, there is no real architectural vernacular like you'd find in cities east of London. Less ornate downtown buildings (Chatham is a bit exceptional here, check out Sarnia for example) and other than the mansions, most of the houses are wooden (usually with vinyl or aluminium siding now). The towns are generally younger too, many didn't grow much until after 1900. If a town in these parts isn't built on agriculture, it's a blue collar industrial town.
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Wow, everything you've said makes the area seem unattractive. I've only been through a couple of times, and my biggest impressions were that the terrain is flatter than Holland, and that the streets in Windsor conform so much to the grid that there are virtually no curved stretches or idiosyncracies in the layout.
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^^one of the reasons that region is stagnant. And it's really, really flat. There's a nice beach at Mitchell's Bay on Lake St. Clair though.
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Windsor's obsession with its grid contributes to its midwestern feel since many midwest cities ars set up the same way. Even the large new subdivisions being built in the city conform to the grid. Quote:
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