Dundas Tennis Club 1924
Dundas is a community and urban district in the city of Hamilton. It is nicknamed Valley Town because of its topographical location at the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment on the western edge of Lake Ontario. The population has been stable for decades at about 20,000, largely because it has not annexed rural land from the protected Dundas Valley Conservation Area.
Dundas is located along the original Dundas Street, which runs between Toronto and London, and is one of the earliest routes used by Ontario’s first settlers. The street is still known as Governors Road in parts, and both names are used in Dundas.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Dundas enjoyed considerable economic prosperity through its access to Lake Ontario via the Desjardins Canal and was an important town in Upper Canada and Canada West. It was later surpassed as the area’s economic powerhouse by Hamilton, but for decades it led in importance.
With the establishment of McMaster University nearby in west Hamilton in 1930, Dundas gradually became a bedroom community of the university faculty and students, with a thriving arts scene. Dundas has a large community of potters, and several studio shows and town walking tours feature their work each year.
