The Brightside Hotel

Community

Generations of Brightsiders and Stelco workers-mostly men-went to the Hotel at the end of a hard day’s work to relax, refresh themselves, and enjoy each other’s company with a post-shift beer and a plate of peanuts in the shell.

Brightside Hotel and surrounding area with Stelco and Hamilton Harbour aerial photo 1955. — The Brightside Hotel and its surrounds can be seen in this 1955 aerial photo that captures its massive size and proximity to Stelco and Hamilton Harbour. (Courtesy of Brightside Memories FaceBook page, Annotation by Simon Orpana)

The Brightside Hotel behind a man and three children. — Posing in their Sunday best for a First Communion photograph, these children are standing on a lawn near the southeast corner of Burlington at Birmingham, the shot captures the Brightside Hotel in its background. (Courtesy of Jim Julian and Brightside Memories FaceBook page)

The Brightside House behind a man and two children, — An early photo of a man and children in front of the Brightside House, when it still had a second storey porch and before the building of its façade. (Source: <em>Brightside Reunion</em>, pg. 9)

Photo of Quinto Martino and his accomplishments. — Brightsiders took great pride in the election of one of their own – and the first Canadian Parliamentarian of Italian descent - who represented Hamilton East in Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s Conservative Government of 1958. (Source: <em>Brightside Reunion</em>, pg. 14).

Three people standing on Burlington Street near the Brightside House. — Standing on Burlington St. looking east with the Brightside House in the background, this photograph provides a rare view of the façade of the Hotel’s second floor, its false windows made the place appear larger than it was, enabling the seating capacity of the hotel to be increased. (Courtesy of Mary Martini Smith and Brightside Memories FaceBook page)

Listen: The Best thing about Brightside. Click the play circle below.

Listen: View Of The Hotel From Joe Bartolacci's Porch. Click the play circle below.

Speaker 1:

The front verandah of the house was the gathering spot on hot summer nights.

It is where we would sit on a silent starless evening, watching the reflections of discharging furnaces on the muggy hazy sky.

In the distance you would hear the constant shifting and shunting steel train cars, riding on steel rails, loading and leaving the small brown rusting mountains of pig iron that stared back at us from across the fence, across the field and finally across our narrow street.

My father was an important man, then.

We all knew it because he was the only man on the street that drove to work and wore a tie.

Some days he would wear a suit.

His importance was felt by everyone, too, because as we simmered together on warm, summer nights, friends and relatives sipping fresh lemonade, he would be asked what he thought of those people going into that dingy Hotel on the corner.

Through his “hrumphs” and so-forths, we knew we would never go there, at least not when we were being watched.

The Brightside Hotel

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