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3 Adam Ainslie and His Street

The names of the four principal streets enclosing downtown Galt’s business section were dictated by ego and political hierarchy. Main Street, of course, was hands-off to avoid expensive and tedious litigation between the village’s founding fathers as to who was number one. Water Street, aptly named because it ran beside the Grand River, caused no dispute because no one wanted his name on a street that flooded every year. William Dickson, who arrived in 1816 with Absalom Shade, laid claim to Dickson Street because it flooded only halfway and ran up past the municipal offices. Shade, a carpenter by trade, built every important building and so had the village, Shade’s Mills, named after him. However, John Galt, better connected politically, had the village renamed after him in 1825, and poor Shade had to settle for Shade Street, which ran from the top of Main Street to a cow pasture later to become Soper Park.

The whole region, including Galt, Preston, and Hespeler, was later inexplicably renamed after a British Austin automobile called the Cambridge.

Ainslie Street, flooded only now and then, cut from north to south through the heart of the village and was named after a transient lawyer who happened to be delivering mail. Adam Ainslie was returning to Hamilton from Waterloo where he had gone to deliver some mail to friends who had accompanied him on a ship from Gibraltar. He had walked to Waterloo from Hamilton through Beverly Swamp where travellers had been known to disappear.

At the junction of two muddy paths called Hunter’s Corner, now the savage and virtually impassable intersection of Water Street, Dundas Street, Hespeler Road, and Coronation Boulevard, Ainslie refuelled at Hunter’s Tavern. He asked Hunter where he might buy a pair of dry socks and was directed down a narrow mucky path from where at a point now covered with Galt Collegiate Institute students’ cigarette butts, he caught his first glimpse of the Grand River shimmering in the moonlight.

Ainslie slogged down the path until he reached the intersection of Main and Water streets. At the northeast end of the bridge he entered Absalom Shade’s White Store (cash only) and bought from a clerk named Harris, after whom Harris Street would be named, the dry socks. Harris advised Ainslie that he might change his socks in the lounge of the Galt Hotel, run by a fellow named Barlow, predecessor of a cartage company and a future member of the provincial legislature. At the hotel Ainslie changed his socks before a roaring fire and chatted with a pleasant man named Thomas Rich, after whom Rich Avenue would someday be named.

Adam Ainslie was so taken by the hospitality of the village that he decided to stay and have a street named after himself. It helped that he became head of the local militia.