Sarasota Sister Cities AssociationCitizen Diplomats - Carving a Path toward Peace Since 1963 |
HAMILTON, PROVINCE OF ONTARIO, CANADA: 1990
Hamilton is a city located in Canada, in the province of Province of Ontario. It is currently the 8th largest city in Canada, with a population estimated at 714,900 in the metropolitan area. Within the city itself the population was 490,268 in the 2001 census.
Its nicknames — all relating to its waning days as a major industrial centre — include the Ambitious City, Steeltown, the Hammer, Hammertown, and the Lunchbucket City. However, health care has outstripped heavy industry — exemplified by the twin steel giants of Stelco and Dofasco — as the largest employer. Moreover, the education, government, services and technology sectors have all dramatically developed as heavy industry has declined.
Hamilton has built on its historical and social background. Unusual and interesting attractions include a flying museum (Canadian Warplane Heritage), a stately residence of a premier of the Province of Canada (Dundurn Castle), a functioning nuclear reactor at McMaster University, a horticultural haven (Royal Botanical Gardens) and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
According to the mid-2001 census, nearly one-quarter of the metropolitan area population of Hamilton was foreign-born, making Hamilton the Canadian city with the third highest proportion of foreign-born citizens after Toronto (44%) and Vancouver (38%). Hamilton has a high proportion of British origins (English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish). According to the 2001 census, 45.7% of Hamilton residents reported the British Isles as their sole or multiple ethnic origin.
The communities of Hamilton also include descendants of original Italian, Portuguese, German, French, Hungarian, Polish, and eastern Europeans who settled during the city's early 20th-century industrial boom. .. Hamilton has one of the largest concentration of Serbians in Province of Ontario, and the eastern side of the city contains a significant and growing East Indian community. The top countries of birth for the newcomers living in Hamilton in 2001 were: Yugoslavia, Poland, India, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, Iraq, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. About 8% of immigrants of the 1990s cited Yugoslavia as their country of birth.
