Dundas is a community and former town in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It is nicknamed the 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 twenty thousand, largely because it has not annexed rural land from the protected Dundas Valley Conservation Area.
The town of Dundas was named after Dundas Street, which itself was named by John Graves Simcoe Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada [until 1798], for his friend Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, a Scottish lawyer and politician who never visited North America. Prior to being called "Dundas," the town was called Coote's Paradise, and was renamed Dundas in 1814.
In 1846, this "manufacturing village" had a population of just over 1,700. The Desjardins Canal had been completed and connected the community with Lake Ontario allowing for convenient shipping of goods. A great deal of cut stone was obtained from the "mountain" and much of it was shipped to Toronto.There were six chapels or churches, a fire company and a post office. Industry included two grist mills, a furniture factory, a cloth factory and two foundries (for making steam engines). Tradesmen of various types also worked here. Four schools, six taverns, three breweries and a bank agency were operating. Dundas was incorporated in 1847 from parts of West Flamborough Township and Ancaster Township in Wentworth County, Canada West.