trev03

Hi am recently starting my application to immigrate to Canada, just guiding some information on provinces, am wondering about Ontario. is Hamilton a cheaper city to live in than ottawa and toronto? such as houses/ apartments to rent? public transport? groceries.
Thank you for your time reading this

iaink

Hi , I moved this to the main Canada area.

Short answer is; yes.

Longer answer is, there are good reasons why.

There is more to life than cost of living.

britishvixen21

ummmm Hamilton errrr yeah i wouldnt live there if you paid me. its a pretty rough town, and im from Basildon in Essex so i know rough. I went to Hamilton for a conference once and the only thing opened were payday loan shops and a strip club! even the employment office had been boarded up. and the food court in the mall the vendors used the toilet sinks to wash vegetables......nice huh!

pay a little more and live in Ottawa or Toronto!

nldfc

That surely dont make it a bad place doese it ?

Novocastrian

Sorry but I disagree. It sounds as if the once that you were there, the conference organizers (or perhaps your good self) made a very poor choice of hotel.

Hamilton is quite different these days to what it was 30 years ago and actually remarkably civilized.

I'd live there even if you didn't pay me.

bgpz

Probably the Sheraton - although to be fair, there's a dearth of decent hotels in Hamilton (but I understand this is changing).

Yup. I've married in to a family that's from here, links to a fair few places elsewhere, and agree with how it's continuning to improve. The bang you'll get for your housing buck here is incredible.

FWIW James St North is where the West Queen West funky creative types seem to be relocating to as they get priced out with the continuing gentrification spread... noticed this when we first moved here, and it's continuing. The monthly Art Crawl is the easiest way to see this yourself.

The downtown core really doesn't begin to show Hamilton in a good light - but it's the kind of small city that's got a lot going for it if you know where to look (and it ain't hard to find, really: just ignore the crap - and there's plenty of that in nearly every city, let alone in north America! - and it's easy to be pleasantly surprised)

Shh! Keep it down!

trev03

Haha thank you for all your information, where are the good and bad parts of hamilton? I can't find too much updated information about the place

Novocastrian

I'll leave this to the previous poster who clearly knows it better than I, but around McMaster is good and up the "mountain", while a bit suburban, is pleasant enough.

bgpz

Around McMaster is known as Westdale - north of Main is your best bet, some areas are a bit "student ghetto" but it's pretty easy to work out which are the student houses by upkeep

Up the mountain (what the locals refer to the Niagara Escarpment as) can be OK, its a bit generic suburban sprawl though, and some parts are nicer than others. Depends what you want, though.

One are we were checking out at the weekend is around Aberdeen Ave and Locke St - some lovely places there, at the pricier end for Hamilton but still very good for what your money will get you. This area is right at the foot of the escarpment, very family/child-friendly neighbourhood (a colleague's just moved from there to Westdale as their kids go to school there and her hubby works at Mac, if it wasnt for this they'd have stayed put).

Avoid the north end, and most chunks of the east side of town (although the bits closest to the escarpment are ok, it can vary quite a bit depending on the exact area, though - but that rule of thumb should see you right, broadly speaking).

Dundas and Ancaster are two other places worth considering - pricier, but some lovely places around there. Dundas in particular has a lovely feel about it, the main street is really nice, Quatrefoil is the new swish restaurant that's getting rave reviews from the Toronto press (and telling folk it's worth the drive - this is like the Evening Standard telling people it's worth venturing o the M25 borders for a meal!) and the Dundas Valley School of Art has some decent events on throughout the year.

(BTW, if serious art turns you on, the Art Gallery of Hamilton is *well* worth checking out)

flyboy74

hi trev03. i live in hamilton, and think it's a great place to be - it's certainly changed a lot in the last few years (for the better), and i think it has a lot to offer now. it's true that there are areas that are nicer than others, and it's also true that the downtown core has struggled, but one of the nice things about hamilton is that there's so much more to it than the downtown core.

i guess the best areas depend on what you're into and what you'll be doing... if you want more info, feel free to PM...

Dave n Ailsa

We are also considering Hamilton as our new home

We will be staying with friends in Ancaster for a week, so we'll get to see how the natives live

I have been to Vancouver island, and driven up to Calgary on holiday, But I've never been to the East side of Canada. I fell in love with Canada when I was there, so hopefully Toronto will have a similar appeal

DanielM

I've been staying with my inlaws in Hamilton for 6 weeks.
The house I'm in is in a "bad" area, and some of the houses and shops are quite rundown but overall it's not that bad. It does have quite a poor vibe in a lot of areas.
Of the areas I've seen, the west side has some really pretty areas, Stoney Creek (east side) is OK and up the mountain is a noticably nicer than where we are.
There's pretty good public transport here as well. regular buses to Toronto and other area's.

But saying all that we'll be moving out of Hamilton as soon as we're settled into jobs.

mls.ca is a good go to website for houses for sale, and you can always check google street view to get an idea of what area's are like (although the Hamiltoon pics are over a year old).

julius smith

yes, i agree.

last time i was in hamilton was way back in 2004, and it did have a run-downish thing about it then.

but many people have said that its now changed and is actually becoming a cool place to be, with some parts having changed by artsy types into the cool environment they like, bit like queen st east in toronto maybe.

at that time, i noticed there was large contingent of italians there, and obviously plenty of eateries offering italian goodies!

and yes, the mountain area is generally more nicer than all of hamilton, but house prices are of course higher.

for me? my favourite was huuuurrrrontariiiiiiiioooooo street.....!!!! just loved that name and kinda fell in love with it first time i went there for a holiday in 2000.....let me see....had madonna playing on the hire car radio....somehow it all just felt right to be there.....

stop all this misty-eyed stuff now!

immichaelcaine

i dunno much but me workin 1nce wit fella from hamiltown ontario (his names wus elvis leclerc!)......he 1nce tellins me hamiltown kinda nice, but alsoo bit like dat place inna dvd under teh volcanoe with actinman alburt finnley

R I C H

Good luck to you, but I find the notion of uprooting and moving to somewhere that 'hopefully' will work out, never having been there and on the basis that friends like it, so it might suit you too, to be a big risk.

The natives live like you'd expect - they go to work, get pissed off, come home, eat supper, worry about bills, go to bed and repeat. On weekends they try to have fun. When relatives stay they make more effort to have fun, but as a visitor you get skewed views of what life is actually like.

Don't want to rain on your parade too much, but research and determine what you want, and don't worry about what friends might have settled for.