On September 1st, 1987, the Mayor of Hamilton, Bob Morrow, signed bylaw 87-246. This bylaw designated the William Pring House as a “property of historic and architectural value and interest.” The owner at the time and the Ontario Heritage Foundation were informed, and the designation was announced in the newspaper.

Congratulations, the house has a heritage designation! But what does that mean?

What is a Designation?

Professional historians and architects agreed that this house was of sufficient historical and architectural importance that it should be protected. When a property is so designated, it means that the owner is not permitted to change – and must protect – certain features, within specific parameters. Unfortunately, this protection is often sorely needed. The property listed immediately before ours in Hamilton’s directory of heritage properties, is the Century Theatre at 14 Mary Street. It was demolished in 2010 after years of neglect.

Designations do not necessarily include the whole property, and owners can often apply for permits for permission for changes. They can even unlock funding to help with restorations and repairs, if they are very lucky! A heritage designation doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to do anything. Nor does it mean that the government will pay for everything! The owner is still pretty much on the same footing as any other property owner. There are just a few extra steps.

Historical Significance

While many important things undoubtably happened here over the course of the last 171 years, they were mostly of a personal nature, for the families who lived here. When a heritage designation is made on the basis of historical significance, it’s usually because someone famous or historically important lived there, stayed there, or did something amazing there.

Our historical significance is not huge. William Pring himself only lived here for four years, and the family sold the house in 1871. For the next several decades, the house was rented out and none of the tenants were particularly famous. The majority of the historical aspect of our designation rests on a former resident. He is recorded in the designation as Beamer W Hopkins.

Beamer’s legal first name was William, but he was known by his middle name. His father, William, owned the house from 1908 until his death in 1933 and Beamer grew up here. Beamer “had a particularly distinguished career as a politician, judge and public servant, serving at various times as alderman, controller, vice-president of the Parks Board, police commissioner and city magistrate.”

Architectural Significance

The house is on firmer footing with the architectural designation. It really is a spectacular house and we are so lucky to be its custodians. While it is not alone in Hamilton, which has many examples of beautiful 19th century stone buildings, it is on its own in this part of the city. Most of Hamilton’s “stone age” beauties are in the south west of the city, whereas we are to the north east of downtown. Most of the houses around us are brick, some clapboard, but very few are stone and there are none of this magnitude.

The limestone itself is part of the heritage designation, especially the “dressed stone front” and “coursed stone end wall.” Most particularly noted on the exterior is the “distinctive Renaissance Revival entrance, which comprises a wide doorway flanked by stone columns supporting a semi-circular voussoir and traceried fanlight.” The door and front porch, which date to the early 20th century, are specifically excluded from the designation.

Inside, there are unfortunately few original features still extant. But the features that remain are listed in the designation: “an elegantly proportioned spiral wooden staircase and the two rounded corners of the dining room with their curved panelled doors.” While the doors are mentioned, they are not specifically protected, while the staircase is.

As the snow starts to melt, we are looking forward to a busy March. Not only for the inevitable spring cleaning, and the emergence of plants and animals after their winter slumbers. We are looking forward to a host of big events that will be going on in Hamilton.

Amazing Music!

Hamilton has long been recognized as a centre of music and culture in Canada. There are a number of historically important venues and recording studios, theatres and clubs. For big, headline acts, you can see Tourism Hamilton’s calendar, highlighting places like the TD Coliseum and the Bridgeworks.

For those who like things classical, there are also many performances by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. And any number of groups and artists perform in smaller venues, such as Mills Hardware, and clubs downtown and in Hess Village. Hamilton has so many music venues, it’s hard to keep track!

But from March 26 to 29 this month, Hamilton is hosting an event so big that it even bumped the usual seasonal calendar highlight. Generally, the last weekend in March means the Around the Bay road race – for more than a century, in fact. This year, however, the Juno Awards will be coming to Hamilton and bringing all of Canada’s music stars.

We are so excited for people who love music to stay here at the hostel!

The Race is Still On!

Don’t worry – the race hasn’t been cancelled. It’s simply been pushed to April, and will be taking place on Sunday, April 12th. There are four different starting lines, for the four different race difficulties, and shuttle buses have been provided to help runners get where they need to be.

We really enjoy being a comfortable and relaxing place for people to stay when they travel for such an amazing event.

We are excited to welcome back some dedicated runners, who have been racing for years and stayed with us many times. The Around the Bay race is the oldest road race in North America and Hamilton is so proud to host it! And we are proud to host its runners from all over the world.

Shortly after we bought this property, back in 2012, before we even had furniture, we decided to hold an open house. There was an Open Streets event in Hamilton and we timed the open house for the same weekend, and advertised to the downtown neighbourhoods that we would be open.

Piano Lessons

We had so many people come to see the house! Among the curious neighbours were several people who had lived in the house in the past, and who had spent time here. One of them was an older lady, who came to see if the house was the same as when she’d seen it as a little girl. She told us that when she was young, she used to come here while her mother was taking piano lessons. While she was waiting for her mother, she used to slide down the stair rail!

This was a lovely story, and we were able to corroborate it when we looked into some of the previous residents of the house. From 1908 to 1933, the Hopkins family lived here – and the lady of the house was indeed a pianist.

Mynora

Mynora Hopkins was the daughter of Levi and Amanda Beamer, and was born in 1870 in Southern Ontario, probably near Lincoln. She married William Hopkins, a doctor, in 1892.

Unfortunately, despite her extremely searchable name, we don’t know much more about Mynora. We don’t even have a picture of her. She and William had three children, and their son (also William) went on to become a magistrate in Hamilton.

It is a fact of history that women are usually less visible than men. We are going to keep looking for Mynora and see what we can find. Until we do manage to shine a light on her, we are happy to honour her in a way that is within out power.

Renaming

Our largest private room, located adjacent to our kitchen, used to be accessed through a door that was underneath our basement stairs. It seemed logical to call it the Potter room. Due to many changing circumstances – including a renovation that moved our staircase – we are renaming this room. It will henceforth be known as the Mynora room.

We look forward to unearthing more of the history of this beautiful, historic house!

Here’s to 2026!

We are looking forward to a great new year, but first, let’s take a moment to look back. In 2025, we were the accommodation of choice for guests from 78 different countries! As always, the majority of guests came from here in Canada, but about 60% of our guests were international travelers. We were busier than the quiet year we had in 2024, but there’s certainly room to improve in 2026.

The Lows

We got an unfortunate “trick” on Halloween. A car crash in the intersection next to us sent one of the cars right through our front fence! Fortunately, no one was hurt and the only casualty was our fence. We’re lucky that our insurance will cover the repairs, but in the meantime our poor fence is propped up with a post. The fence itself is quite old – not as old as the house, but probably about 100 years old. It’s wrought iron and quite elegant and we’re looking forward to having it beautifully repaired.

We suffered some personal loss during 2025. We’re very grateful for our friends and family who supported us through it.

The Highs

Given our increasingly shaky relationships with the large OTAs, we have reached out to a few new platforms to reach tourists and travelers. It’s important to try new things when the old stop working! We are looking forward to working with listing partners and reaching hikers, film-makers and more.

Late in the year, Hamilton’s primary downtown concert venue reopened after a long closure for renovations. The headline act for the grand opening was nonother than Paul McCartney, and the Pring was sold out, full of fans! In addition to concerts, sports teams will be returning for regular games. There are several big-name acts coming in the new year and we can’t wait to have music fans and sports fans staying with us at the hostel.

Looking forward

In the next year, we’ve got a lot to look forward to. Festivals, music, awards, races and even the World Cup! For ourselves, we are hoping to do some upgrades to the backyard. And, of course, we will have a beautiful front fence!