Powder Magazine Road sounds made up. It isn't. The short Aldershot road traces back to an explosives warehouse near the waterfront in the late 1800s. A magazine was a building used to store explosives, and this one belonged to the Hamilton Powder Company.
The name survived after the warehouse disappeared. It is one of several Burlington street names that still point to something the modern city has mostly erased.
The Burlington Historical Society has an entire book devoted to those names. Burlington Streets: What's Behind the Name?, researched by Peggy and Les Armstrong with a local committee, records origins ranging from early settlers to literal descriptions of what used to be there.
Powder Magazine Road
The Hamilton Powder Company also operated a mill in the Cedar Springs area north of Burlington. In 1884, an explosion at that mill killed four men, wounded two others and was reportedly felt for miles.
The waterfront magazine served a different purpose: storing and distributing explosives. Today, the quiet Aldershot road gives almost no clue that this was once part of the local explosives business. The name is the clue.
Putter Place
Putter Place has a much simpler explanation. The small lane off Jennifer Crescent was named because its shape resembles a golf putter. The developer, Milan Vrenjak, was also interested in golf.
Look at the lane on a map and the name makes sense immediately.
Locust Street
Locust Street was named in 1867, before Burlington was incorporated under its current name. The area was then part of Wellington Square Village, and locust trees stood along the street.
So the downtown name has nothing to do with an insect infestation. It records what people could actually see there more than 150 years ago.
Walker's Line
Walker's Line looks generic until you know there was a Walker family. Philip Walker and his wife, Susannah Cline, settled on the west side of what became Walker's Line in 1816. The family farm stayed in the family for generations.
A Walker house built around 1913 still stands at 496 Walker's Line and has heritage protection. One of Burlington's busiest north-south roads is, in effect, a family name stretched across the city.
Tweedsmuir Court
The Brant Hills cul-de-sac is named for John Buchan, the Scottish writer who served as Canada's governor general from 1935 to 1940. Buchan held the title Lord Tweedsmuir, a name connected to the Scottish area where he spent part of his youth.
He is better known to many readers as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps. During his time as governor general, the Governor General's Literary Awards were established in 1936.
Tecumseh Drive
Tecumseh Drive and the nearby school honour Tecumseh, the Shawnee military and political leader who built a First Nations confederacy resisting U.S. expansion and fought alongside the British during the War of 1812. He was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813.
This name points beyond Burlington to a much larger piece of Canadian and Indigenous history.
Street names can outlast almost everything around them. Buildings disappear, businesses close and farms become subdivisions. Powder Magazine Road is the clearest example: the warehouse is gone, while the words that described it are still printed on the sign.