New residents eager to make move this fall
By Kristian Partington
It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes the people of Hamilton who are choosing to make their new home in the retirement neighbourhoods in the Village of Wentworth Heights so special. There’s an authenticity about them, a genuine friendliness and quiet confidence, and they all seem to share a deep connection to the city they call home.
Edith and Gordon Bull have deep roots in Hamilton
and will soon call Wentworth Heights home.
Edith and Gordon Bull are a prime example. In the comfort of the house they’ve lived in for more than 25 years in a quiet neighbourhood just a few blocks from Wentworth Heights, they talk of their connection to the city. For nearly the entirety of their 90 years, they’ve lived in the farmland and woods atop “the mountain” just beyond the city limits.
It’s a different world now, built up as it is with shopping malls and sub-divisions, but as a boy, Gordon worked the farms in the area, often getting four hours of work in before breakfast. When the work was done, the kids in the area would often gather at a little lunch counter and variety store at Ryckman’s Corners, operated by a couple who had no children and loved having young people around. There was nothing but farmland around the corners so the service station and stores that took up each corner were a popular gathering place for the people of the area.
That’s where he met a girl from Lower Hamilton who was told by her parents to keep away from those boys from up the mountain – they were bad news. Naturally, Edith did the opposite and she and Gordon were eventually married in 1947, seven years after they met at Ryckman’s Corners. They built a house on Gordon’s father’s property, alongside one of his brothers, and they lived there happily for 40 years. They even ran one of the lunch counters and service stations at Ryckman’s Corners for a short time, and they raised their two daughters a stone’s throw from where Gordon was born.
Throughout their years together, they travelled extensively across Canada, from the Yukon to Newfoundland. They met wonderful people, enjoyed genuine hospitality and gazed upon stunning natural beauty, but Hamilton would always be home. Travelling like that, Edith says, “makes you appreciate your home when you get back,” and the memories they cherish: “I think that’s what keeps us going.”
Now, at the age of 90, they’re anxious to move to their new home on the 10th Floor of the new retirement home at Wentworth Heights. They chose the northeast corner suite so they could enjoy the morning sunshine and soak up the view that encompasses the history of their lives.
“Now I can look out all over my old domain,” Gordon says with a laugh. “Where I was born and where I lived,” even the corners where he fell in love with his wife of 69 years.
Theirs is one of 150 confirmed suites sold in the new neighbourhoods as of mid-May. Thirty more of the remaining 108 suites are spoken for and Gordon and Edith are as eager to meet their new neighbours as they are to make the move when the neighbourhoods open this fall. They’re sure to have much in common.
“I just got the feeling that this was the group to be with,” Edith says, when asked what attracted them to Wentworth Heights, aside from the location. “We just figured it was what we needed.” They’ve visited the neighbouring Village of Tansley Woods in Burlington and met several times with team members from Wentworth Heights, and Edith says she’s never seen a team member without a smile upon their face.
“They just make you feel at home,” she says with a smile.
That’s a little easier to do, perhaps, when the roots that are planted to home run so deep, and that may just be what makes the Bulls and the other new residents of Wentworth Heights so special.
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