Photo credit: Facebook/HMCS Star
HMCS Star, Hamilton’s Naval Reserve Division and the second oldest naval reserve division in Canada, celebrated its 100th year of existence back in March.
The unit was established as the Hamilton Half Company on March 15, 1923.
It began with about 50 men who worked out of the old Imperial Building at 20 Hughson Street South in downtown Hamilton.
A few months later they moved to 469 Bay Street North closer to the harbour.
The Hamilton Half Company was then recommissioned as HMCS Star on November 1, 1941 and relocated to a new facility, its current home, at the end of Catharine Street North.
Despite staying at the same site since 1943, it should be noted that the buildings were updated in 1997.
HMCS Star became a major recruiting base for the Royal Canadian Navy’s World War Two operations and trained 7,490 personnel over the course of the War.
That accounted for approximately 10 per cent of the entire Canadian navy at that time.
They were later home to the Great Lakes Training Centre and had two reserve training ships, the HMCS Porte St Louis and HMCS Porte St. Jean.
Eventually, the Commander of Naval Divisions even relocated from Ottawa to the HMCS Star facility.
The reserve was quite active throughout the rest of the 1900s, with various Cold War operations following World War Two.
But then the Great Lakes Training Centre disbanded in 1964 and the Commander of Naval Divisions relocated to HMCS Stadacona in Halifax. The two ships, the HMCS Porte St Louis and HMCS Porte St. Jean, left as well.
In May 1997, HMCS Star officially opened their new state-of-the-art facility, replacing all the original buildings of the World War Two era.
The division currently has around 200 reservists and their site now includes the HMCS Haida destroyer ship which now operates as a National Historic Site run by Parks Canada.
The HMCS Haida was relocated from Toronto Harbour to Hamilton in 2003 and is the last of the 27 Tribal Class destroyers that were built for the Royal Canadian Navy during World War Two.
The division recently celebrated their “Centennial Ball” at Liuna Station on March 11 in recognition of the historic milestone.
The venue for the event was also quite fitting considering the banquet centre’s historical significance as the former Canadian National Railway station.
It remains to be seen what the next century has in store for the division.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
