An annual Chamber of Commerce initiative seeking the support of shoppers to aid local and small businesses while celebrating the city’s arts and culture sector is now a four-day celebration.
Chamber president Greg Dunnett said the decision to make Hamilton Day “bigger and better” was spurred on by the “thousand businesses” participating in last year’s single-day event.
“We had, last year, over a thousand businesses participating and literally thousands of Hamiltonians getting out to the streets and shopping and taking part in the pop-up markets,” Dunnett said.
The first two nights are highlighted by a live music series at multiple locations, with Saturday as “Shop Local Day” with over a thousand restaurants, retailers and services offering deals and giveaways.
Dwayne Gretzky at the music hall on Main Street West and the Hamilton Day Kickoff Party with Sonic Runway at Pier 8 along the Waterfront Trail are just a couple of the marquee events.
Saturday will see free admission to the Art Gallery of Hamilton and pop-up artisan and farmers markets across the city.
Dunnett told Global News that Hamilton Day, whose roots go back almost 90 years, has always been a symbolic mechanism rallying residents to shop locally with micro, small and medium businesses to bolster the local economy.
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Recent inflation and the looming payback of the Canada Emergency Business Account make the next few months of holiday shopping even more crucial for a number of small businesses to buffer financial impacts, according to Dunnett.
“One of the messages that we always want to come out of Hamilton Day is that shopping local isn’t a one-day event,” he said.
“It’s something that we need to prioritize all year round. But this is a great way to kind of make us have a central focus on it.”
The COC’s first Hamilton Day was in 1931, during the Great Depression, and was a one-day symbol of the city’s “rallying spirit” in what was then a time of an economic downturn that carried on for years.
The initiative encouraged Hamiltonians to visit small retail shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and theatres, among others.
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