Her name was Mabel. You may not have heard of her, but she played an important part in Aldershot’s history. It was Mabel Easterbrook who established the now famous hot-dog stand on Spring Gardens Road. That was over 90 years ago.
Mabel was the founder and first of four generations to run the Easterbrook’s hot-dog restaurant. Without Mabel, it may never have happened.
“My grandmother was quite the entrepreneur,” commented grandson Ray Easterbrook, who recently retired from the business.
Today, Mabel’s hot-dog stand is a huge success. It has been the subject of many news and magazine articles, visited by a variety of celebrities and most importantly, produced hundreds of thousands of “dogs.”
Mabel was born in 1886. She married John Easterbrook and together they purchased a farm around 1926 in the area south of Plains Road between Holy Sepulchre and Woodland Cemeteries. Along with the fruits and vegetables, they planted the seeds that would later grow into miles of hot dogs.
Mabel and John were not well off. They had taken out a mortgage to buy their farm, but the Great Depression hit and they needed cash. They sold off part of their land and Mabel started to sell produce to passing cars, especially the famous Aldershot sugar maple melons.
Those produce sales later evolved into a tea house.
“She had no money to do anything but she came to realize that all these people driving by might want something to eat, so she started up a tea house with sandwiches and stuff like that,” said Ray.
At that time, the part of Plains Road that now curves behind the Royal Botanical Gardens was Highway 2, directly in front of the Easterbook farm. There was a lot of traffic. It was the main drag between Hamilton and Toronto.
Sometimes, Mabel would even rent out a room in the farmhouse for weary travelers, forcing her husband to sleep in the greenhouse or the barn. Clearly, Mabel was the boss in that family.
“She just kinda eked by,” said Ray.
But Mabel would not let the Depression beat her. In addition to the produce sales, tea house, and occasional motel service, she bought up old ramshackle houses in Hamilton, had horses drag them across the frozen bay, and rented them out as beachfront cottages until they fell apart.
Around 1930, the tea house added hot dogs to the menu. Eventually, the dogs outsold the produce and the rest, as they say, is history. It was struggle for many years, but Mabel ran the place until 1952 through good times and bad.
“Carrying a mortgage through the Depression was very difficult but Mabel managed one nonetheless through sheer determination,” once wrote the Hamilton Spectator.
Mabel is remembered for her achievements in leading her family, surviving the Depression, and starting the hot dog stand, but she felt that her greatest moment was when she was named postmistress for the area known as Willow Cove.
Grandson Ray recalls that postal officials had to track her down at the back of the farm, where she was picking tomatoes, in order to swear her in.
“Everyone in Aldershot used to have to come to that hot dog stand to get their mail. I still remember all the cubby-holes where everybody’s mail went in. She was very proud that she was the postmistress.”
As postmistress, Mabel became a central figure in the community, the source of information and gossip.
There are reports that one time, she purposely placed the mail of a single young woman into the slot of a single young man, forcing them to meet and exchange mail. Mabel’s maneuvering eventually worked out and the young couple married.
Ray has fond memories of his grandmother Mabel. “Whenever I brought a girlfriend home, she’d look her up and down and say ‘can you sew?”
There was one day, according to Ray, when Mabel spotted a police officer heading toward the store. There was an illegal slot machine in there. Mabel picked the whole thing up by herself and hid it in the backyard. Ray says It took three men to hoist it back in. Mabel died in 1975 at the age of 88 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery. She remains an important figure in local history.
