Days of Future Past: Boyes Park, a name, and the man behind it

Saturday, 13 June 2026

A decision taken recently by the Hamilton City Council to rename Boyes Park, a piece of land long associated with the late Founders Theatre, could be seen as part of a systematic effort by that proactive governing body to reshape aspects of our past in line with the sensitivities of the present. Not content to demolish a building that was built by the fundraising efforts of its citizens, for the good of all, the HCC has now turned its attention to the shortcomings of Mr George Stephenson Boyes, a man whose principal evil would appear to have involved a desire to make Hamilton a more aesthetically pleasing place. Possibly Boyes was insufficiently attuned to the exclusive virtues of native flora to warrant the term 'environmentalist' but he certainly planted an awful lot of trees and was enormously invested in what was once quaintly termed 'beautifying' the town.

In addition to these sins, an objective commentator might point to other fundamentally objectionable aspects of Boyes' character. He was, dare I say it, a disgustingly successful capitalist and a practising Christian. Hamilton's first dedicated real estate agent, he sold and resold land, farms and urban properties, realising profits, building and sustaining a business that employed many and facilitated town and later city commerce. He knew his Bible well, fiercely defended the Sabbath against transgressors, especially those who would profane the Lord's day by kicking balls around or otherwise indulging in physical exercise and could, when the occasion called for it, intone wisely in the matter of scripture.

Boyes' crimes are not quite of the same magnitude as those colonialist icons whose prosecution of duty in the context of the times in which they lived was championed, latterly recast as villains. The mercenary Von Tempsky and that unfortunate British officer who failed to keep his head down, Captain Hamilton, set posthumous precedents, erased as Trotsky was from old Soviet photographs, airbrushed out of our past with, respectively, a street renaming and a statue removal. That Boyes joins their ranks, ceding his park moniker to Hinemoa, a venerable 18th century ancestor to mana whenua, might be seen as just given the grim realities of the Waikato invasion, except he did not arrive in Hamilton until 1905, some 40 years after the fighting had ceased. Moreover, given Hinemoa already has a park named after her, across the road, the matter could be conceived as a progressive annexation, a prelude perhaps to the renaming of Seddon Park, across another street. The misdeeds of Richard John Seddon vastly outweigh anything that Boyes did, even in the latter's wildest dreams. The next time an international cricket team graces the Waikato they could, in all likelihood, be playing at Hinemoa Park, subject of course to the wishes of a guilty, ever compliant council.

In all of this the attitude of Mr Boyes' descendants has importance. In endorsing the name change the Boyes family have proven themselves entirely worthy, not merely consistent with contemporary attitudes and the will of the majority of our democratically elected representatives but with the inherent modesty of their forebear.

The naming of what was to become Boyes Park was settled at a meeting of the Hamilton Domain Board on 6 February, 1923. That mana whenua were not part of the decision making process, on the very day that was to subsequently become Waitangi Day, but which was not recognised as such at that time, is an undeniable fact. Instead, the HDB was composed of male, Pākehā Hamiltonians, largely but not exclusively drawn from the ranks of the Hamilton Borough Council, men who oversaw the management of public domain lands and municipal reserves, doing so without payment, as a matter of public service.

In 1923 George Boyes was the secretary of the Hamilton Domain Board, a position he had occupied at that stage for a decade and would continue in for a further 23 years. This was a paid position: Boyes was an employee of the HDB, a job he did in addition to running his own, highly profitable real estate firm, George Boyes & Company. The cynical might suggest that one complemented the other, facilitating networks and influence but Boyes had, even prior to his HDB appointment, demonstrated a proactive commitment to improving the aesthetics of Hamilton. On 5 August, 1912, he was a founding member of the Hamilton Beautifying Society. At the HBS's second meeting he was elected to its executive. On the occasion of the HBS's first anniversary, in 1913, he became its secretary.

The HBS had a symbiotic relationship with the Hamilton Borough Council, who provided its funding. It initiated and oversaw projects, cultivating various borough properties and lands. In October, 1912 - very much hitting the ground running - it placed an extensive plan before council to invest fifty pounds in the surveying and development of a footpath along the western side of the town river bank. Almost 800 trees and shrubs were planted in an area that extended toward and included the ferry bank, ferns, iceplants, pampas grass and cabbage trees among them. Elsewhere the project included the creation of rustic bridges and small streams, along with more prosaic necessities anticipating the usage of the walkway: rubbish bins.

This initial success proved a template for various other initiatives, with George Boyes' voice among the loudest in their promotion and execution. Two issues about which he articulated concerns continue to resonate today, 113 years later. In the first week of May, 1913, at a meeting with the HBC to discuss the further planting of trees in various streets, Boyes complained about the flow of water from Bridge St into the area occupied by the Town Hall. Given today's Celebrating Age Centre, on almost exactly the same site, rots away in a most unsightly manner, a certain consistency is apparent. Likewise the HBS's 1913 plans to further develop Garden Place, then still a hill, anticipates the Hamilton City Council continuing to throw millions of dollars of ratepayers' funds at the problem in 2026.

It was this unpaid commitment to the Hamilton Beautifying Society that Domain Board chairman R.C. Fowler likely had in mind when he suggested in 1923 that 'Mr Boyes has rendered a great deal more service than was required of him by the Board, and was an enthusiast in Domain work, a gentleman who had done a considerable amount for the town'. Fowler added, 'Mr Boyes was not merely a paid servant; he was an earnest worker on the town's behalf, and had given a considerable amount of his time to Domain affairs'.

Other members of the HDB committee having spoken 'in feeling terms of Mr Boyes' service', Fowler's motion to name Boyes Park in their secretary's honour was carried 'unanimously and amidst applause'.

For his part, the recipient replied 'that he was not at all anxious for the honour as he had only done his work as he would like to do it, in a proper manner'. However, feeling it would be 'ungracious on his part to decline', he gave his consent to the use of his name. That his descendants have consented now to the opposite might be thought a case of taking Boyes' protests at face value.

Not everybody was happy with branding a civic park with the name of a town employee. If the paper of record failed to consult local iwi about their opinion any more than the Hamilton Domain Board, one correspondent of the Waikato Times did register a complaint, published four days after the HBD meeting. Electing to hide behind a nom de plume, the writer who signed himself or herself as 'Resident', balanced constructive criticism with wit.

One objection, anticipated by the Board, was that Boyes was 'a paid employee', who, by implication, was merely doing his job. Others, it was argued, had been doing such jobs for a superior duration, including Mr E.J. Davey, Hamilton's prohibitionist-inclined town clerk, thought to have 'rendered far greater and longer service'. If Boyes was, in the opinion of the writer, 'a very estimable, trustworthy and reliable gentleman' he was 'not [the] only such in the town'. 'There are others', the letter continued, 'who have given to the town more gratuitous services than he, and whom I feel sure he would be the first to admit were more deserving of the honour'.

The very name 'Boyes Park' was believed to be 'not altogether euphonious', its principal shortcoming being the possibility that 'it might mislead visitors into the belief that it is a park reserved for the male sex only'. For Boyes, read 'boys'!

Against this, the Resident proffered another name. James Shiner Bond, deceased the previous year, had, in addition to a moniker that would in the decades to come prove most illustrious to spy thriller readers and movie goers alike, achieved the rare feat of being elected Mayor of both Cambridge and Hamilton, had served on the latter's Council, Harbour and Education Boards and left the sum of £250 toward technical education in Hamilton, allegedly the first such instance of local, posthumous philanthropy.

It was indeed a lost opportunity not to name Boyes Park, James Bond Park. The tourist possibilities it would have opened up, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, conceivably in conjunction with an obstacle course in which Hamilton children were required to negotiate booby traps set by Blofeld, Spectre or SMERSH, would have proven a wonderful complement to the Founders Theatre, if threatened international copyright infringement.

Taking a lead from Boyes' reported comments, or possibly writing from first hand knowledge, Resident concluded by saying 'I am inclined to think the naming of the park after him is far from his own wish and that it rather it had not been so'.

George Boyes has, 103 years later, had his own supposed wish granted.