Zonta International was founded in 1919, and nine years later, in 1928, the Zonta Club of Hamilton was chartered. It became the 82nd club in Zonta. There are now over 1200 clubs worldwide.

Our Hamilton club has successfully formed eight other clubs. They include St Catharines, Cambridge, Oakville, Burlington, Woodstock, Stratford, Freeport in the Bahamas, and most recently, a second Hamilton club. Hamilton 2 became the first "two" club on the North American continent, and our Club became the Zonta Club of Hamilton 1.

We have traditions in our club for providing service to our community. We have been hostesses for the Citizenship Court since 1955, and we first established an annual scholarship for Junior Achievement in 1969. Both of these continue today. We have held our anniversary celebrations every five years at the Hamilton Golf and Country Club since our 40th birthday, in 1968.

International Honorary Members

Zonta International awards International Honorary Membership to world-renowned women who exemplify the trailblazing spirit of Zonta’s founding members. The Zonta Club of Hamilton 1 is proud to have sponsored two of the thirty-one women on this list.

The Right Honorable Ellen L Fairclough joined our club in 1937 and died in November 2004. She was the first woman to serve as Canada’s acting prime minister. She was a former Secretary of State and Canada’s first woman federal cabinet minister. She introduced equal pay for equal work.

Roberta Bondar, a member since 1984, is Canada’s first woman astronaut. She was a crew member aboard the 1992 Space Shuttle Discovery.