Hamilton is…
Well to be honest I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I think my habit of overthinking everything makes me try to find deeper meanings within the little details of life, and I’ve wrapped this city up into an enigma that I just can’t seem to crack.
I don’t want to trash this city; I feel like it deserves more than that. But If I were to speak with unadulterated ignorance, I would say that Hamilton is an old, rundown, “has-been” city that stands in the shadows of its former glory and has too much faith in its football team.
Although that wouldn’t be a unique observation, in fact it seems to be the story of every Rust Belt city in the Northeast of this continent. Detroit, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cleveland, Philadelphia; this is the land of blue-collar workers, billowing smokestacks, and honest industry. Hamilton is just another sad tale of a manufacturing powerhouse that has succumbed to the effects of offshore trade and automated assembly. It’s a story that we’ve come to expect in this part of the world; the rise to power, the growth and prosperity, the shift in economy, the loss of industry, the obsolescence, the poverty, and then the final chapter; resurgence and the search for a new identity.
And yet, Hamilton has decided to forgo the last act, almost as if it’s stuck in some sort of Victorian era purgatory. Reminiscent to its defiant character, the people of this city have held on to their gritty urban identity and refuse to move on to greener pastures. Hamilton is not a ‘post-industrial city’, it’s a ‘still-industrial city.’ The smokestacks are still pumping, the steel mills are still smoldering, the factories are still running, and the harbor is still packed with giant tanker ships that ferry goods across Lake Ontario and beyond.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back time after time instead of heading somewhere better. Hamilton is a living monument to a by-gone era when our country’s manufacturing prowess reigned supreme. Back when it was a noble profession to be a laborer, a union worker, a fisherman, and a master of your craft. You can’t find that anywhere else in Ontario; it’s all been destroyed, wiped clean to make room for the ritzy lakefront promenades, shiny new condos, and gentrified suburban neighborhoods that grace every waterside community from Ottawa to Niagara Falls.
The latter half of the 20th century proved to be a death blow for the city and the tables turned quickly. Offshore manufacturing ushered in a new age of affordable technology, and international trade that Toronto eagerly stepped in to capitalize on, leaving Hamilton to look old and archaic. A sick joke that was nothing more than a poverty-stricken hovel, and a mirror image of Detroit.
There’s something romantic in the tragedy of it all. The Rust Belt’s remains were the backdrop of my childhood, where magical experiences were hidden inside overgrown fields, barbed wired fences, and forgotten walls. Maybe in some strange way Hamilton reminds me of those moments, helping me to relive those adventurous experiences I had while traversing through the ancient ruins of a paper mill on the outskirts of town.
The Barber Mill in Georgetown Ontario…
That name brings back nostalgia and that sense of juvenile freedom I felt from the electric tingles of discovery and breaking all the rules.
Inside that shattered memory of abandonment, adolescent rebellion echoed off the graffiti-colored walls, reverberating the sweet sound of youthful terror and tiptoes as bored teenagers whispered in the dark.
Inside that shattered memory of abandonment, adolescent rebellion echoed off the graffiti-colored walls, reverberating the sweet sound of youthful terror and tiptoes as bored teenagers whispered in the dark.
That mill used to be something once.
That broken, dilapidated, weed infested, miserable industrial shell used to be someone’s dream, their sense of pride and livelihood that they used to support a generation of faceless nameless souls who have been forever lost to the brutality of time.
And now look at it. Look at what it’s become. A crumbling canvas of stone writhing in paint and tags that intermingle with the leaves and rippled branches clinging to the surface and blossoming in the spots where the sun peers through. An outcast mausoleum lit by the stained-glass windows of rotten roofs and shattered skylights.
A museum with no visitors, a story with no words…
I’ve spent too much time in Hamilton searching for difficult answers to simple questions. What was it that kept me coming back? Why do I make that right turn on the highway towards this old city instead of Toronto?
A crumbling canvas of stone writhing in paint and tags that intermingle with the leaves and rippled branches clinging to the surface and blossoming in the spots where the sun peers through. An outcast mausoleum lit by the stained-glass windows of rotten roofs and shattered skylights.
It’s not for the street art.
I can appreciate what I see, but I would never make the drive here just for that.
It’s more for the experience, and the stories you get from driving down the strange looking streets. This is a world that I thought no longer existed; the one I’ve seen hiding in the background of faded family photos and homemade films. Old buildings don’t get torn down in Hamilton. They just remain; forever standing as emptied out monuments to the lives that once were.
When you travel through this city you see the past. But you also see the present. And in some poetic way you see the future as well.
Every empire is destined to fall, that’s a guarantee in life. No matter how invincible we think our society is, someday, someone just like us is going to explore the ruins of Toronto and New York, staring in awe at all the decaying skyscrapers, and try to understand who those mystifying people were that built glass towers in the sky.
When you travel through this city you see the past. But you also see the present. And in some poetic way you see the future as well.
It’s the structure’s we leave behind that connects us with the future. After we’re long gone, the buildings that we’ve created are the only things that will survive. In a way Hamilton is a modern-day ruin to me; a lasting legacy of a by-gone generation like the Colosseum of Rome, the Acropolis of Greece, and the Great Wall of China.
Muralists like Lester Coloma capitalize on this fact, motivating his community with grand depictions of everyday heroes on the sides of buildings. Lester’s paintings seem to come alive as you drive past, giving you a glimpse into a world where the working man, the settlers, and the great innovators like Nikola Tesla prevailed.
“I think it’s important to tell the history of a building,” Coloma explained to me. “There’s a lot of older structures in Hamilton that people don’t know about; and if you can dig into their history and put that up on the side of a wall, it really helps them understand what happened in the area, and that’s a great way to integrate a community.”
Lester Coloma is one of the new generations of trained artists whose work is revitalizing the aesthetic of the city, as well as taking its citizens on a beautiful journey through their past. In a way he has become a sort of visual historian, telling stories that nobody else can; the doom and glory of everyday life, the forgotten people who lived here, who we are, where we came from, and what it truly means to be alive.
In a way he has become a sort of visual historian, telling stories that nobody else can; the doom and glory of everyday life, the forgotten people who lived here, who we are, where we came from, and what it truly means to be alive.
“The people are very proud of the artwork if it shows a reflection of their identity,” Coloma observed. “And it seems to get communities excited if it’s relatable for them. It gives them a story and something to talk about.”
Artists like Lester represent the renaissance of street art in the city. Beautifully commissioned murals that bring pride to those around it. And yet, the interesting thing about Hamilton is the dichotomy of the two sides that clash and create tension. There’s an obvious disparity of the social classes that breaks up the raw and gritty urban landscape with the middle class suburbs that surround it, revealing itself in the diversity of the street art.
Hamilton is a tale of two cities, conveniently divided by what’s known as ‘The Mountain’; a towering geological feature topped with million-dollar mansions that keep the rich looking down upon the poor, literally as well as metaphorically.
From up there you get an entire view of the city transitioning from the harbor, the industrial port, the steel mills, the factories, the subsidized housing, the suburban communities, the city center and finally the august luxury estates seated around you at the top.
Graffiti has always represented rebellion to me. It’s an artistic way to defy the ideals of those mountain top elite’s whose conservative perception of the world slowly seeps down into the arts and culture of the working class.
Those grey men in grey suits despise individuality and progression. They expect conformity and submission. That’s how they remain in control, and anything that goes against their vision is silenced and destroyed.
For years, street art was banished in Hamilton. It was labeled as a destructive act, created by juvenile delinquents who’d adopted the defiant subcultures of skateboarding and hip-hop. Those new-school genres seemed to have two things in common that enamored the youth: an unorthodox display of expression, and a subversive attitude towards the upper class of society.
The power-mongers in the political arena’s saw what was coming and did their best to stop the storm; developing an oppressive opinion that the new wave of graffiti in Hamilton was a crime and needed to be stopped.
What they failed to realize however, was that their new regulations had struck a chord with Scott McDonald and Leon “Eklipz” Robinson; two polarizing leaders in their communities whose decision to wage a personal war against the police and their persecuting by-laws would become the stuff of legends.
“For the longest time, murals where illegal in the city, and that was because of me,” McDonald explained. “I even went to jail for graffiti back in 1993.” Scott McDonald brought graffiti culture into Hamilton at Beasley Skatepark in 1992 after seeing what other artists were doing in New York City. At that time, government laws mandated that graffiti was a criminal offense, fueled by New York’s infamous Mayor Edward Koch, whose distorted opinion on vandalism had spread North into Hamilton’s crime prevention system.
“If you got caught doing graffiti you were getting heavy charges,” McDonald continued. “They’d try to put you away just to make an example of you, and then they finally created a by-law that said you couldn’t have any kind of spray paint in the city.
“There was a couple of graffiti jams that happened in the late 90’s where the police were just picking people off. They had conditions that said anyone who had any kind of paint, even markers or graffiti tools would be thrown in jail and It just killed the scene.”
At the same time Leon Robinson was fighting a war of his own. The multidimensional artist, radio host, and owner of a popular hip-hop store called The Boom Spot began reaching out to government officials and organizing the first Hamilton street art festival in 1994, which would eventually be known as Concrete Canvas.
“We set up on top of Jackson Square for three days out of the weekend and invited writers to come out and paint,” Robinson added. “We had DJ’s up there spinning, B-boy’s up there break dancing, graffiti competitions, three-on-three basketball tournaments; it was just a really beautiful vibe.”
Robinson and McDonald would eventually join forces in the mid-nineties and became a dynamic duo, pushing forward street art from both sides of their graffiti centric subcultures. Both of them had the same core values and the belief that street art is a voice which no one should be able to mandate or say whether it’s acceptable or not.
“I was lockstep with Scott in those times,” Robinson continued, “We had to go and sit in open board meetings to make sure that artists had a voice after they started saying that graffiti was a crime.
“Even back then we were saying, ‘How are you going to say that graffiti is a crime when you’ve got 99 cent Whoppers advertised in graffiti style?’ They extrapolate what they want from the culture to commercialize and monetize it, yet at the same time they deem it as unworthy and illegal when there’s people out there that really live this, and to them it has value, and it really helps to foster their life experience.”
“Even back then we were saying, ‘How are you going to say that graffiti is a crime when you’ve got 99 cent Whoppers advertised in graffiti style?’ They extrapolate what they want from the culture to commercialize and monetize it, yet at the same time they deem it as unworthy and illegal when there’s people out there that really live this, and to them it has value, and it really helps to foster their life experience.”
Even now, twenty-five years on from when they started their fight, the passion still rages through their voices. Maybe that’s indicative of Hamilton’s culture. That internal will to move forward at any cost, and the hard slog through life that comes from living inside a blue-collar city of the Rust Belt.
“My natural reaction is to fight back,” added McDonald with a defiant smile. “I’m not going to let anyone use their idea of what art is to tell me what mine should look like. The police should never have that authority over creativity; but they’re losing the battle right now and it’s awesome!”
My last search for answers had brought me back to where I’d started. The final question that was preventing me from solving that riddle. Why do I keep coming back to Hamilton when Toronto has so much more to offer?
Jason Thorne, the General Manager of Planning and Economic Development, seemed to have the answer for me.
“Hamilton is a city that hasn’t left its heritage behind. Instead, it has re-embraced it and worked that into the renaissance that’s happening,” he explained. “There’s been other cities in the Rust Belt where the industry died, and so they pivoted themselves into arts and culture, investing their identity into the creative class. That’s the typical story of the post-industrial city.
“Our story is a bit different; we developed that sector and became a very strong location for artists, but it’s in addition to. It’s layered on top of. We haven’t replaced it; and there’s no intention of replacing it, and we don’t want to replace it.”
Everywhere else has fallen; all of those humble cities that I’ve seen great heroes rise out of in the movies like Rocky Balboa no longer exist. There’s no more ‘Detroit Muscle’, ‘Pittsburg Steel’, ‘Buffalo Flour Mills’ or ‘Toronto Distillery.’
Everywhere else has fallen; all of those humble cities that I’ve seen great heroes rise out of in the movies like Rocky Balboa no longer exist. There’s no more ‘Detroit Muscle’, ‘Pittsburg Steel’, ‘Buffalo Flour Mills’ or ‘Toronto Distillery.’
Hamilton hasn’t died. It’s just lived on.
This used to be us, this used to be what the world looked like before corporate America took over and washed everything with its bland suburban, Walmart super-center, McDonald’s drive-thru, minivan-filled, multi-level highway aesthetic that we’ve become so used too.
The three million square foot Amazon fulfillment center on the outskirts of town is the last remnants of industry. That shiny new building with its manicured lawn and perfectly paved parking lot used to be a dirty, grimy, brick laden, smoke churning, factory in the center of town.
But that’s become someone else’s existence now; in some far-off Chinese city we’ve never heard of that looks eerily similar to the shoreline of Hamilton.
“Some people see the smokestacks and the factories and think that it’s just ugly and old,” Thorne remarked. “Maybe it’s because I grew up in this city, but I think it’s beautiful. If you were to talk to any Hamiltonian, they’ll tell you that they are proud of the fact that we’re still making the steel that’s being used to build the towers in Toronto.”
That was it! Right there, that was the answer to my three-year-long question.
Hamilton can never be Toronto; the towering cityscape that looms over in the distance, standing as the golden child of the province, and a constant reminder of what it used to be; a source of innovation and pride that people flocked to from all over the nation to be a part of.
It is doomed to be a smoke pumping, second tier city for years to come,
But without the rusty steel mills in the ports of Hamilton, there wouldn’t be the glitzy condos in the center of Yorkville. Without artists like Scott McDonald and Leon Robinson who advocated for their rights in the nineties, there wouldn’t be a Graffiti Alley that’s become such a major part of Toronto’s identity.
I make this right turn on the highway week after week because deep down I realize that Hamilton represents the innovators who’ve pushed us forward. The artists who’ve fought for our voices, the industrial class in the shady parts of town who work day after day, generation after generation, life after life, to bring us to where we are today.
I think that adventurous child is still stirring inside me at times, searching for hidden secrets in tragically beautiful places. It’s funny how these forgotten areas of destitution always seem to be the best places for art to thrive; almost as if the vast emptiness of concrete fertilizes the seeds for creativity to grow.
It’s strange, isn’t it? How the most unassuming of places can hold the greatest stories and the grandest sights. Maybe like the talented artists I’ve met on my journey through this city, Mother Nature is sort of a painter in and of herself; creeping her healing hands into the cruelest of places to bring a little bit of magic to the dull grey walls and breathe life inside them once more. And that, in its downtrodden, rundown, grease covered, “has been” way is quite a beautiful sight indeed.
