City of Waterfalls, Steeltown, the Ambitious City - Hamilton, Ontario, has gone by many names over the years as it has risen to economic heights and fallen from them. In this wide-ranging collection of essays editor Paul Weinberg has gathered together some of Hamilton's most tireless advocates to chart the rise of a new ambitious city. From examining the city's long history of immigration to chronicling vanished working-class neighbourhoods, to citizen journalism, to art advocacy, to battles over expressways and light rail transit, and with a close look at gentrification and housing, Reclaiming Hamilton traces the fault lines that run through the city today. What these essays reveal is a remarkable city, one that is filled with rich history and present-day ingenuity, and one that is energized by citizens who never fail to fight for what they believe in.
About the Author: Paul Weinberg is a veteran journalist and freelance writer whose work has appeared in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and websites including the Globe and Mail, the Monitor (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), Canada's History, rabble.ca, Inter Press Service, NOW, Eye magazine, Metropolis, LobeLog and Quest. He is also working on a forthcoming book on the anti-poverty movement of the 1960s. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
Matthew Bin is an author and IT consultant, born and raised in Hamilton and currently residing in Oakville with his wife and beagles. He has published non-fiction books and articles on Canadian military history, international soccer and business, as well as military, horror and science fiction novels. In his spare time he is a licensed marriage officiant, artisanal pasta maker, and bassist and backup shouter in a punk rock band.
Nancy B. Bouchier, professor of history at McMaster, explores issues of locality, gender, social class and the environment in the history of sport and physical activity. She is author of For Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small Town Ontario 1838-1895.
Ken Cruikshank, professor of history and former dean of Humanities at McMaster, works on the history of business and of the administrative state in Canada and the United States, particularly between the 1880s and World War II. He is the author of Close Ties: Railways, Government and the Board of Railway Commissioners, 1851-1933.
As long-time research collaborators, Ken and Nancy have focused on the state, the environment and recreation in the history of Hamilton Harbour. In 2016 UBC Press published their The People and the Bay: A Social and Environmental History of Hamilton Harbour, which won the Canadian Historical Association's 2017 Clio Prize for Ontario regional history.
I'm Joey Coleman, a Hamiltonian who works as an independent crowdfunded journalist, is engaged with open data, involved in my neighbourhood association, a pinball player and am blamed by City Hall for increasing civic engagement with my work over at www.thepublicrecord.ca.
Kerry Le Clair is a Hamilton-based editor, community organizer and activist with a background in human rights, Indigenous solidarity and environmental racism work. She loves Hamilton for what it is and what it could be, and as such, continues to celebrate and castigate the city as needed.
Robert S. Fiedler completed a Ph.D. at York University where his research focused on suburban change and the politics and planning of postwar suburbanization in Toronto. He is originally from Vancouver and moved to Hamilton in 2011 after living in Toronto for five years. He lives in the North End with his spouse and children.
Kevin MacKay is a writer, community organizer, union activist and social science professor. He has lived in Hamilton for over thirty years and for the past fifteen years he has acted as Executive Director of the Sky Dragon Community Development Co-operative. In 2017 Kevin published Radical Transformation: Oligarchy, Collapse, and the Crisis of Civilization, with Between the Lines. He is currently working on a second book, A New Ecological Politics, with Oregon State University Press.
Ryan McGreal is the editor of Raise the Hammer (raisethehammer.org), a website focused on civic affairs in Hamilton, Ontario. He is a founding volunteer with Hamilton Light Rail (hamiltonlightrail.ca), a citizen group dedicated to bringing light rail transit to Hamilton. His writing has been published in the Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton Magazine, The Walrus, HuffPost and Behind the Numbers.
Seema Narula is a high school teacher, writer and sometimes DJ. She started her blog This Must Be The Place in 2011, where she documented her exploration of the city uncovering old gems and new places.
In 2016 she was nominated for the Hamilton Arts Award as an emerging artist in the category of writer. She has written for publications such as The Guardian, the Hamilton Spectator and Tourism Hamilton.
After writing this chapter, Seema has since become a member of the Coalition of Black and Racialized Artists (COBRA).
You can sometimes catch Seema DJing dance parties around the city or traipsing around various haunts with her kids in tow.
A graduate of Carleton University's School of Journalism, Jessica Rose is a writer, editor and book reviewer whose work has appeared in publications across Canada. She is a founding editor at The Inlet, the book reviews editor at THIS, a senior editor at the Hamilton Review of Books and was a long-time writer for Hamilton Magazine. She is the marketing manager at gritLIT: Hamilton's Readers and Writers Festival, sits on the Hamilton Arts Council's Literary Arts Committee and is a board member at the Adult Basic Education Association. She has nearly fifteen years of experience writing and editing publications for children.
Shawn Selway has a BA in Religion from McMaster and an Industrial Mechanic license from the Province of Ontario via the Steel Company of Canada basic works in Hamilton, Ontario. He is a moderate technological determinist broadly interested in questions of material culture and the attendant paradoxes. Accordingly, he finds himself writing about municipal planning issues for the local civic affairs blog, and about superseded industrial equipment for the clients of his consultancy in the conservation of historic machinery. He is the author of Nobody Here Will Harm You, a book about mass medical evacuation from the Eastern Arctic during the second half of the twentieth century.
Margaret Shkimba is a writer and contributing columnist to the Hamilton Spectator. A mother and grandmother, she lives in Hamilton with her partner, Ray, and her two hound dogs, Bonnie and Clyde.
Sarah V. Wayland is senior project manager for the Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council. From 2013 to 2018, she was the creator and leader of Global Hamilton, the City of Hamilton's immigrant attraction and retention initiative. A dual US-Canadian citizen, she earned her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Maryland. She immigrated to Canada in 1994 and settled in Hamilton with her family in 2001. From 2005 to 2014, she served on the board of Hamilton's largest settlement agency, including as secretary and president.
