We’re all in this together

The Tale of One City

What is “Hamilton”?

For some, Hamilton is and always will be no more than the 123.23 square kilometres of the “old” city, which had grown to roughly its accepted size by 1960. From the hollows of Ancaster Creek in the west to the jagged, human-made lines that weave in and out of backyards and parking lots along Grays/Gray Road and Centennial Parkway in the east. From the hulking hydro towers that I could see from the kitchen window of my childhood home on the city’s far southern border to the Harbour and lakefront shorelines made and remade by people and commerce and industry in the north.

For others, the broader, official boundaries better define Hamilton. This version - 11 times larger than the old city - stretches from the Mountsburg Reservoir to a bend in the road just south of Regional Road 9A in the community of Sinclairville: a fraction of a percent less than 52 kilometres from northwest to southeast. This idea of Hamilton includes six formerly independent municipalities, each with their own histories and cultures and traditions. These are places that became what they were and what they are both independently of one another and precisely because of how integrally connected each place was for hundreds of years of colonial settlement.

Today, no matter what your view of Hamilton is, it has become “one city of many communities”, governed by a municipal council as a “single-tier municipality”. Unlike with neighbouring municipalities like Burlington or Grimsby, there is no longer a “regional” municipal body above our council. Single-tier municipalities manage all their affairs in house, as one government. Lower-tier municipalities deal with some issues on a smaller scale, but send representatives to an upper-tier municipal council to manage those issues that impact a wider area: police, transit, large roads, water and sewer services, public assistance, etc. For us, it is all dealt with at the same level and at the same scale.

This has been on my mind for a few reasons. First, exactly one month ago, the last mayor of Flamborough, Mark Shurvin, passed away at age 69. While Shurvin’s time in office was very short, his impact on the city we know today was significant. He was an integral player in the mid-90’s debate over what a reimagined Hamilton would look like and the decisions he made (and that were made in the wake of his activism) have created the city we know today.

Second, there’s been a lot of chatter in town about the fallout from Mayor Horwath’s decision to use her mayoral veto to end the saga of the Lake Avenue South parking lot. Indeed, three councillors have begun calling for a “Made in Stoney Creek” housing plan and making vague threats about “forcing” housing projects on other parts of the city in what they think will be an act of retribution.

The Lake Avenue South parking lot saga is one very real reminder that the fallout from the process of municipal reorganization that began in the 1970’s still hangs heavy in the air. While the threats of “deamalgamation” and community secession once came up in response to every little issue we’d face, a new kind of exclusionary localism has taken its place. When the scales change, fear of the other is employed with enthusiasm to exclude people based on petty geographic differences. Distrust the “Hamiltonian” in Stoney Creek. Distrust the “out of towner” who becomes politically involved. Distrust anyone who doesn’t share your exact experiences. A little Head-of-the-Lake ultranationalism sprinkled through our civic discourse.

How did we get to this point? What was the process that made Hamilton Hamilton? And how does the Lake Avenue South parking lot saga fit into all of this?

For some of you, this will all be common knowledge. But, for many, the history of municipal organization and reorganization in Hamilton is one of those weird pieces of local knowledge that seems like it was purposefully forgotten. There’s a feeling that “this is the way it’s always been”, even though the structures we know today are relatively new.

With that all said, let’s begin.

11 becomes 6

The Hamilton we know today only came into being on January 1, 2001 as the “New” City of Hamilton. To put in perspective just how “new” it really is, I’ve even got 10 and a half years (like…exactly) on this current iteration of Hamilton.

Prior to that - for 27 years, from January 1, 1974 to December 31, 2000 - this entire area was the “Region of Hamilton-Wentworth”, made up of six municipalities.

There is, of course, history before that as well. The colonial period saw plenty of change over time: this whole area was covered by the Between the Lakes Purchase of 1792 (reminding us that this land important to countless Indigenous people for thousands of years before colonization), George Hamilton began concocting his plan for the city around 1814, the police village of Hamilton was created in 1833, and the city was incorporated in 1846. Some of the surrounding areas had their own acts of incorporation and governments, while other portions were part of other counties and townships. Some of those names still linger in the area: Barton, Saltfleet, Beverley. A more fulsome history would incorporate all that, but I suppose you’ll just have to wait for the book version of that which I’m sure I’ll get around to writing one day.

Back to the Region.

From the late 1960’s into the early 1970’s, the provincial government began investigating the creation of a regional body to better coordinate the delivery of municipal services. Even before the region was created, there was controversy. During Hamilton’s deliciously partisan 1970 municipal election, the three candidates for mayor - incumbent Vic Copps, official NDP candidate Bill Freeman, and Lloyd Lazar (who was running as an independent because he was angry he did not get the NDP nomination for mayor) - each campaigned on opposing any regional government that didn’t combine Hamilton and Burlington. As Freeman told the Spec: “I see Burlington as very much part of the geographic area and I can’t really see it being regional government if it’s just going to be [Wentworth] county.”1

The province plowed ahead with regional government sans Burlington, passing the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth Act in 1973. This act actually created the five suburban communities as we know them. Prior to 1973, Wentworth County was made up of 10 municipalities: The towns of Dundas and Stoney Creek, the townships of Ancaster, Saltfleet, East Flamborough, West Flamborough, Beverly, Binbrook, and Glanford, and the Village of Waterdown. Within these municipalities were also the three “police villages” of Ancaster, Freelton, and Lynden, which were the population centres of otherwise small townships.

Each of these small population centres and townships had reeves (the mayor of a small municipality), deputy reeves, and aldermen all elected in different ways with differing responsibilities. The creation of the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth streamlined all of that, slimming local government down to 68 elected members and one appointed regional chair. Only 27 elected officials would serve on both the regional council and their local council, while the remaining 41 would only serve locally. Of those 27 elected regional councillors, 17 of them - 63% - would come from Hamilton. That included the mayor, the four members of Hamilton’s Board of Control (the body that oversaw financial matters and maintained other high-level responsibilities), and all but 4 aldermen. During the special 1973 municipal election to select new councils for the newly formed municipalities and regional reps for the brand new Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, the Spec gave this new body a simple name: The Family.2

The size of The Family changed over those 27 years. By the region’s last municipal elections in 1997, Hamilton-Wentworth had slimmed down to 59 elected representatives across the whole region. Each municipality had changed their own councils and who sat on the regional council. Hamilton ditched the Board of Control in 1980, trimming our local government from 21 to 17. Ancaster and Glanbrook kept their elected mayors, but changed the regional councillor position to that of an elected “deputy mayor”. Both of those communities also had councils of 5, all elected by ward. Flamborough and Stoney Creek had done the same, except their councils were elected from 7 wards. Dundas was the only municipality to keep things the same; the valley town elected its council at-large, with a separate election for one at-large regional councillor. The only addition was that of an elected regional chair, abandoning the previous tradition of appointing one for the 1988 municipal election.

By the region’s final election in 1997, it was already evident that changes were coming to Hamilton-Wentworth. What those changes would be remained unclear, though. But everyone knew that there was no escaping the runaway train that was Common Sense.

Common Sense comes for all of us

June 8, 1995.

Ontarians flocked to the polls, driven by their palpable disappointment with the province’s five year experiment with a tepid variant of Third Way social democracy. Bob Rae, the province’s premier, had alienated a seemingly diverse cross-section of people, from the forces of organized labour to tax-conscious suburban moderates to members of his own party, who were already starting to see a lot more Liberal red than NDP orange in his politics.

Up until a few months before the election, it looked like Ontarians would replace Rae with the former Thunder Bay-area school trustee Lyn McLeod, who had taken over leadership of the Ontario Liberals. McLeod’s party had dominated the polls as the 1990-to-1992 recession dragged on. But, as the election drew near, she made some serious tactical errors. Her biggest came in June of 1994, when she withdrew OLP support from Bill 167. That particular bill - the Equality Rights Statute Amendment Act - was a groundbreaking piece of civil rights legislation that would have provided a form of partnership akin to a civil union for same-sex couples. Her support for the bill during its first reading was half-hearted but, after the Liberals lost a by-election in a deeply conservative Haliburton-area riding, she switched her tune and withdrew support to placate the right-wing. A group of renegade, socially-conservative New Democrat MPPs (including future Toronto city councillors Giorgio Mammoliti and Anthony Perruzza, and 1997 Dundas mayoral candidate Don Abel) had already announced their opposition to the bill, so losing Liberal support meant the bill was dead. McLeod and most of the Liberal caucus, including future premier Dalton McGuinty, voted against the bill, which was defeated 59-68.

McLeod was branded an inexperienced flip-flopper. Rae was already disliked across the province. So Ontarians turned to the long-time MPP for Nipissing, Mike Harris, who had assumed control of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party in 1990. Beating out the Red Tory establishment favourite Dianne Cunningham, Harris had turned his party to the right in a dramatic fashion.

For the 1995 election, Harris unveiled a radical new platform called the “Common Sense Revolution”. Harris’s neoliberal tour de force would not have even come into being without the help of one of those 59 local representatives in Hamilton-Wentworth - Dundas council member John Mykytyshyn, an extreme right-winger aligned with the Reform Party who once told a reporter: “Old-style Red Toryism believes very much in the socialist agenda and the government having a larger, more interventionist role…people of my generation believe in individual responsibility.”3 It was Mykytyshyn and a band of ultraconservatives who crafted the party’s 1995 platform which, as the Liberals faltered and the NDP languished, suddenly became more appealing to Ontario’s weary voters.

The Common Sense Revolution called for deep spending cuts, a relentless desire for efficiencies, and an overall reduction in the size of government. The platform was ruthless in its pursuit of savings and zealous in its ideological fervour. Among other things, it called for ending public daycare, privatizing social service delivery, cracking down on “welfare fraud”, selling the LCBO, slashing at least 20% of the government’s budget, repealing anti-scab legislation, and stopping “government growth once and for all”.

Taking aim at municipalities, the Common Sense Revolution included the insistence that “we do not need every layer - federal, provincial, quasi-governmental bodies, regional, municipal and school board - that we have now” and that governments will be required to cut the number of elected officials by 24% and “non-priority” spending by 20%.4

On June 8, 1995, when faced with the alternative choices, 1.8 million Ontarians cast ballots for Harris’s Tories and the austere, ruthless, ideologically-extreme platform he presented. The stage was set for dramatic changes to municipal government in Ontario.

Drop a quarter

Even before the Tories were elected, a 30-member citizen advisory body - the Hamilton-Wentworth Constituent Assembly - was struck to “study” the issue of regional government. After a year of work, the report (which apparently cost $600,000) recommended a single-tier municipality.5 The recommendation was widely rebuked by residents and politicians alike, who thought amalgamation would upset the delicate balance forged over the past quarter decade of regional government. One of the Assembly’s members, Ancaster’s Harald Stolberg, pushed back on this notion, writing in the Spec that “I do not believe that maintenance of the identity and unique character of our wonderful village depends upon adherence to an obsolete and inefficient political structure.”6 Regardless, the idea was not popular in the region.

In the failure of the Hamilton-Wentworth Constituent Assembly, the new Tory government saw an opportunity. Municipal reform was still on the table, but, now, they could inject some Common Sense into the process. To do this, the province appointed a “mediator” to help reform local government in Hamilton.

Gardner Church, a planner and municipal affairs expert, was appointed by Municipal Affairs Minister Al Leach. Wentworth North MPP Toni Skarica and Hamilton Mountain’s Trevor Pettit of the PCs, as well as Hamilton East’s Liberal MPP, Dominic Agostino, all saw Church’s appointment as a positive step toward achieving the high standards set by Harris.7 By the letter of the Common Sense Revolution, the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth would need to shed at least 14 more politicians, bringing the region’s elected representation down to 45.

Church and representatives from each of the region’s municipalities locked themselves in the Convention Centre for 13 hours from 4:00 PM on Thursday, November 7 to 5:00 AM on Friday, November 8, 1996. The negotiations were not easy and the conflicts eventually saw Dundas and Flamborough abandon the negotiations, dramatically walking out to signal their disapproval. But with all the other municipalities - representing 85% of the population of Hamilton-Wentworth - on board, it looked like a deal had been made.

The Gardner Church Plan would have amalgamated all former municipalities into one new municipality - likely named Hamilton-Wentworth - that would balance representation. Council would be made up of 32 councillors, with 16 coming from “old” Hamilton and 16 divided among the formerly independent communities. The plan required redrawing Hamilton’s wards or creating megawards where multiple members would be elected. The new council would be led by a single mayor and could have come into being on January 1, 1998, the same day the new City of Toronto would replace Metro Toronto.8 To soften the blow of losing a level of autonomy, the option would exist to create “community councils” of five-to-seven members in the former independent municipalities to oversee locally-specific issues like some local planning, by-laws, and recreation programs.9

Within weeks, the plan began to unravel. The November delegates agreed on “parity” between Hamilton and the former municipalities on council. But, when that was presented to Hamilton’s council, it was rejected. Suburban councils saw this as Hamilton reneging on the original deal while Hamilton’s councillors were worried about what this dilution of their power would mean. Further complicating matters was Minister Al Leach’s comments to media that the original plan might still be “tinkered” with to achieve a final municipal agreement. Anne Bain, the mayor of Stoney Creek, expressed frustration that a deal would be imposed when the original agreement was that amalgamation was only acceptable if certain conditions were met. “It's like a trick. I'm not feeling very good about this. I do feel manipulated,” she told the Spec.10

By December, none of the original signatories to the Gardner Church Plan felt like following through. In response, Leach appointed Ernie Hardeman, his Parliamentary Assistant, to “resolve” the issue and ensure a new municipality would still come into being on January 1, 1998.

By the end of January, 1997, Hardeman had run into a wall with local representatives. No one wanted to budge and both Stoney Creek and Ancaster said they would only agree to amalgamation if the Gardner Church Plan was implemented without changes. Hardeman threatened an “imposed” plan if no one was willing to play nice. Only two area Tory MPPs, Hamilton Mountain’s Trevor Pettit and Hamilton West’s Lillian Ross, said they were okay with imposing a deal on the city. Toni Skarica, the PC MPP for Wentworth North, remained skeptical.11

Further complicating factors was a citizen-led referendum on the issue of amalgamation. During the weekend of February 8 and 9, over 30,000 suburban residents participated in an informal poll, in which 94 percent voted against a “supercity”.12

When the Hardeman report was released shortly after the citizen referendum, it painted a grim picture. The new plan slashed council to 19 members and dismantled parts of the city.

Flamborough was to abolished, divided haphazardly between Waterloo, Halton, and Hamilton. Portions of Flamborough - likely Greensville - would be appended to Dundas which, itself, would be abolished and merged into Hamilton. Hamilton’s wards were to be abolished as well, with three superwards aligning to federal and provincial riding boundaries each electing three members. The new “Dundas ward” would elect two councillors, as would the “communities” of Ancaster and Glanbrook. Stoney Creek would elect three members. Community councils would be created, but they would be made up of appointed members. And, by January 1, 2007, Hamilton’s council would be required to further reduce its members, cutting at least 1 council member from Glanbrook, Ancaster, and Dundas.13 This, in turn, would have complicated the community council idea, as such an imbalance would have meant more appointed members making local decisions than elected ones.

The reaction to this plan was swift and overwhelmingly negative. Across the board, local representatives slammed Hardeman’s dramatic proposal, with suburban mayors and councillors doing all but proposing outright revolt.

One of the plan’s harshest critics came from within the PC caucus: Wentworth North MPP Toni Skarica. Despite his allegiance to the Tories, Skarica openly and frequently clashed with his party’s austerity agenda. When the Hardeman plan was announced, Skarica jumped into action, gathering 5 municipal politicians from Hamilton and 5 from the other constituent municipalities of the region (among them, the aforementioned Flamborough politician Mark Shurvin), developing an alternative proposal with an eye to getting everyone on board with municipal reform while still adhering to the principles of the Common Sense Revolution.

The plan that Skarica came up with just barely met the Common Sense Revolution threshold of a 24% reduction in the number of elected officials. Abolishing the region, the Skarica plan ended up devolving powers to each municipality in a rather ad hoc way, creating joint management of things like the Hamilton International Airport while requiring Hamilton to continue to provide things like transit service and “regional” planning on its own.

This plan would have shrunk some municipal councils, most dramatically abolishing Hamilton’s 8 wards with two alderman each and creating 12 new wards, which would each elect just 1 councillor, with one city-wide mayor elected for “old” Hamilton. Each suburban municipality would have a mayor and a council of between 4 and 7.14

There wasn’t as much opposition to the Skarica Plan, though questions still remained. Ancaster’s council quickly endorsed the Skarica Plan, even as some on their council balked at losing the region. The loss of the region meant Ancaster tax dollars would be funneled into Hamilton to provide the same services the region previously provided. One estimate calculated that Ancaster’s contribution for the HSR would jump from $21 per household to $300. That led Ancaster councillor Murry Ferguson to say “I don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling about all of Skarica's plan but it's the closest anyone has come to what this town wants,” saying that Hardeman’s amalgamation plan would have rubbed rural residents the wrong way, given that “We do not require and we don't want to pay for buses, sidewalks and sewers. We're not even real crazy about paved roads.”15

But eventually, all the suburban councils came around and, on the last day of February, 1997, Hamilton’s council voted 10 to 7 to endorse the Skarica Plan as well.16 This frustrated Minister Leach, who then said that any change would also have to be approved by the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth’s council, which turned around and approved the plan in an 18 to 8 vote.17 Less than a week later, the plan was thrown into doubt when Hamilton’s council proposed amendments that would allow the “old” city to annex territory at will. Suburban councils balked at Hamilton’s territorial hunger, and began voting down the “amended” Skarica Plan.18

The province had imposed a deadline of April 1, 1997 for a reform plan to ensure it could be implemented before that November’s municipal elections. But as the wrangling continued (people like Hamilton Mountain MPP Trevor Pettit and some regional politicians who opposed the Skarica Plan kept pressuring the government to go with a single, amalgamated municipality), the clock ran out. Then, on April 2, 1997, Mike Harris announced there would be no regional reform for at least another few years. The Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth would persist into the new millennium.19

Two weeks later, Skarica was demoted, losing his Parliamentary Secretary role. Dominic Agostino openly told the Star that Skarica would be welcomed into the Ontario Liberal caucus with open arms.20 Skarica remained a Tory and ran as the party’s candidate in the newly restructured riding of Wentworth-Burlington in 1999. Along with fellow PC MPP Brad Clark in Stoney Creek, Skarica ran on an explicitly anti-amalgamation platform, with both indicating they would do what they could to stop any proposed regional merger.21

Then, on August 23, 1999, the province handed the municipalities of Hamilton-Wentworth a demand: get your act together and give us a regional restructuring proposal in 60 days or else. Within three months, there would be some kind of change, with or without the input of municipal politicians in the region’s six communities.22

Within days, the mayors of Flamborough, Dundas, and Ancaster met to discuss next steps. Central to their plans was a proposed three-community merger and secession from the region in a move that was described by some in the local media as the “Anything But Hamilton” plan and by others, including Spec editorial cartoonist Graeme MacKay as “Flambasterdas”.23 

Others, like Flamborough mayor Ted McMeekin, preferred to call it the “City of Wentworth” plan, arguing that between 80,000 and 100,000 people was the ideal for a municipality and that amalgamation was akin to corporate monopolization. “I don't believe bigger is necessarily better or small necessarily more beautiful…Some amalgamations make sense, others don't. The people of Ancaster, Dundas and Flamborough know the difference,” he said during a speech in September, 1999.24

When the province’s “special advisor” on municipal restructuring, David O'Brien, released his report on November 26, 1999, everyone’s worst fears were realized. There would be no City of Wentworth. There would be no 33 member council with parity for Hamilton and its surrounding communities. There would be no community councils or regional decisions or minor tweaks to the existing system.

All there would be was amalgamation into one, unified City of Hamilton. The region’s 59 politicians would be cut down to just 14: 9 councillors for Hamilton, 2 split between Stoney Creek and Glanbrook, 2 split between Flamborough, Dundas, and Ancaster, and one city-wide mayor.25

Skarica was furious, telling reporters a few days later that, if the province followed through with the plan, he would resign. He had previously promised to do just that at an all-candidates meeting during the 1999 provincial election. Clark was equally frustrated, but maintained he would stay in caucus if allowed, despite his plans to vote against the “supercity” plan.26

The merger went through. On January 21, 2000, Skarica called a press conference and resigned.27

The by-election to replace him was seen as a referendum on amalgamation. The Tories cast a wide net looking for their candidate. Some high-profile names were among those who expressed interest: Burlington councillor Lynda Schreiber, CHML radio personality John Hardy, Ancaster councillor Barry Kent, and the long-time chair of the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, Pat Daly.28 But, in the end, the PCs went with Priscilla de Villiers, an activist who dedicated her life to ending violence against women after her daughter was murdered while jogging in 1991. Her personal story was compelling, but her experience in politics was lacking; her campaign initially neglected to tell the local PC riding association she had decided to seek the nomination and began signing up members without their knowledge. Despite this, the Tories were exceptionally confident in her abilities; Conservative activist and Spec columnist Ken Mitchell spoke to a PC “insider” who told him point blank: “If [de Villiers] runs…she wins.”29

The Liberals also had their eyes on the seat, but had an intense nomination battle on their hands. Both of the top municipal officials in Flamborough - Mayor Ted McMeekin and Deputy Mayor Dave Braden - wanted the nomination, as did Ancaster councillor Bryan Kerman and 1997 regional chair candidate Mike Roughley. McMeekin was the insider’s choice, with OLP central office viewing Braden as a Peter Kormos-style “maverick”. As Spec columnist Mike Davison wrote, the OLP kids in short pants “believe team-player Flamborough Mayor Ted McMeekin is their ticket to victory in the constituency. They see McMeekin in a Liberal cabinet three years from now and Braden as a permanent internal gadfly…”30 It was McMeekin who won the nomination, bringing his opposition to amalgamation to voters at a new level.

The New Democrats picked Jessica Brennan, who was, at the time, still 4 years out from becoming the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board trustee for Dundas. Interestingly, Brennan would run in that trustee election against one of her by-election opponents: local author and lawyer Mark Coakley. Then based in Dundas, Coakley was the Ontario Green Party candidate in the by-election and placed second to Brennan in the 2003 Ward 13 trustee race. Coakley had a major bump in the 2000 by-election when Skarica’s sons and the group behind the 1997 suburban anti-amalgamation referendum endorsed him.31

While the by-election drama unfolded, provincial officials were still hammering out the details regarding what the “megacity” would look like, with a specific focus on Flamborough. Throughout the first half of 2000, there were rumblings about a “divorce”, which would see Flamborough dissolved and split between Brant County, the Township of North Dumfries, and Burlington. Much of this push came from municipal politicians in Flamborough, who desperately wanted to avoid being associated with Hamilton. But, by July, the province rejected the “Flambexit” because of the associated tax increase that residents would face to pay for the conversion of services and the debt on outstanding municipal infrastructure provided by Hamilton-Wentworth.32 

After Flambexit failed and amalgamation was a sure-thing, voters sent a strong message to the Harris Tories on the day of the by-election, September 7, 2000. McMeekin earned nearly 60% of the vote, and de Villiers admitted to the media that her defeat was, at least in part, thanks to public frustration with amalgamation.33 Within two weeks, McMeekin was sworn in to the legislature and Mark Shurvin had been appointed Mayor of Flamborough, a municipality that had less than three months to live.

On November 13, 2000, Hamiltonians went to the polls to elect a new council. Instead of the 13 councillors proposed during the initial round of amalgamation talks, Hamilton got 15 instead: 8 for the “old” city and 7 for the amalgamated municipalities. About as close to parity as they’d get.

Voters returned a council with ample experience. Every suburban council seat was won by a former suburban politician. Ancaster’s last mayor, Bob Wade, became the new City of Hamilton’s first. The only seat that elected a new member was “old” Hamilton’s Ward 4, where a much-talked-about young Liberal Party insider beat a nine-year incumbent affiliated with the NDP. But the story of Sam Merulla’s rise and fall in local politics is one for another time.

Days before Christmas in the year 2000, the last municipal council meetings were held across the soon-to-be dissolved suburban municipalities of Hamilton-Wentworth. Despite them only existing for 27 years, there was a sense of deep loss in each community. At the last Flamborough council meeting, Shurvin concluded the meeting by quoting George VI’s 1939 Christmas message, as though the citizens of the township were preparing for their own war: “keep all of the people of Flamborough in your prayers and hearts as you too go out into the darkness.”34

At the stroke of midnight, January 1, 2001, we all ventured into the darkness as the new City of Hamilton came into being.

Le Bloc Deamalgamation

Almost immediately after it was born, people were trying to kill the new City of Hamilton. In 2002, Glanbrook councillor Dave Mitchell pushed for city council to ask the province to hold a referendum on amalgamation during the city’s 2003 municipal election, but earned only 4 council votes in favour - all from councillors representing the imagined City of Wentworth.35 

Ward 14 councillor Dave Braden, who sought the OLP nomination against McMeekin in 2000, threatened to run against his former mayor as an independent on a deamalgamation platform in the 2003 provincial election.36 The idea of deamalgamation was thrown about during that campaign by provincial leaders keen to scoop up some of the votes from angry suburbanites, still unset about their affiliation with Hamilton. Dalton McGuinty told The Spec that he could see himself supporting deamalgamation if there was “substantial support” from the population, while NDP leader Howard Hampton said his party would push for it if Hamilton city council passed a motion asking for a referendum.37

Local activists were emboldened. The Committee to Free Flamborough, armed with a Township of Flamborough flag and yellow caution tape, occupied the former municipality’s town hall in May of 2003.38 A neighbouring organization - Ancaster: Our Town - was more subdued, holding a meeting at the Meadowlands Sobey’s.39 The efforts of deamalgamators were put on hold for 48 hours in August as we all reveled in the dark of the Great Blackout of 2003, but were revived when the lights came back on.

Then came the ultimate test: the city’s 2003 municipal election. Most of the biggest names seeking the office of mayor wanted to give amalgamation a little more time. Larry Di Ianni, David Christopherson, Brother Michael Baldasaro, and former councillor Tom Murray all opposed deamalgamation efforts.40 In the opposite corner, Flamborough resident Dick Wildeman represented what he saw as a large and powerful pro-deamalgamation camp. (Side note: I don’t know who you pissed off at the Spec, Matt Jelly, but they did not include your views on amalgamation in their coverage.)

Wildeman, as a mayoral candidate, led a “deamalgamation slate” of candidates who promised to smash the City of Hamilton if elected. The slate ran candidates in Wards 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, and 15, with Wildeman saying that the whole slate, including himself, would be swept into office in a wave of suburban discontent. Wildeman claimed to have “99 per cent support from the 127,000 eligible voters in the former towns.”41 Wildeman and his deputy, Ward 8 candidate Roman Sarachman, said that, after deamalgamation, the group would push for a “sovereignty-association deal” with Hamilton, echoing the language used by the Bloc Québécois and Parti Québécois in la belle province.42

But it seemed like things were changing. While Wildeman and the Bloc Deamalgamation believed the municipal vote would be about the future of the megacity, voters began to turn their attention to other issues - the new provincial Liberal government, the Red Hill Valley Expressway, and the “Aerotropolis” development around the airport.

After meeting with the Spec’s editorial board, Wildeman earned a rebuke from the paper. Editor Lee Prokaska said the board viewed his plans to liberate suburban municipalities and have them buy services from Hamilton as turning back the clock “about 25 years to pre-regional times”. The summary was short, sharp, and dismissive: “We're not convinced by Wildeman's apparently nostalgia-based platform.”43 This factored into the Spec’s 2003 mayoral endorsement; the paper dismissed Wildeman and said that, as the race was really between Christopherson and Di Ianni, their support went to the latter, who was more supportive of business, privatization, the Red Hill Valley Expressway, Aerotropolis, and providing better services to the formerly independent suburban communities.44

On election night, Wildeman earned just 3.2% of the vote city-wide (while performing marginally better in the former Flamborough). The candidates of the Bloc Deamalgamation earned an average of 26.8% in the wards they contested, with only incumbent Ward 14 councillor Dave Braden winning his seat. Even then, Braden beat challenger Don Robertson by just 85 votes. Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel called Wildeman’s defeat “political humiliation” and that his loss “cast serious doubts on how substantial the whole separatist movement is.”45

The deamalgamation issue lingered after the 2003 election. In 2005, members of a group called the Glanbrook Freedom Train helped in a blockade of the Highway 401, blending rural landowner’s rights with calls for deamalgamation.46 The 2003 Bloc Deamalgamation candidate in Ward 8 and chair of the Committee to Free Flamborough, Roman Sarachman, got a news bump when he sued ever-controversial Councillor Terry Whitehead for sending an email to his colleagues saying Sarachman was a “destructive, mean-spirited, irrational liar that does not deserve the time of day.” Sarachman was awarded $15,000 by a judge in 2011.47

After winning his by-election victory in Ward 2 in 2004, Bob Bratina regularly flirted with deamalgamation activists. After speaking at a Committee to Free Flamborough meeting in late 2005, then-Councillor Bratina told the Spec, “I don't like amalgamation…I don't think it's worked and I think it needs to be looked at. I've got no formal proposal. I just want to see that the right thing is done.”48 At his mayoral campaign kickoff in 2010, be promised to “consider” deamalgamation, saying that he would “meet with the province and explore the city's options to de-amalgamate.”49 Bratina spent his term in office dangling the deamalgamation carrot in front of suburban communities, finally announcing in early January, 2014 that he intended the ask the province to review amalgamation.50 That effort died when Bratina switched tracks, deciding to not run again and, instead, to pursue federal politics.

When Fred Eisenberger won the mayor’s chair back in 2014, he declared the idea of deamalgamation dead.51 After a few modest deamalgamation announcements by Sarachman and his disastrous last place finish in Flamborough-Glanbrook as a candidate of the hard-right Trillium Party in the 2018 provincial election, the word “deamalgamation” faded from the pages of the Spec. By the 2022 election, the issue barely registered anywhere in the city.

The supercity, it would appear, is here to stay.

23 years later

Here we are, 8,494 days since this version of Hamilton was created.

While the threat of deamalgamation does not resonate as it once did, there’s still a kind of exclusionary localism that pops up during times of great controversy.

The issue of 5 and 13 Lake Avenue South in Stoney Creek has brought that exclusionary localism back into the public eye. After Mayor Horwath announced her intention to use her mayoral veto powers to override the tie vote on converting 57 parking spaces in those lots to affordable housing, three east Hamilton/Stoney Creek councillors issued a press release. As a side note, this release was also posted on Matt Francis’s Facebook page and the comments are…something else. Go check them out if you want to see former councillor and MPP Shirley Collins asking for the contact information of someone’s mother so she can “give her my opinion about the way she raised you.” Almost makes me sad I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago.

In the release, the three councillors said “we firmly believe that as Stoney Creekers, we have the ability to create our own proactive, locally developed solutions and implement homegrown plans to address the ever-growing need for affordable housing in our community.”

Create our own solutions. Locally developed solutions. Homegrown plans.

Reading between the lines, the argument made here is that the big bad “out of towners” have imposed something on the people of Stoney Creek against their will.

I mean, they’re calling for a “Made in Stoney Creek” solution to the housing crisis. Though, as Joey Coleman notes, their “Made in Stoney Creek” plan is to build housing in a part of Riverdale that was part of the “old” city of Hamilton.

But that doesn’t really matter, does it? The call for a “Made in Stoney Creek” housing plan is all political theatre. The councillors in question are responding to the rumblings from a small portion of their electorate upset about the fact that 57 parking spaces will be turned into affordable housing while also trying to save face and not seem like total NIMBYs. With this call for a “Made in Stoney Creek” plan, they’re saying that they’re not necessarily opposed to housing, just the specific project being forced on their community by those nasty, out-of-town radicals who don’t care about the wishes of the good people of Stoney Creek. They’ve presented their far-fetched alternative to say they’ve done something, all the while knowing that proposal - to build housing on the site of the Dominic Agostino Riverdale Community Centre - will be almost impossible to accomplish on the same timeframe that the Lake Avenue South project can be completed. That allows them to hold their heads up high while canvassing in 2026, able to tell those opposed they fought for them and tell those who want more housing options that they technically presented an alternative.

We can’t look at this call and the backlash to the housing plan without considering the angry, exclusionary localism that has replaced the more substantive, if not equally unconstructive, deamalgamation movement.

In last Saturday’s Spec, a letter writer provided their view of the impending mayoral veto on the issue. There are to lines I want to isolate from that letter. The first is this incredible line: “The parking lot in question in Stoney Creek is important to residents.”52

Imagine a parking lot being important to anyone. It is a slab of pavement reserved for the temporary storage of a private consumer good. It is designed to be a liminal space. It is a basic and uninspired piece of municipal infrastructure. It is the absence of anything useful, a monument to consumerism and environmental destruction, a testament to how uncreative we can be as a species.

Sure, there’s been some chatter about how absolutely essential the parking lot is for the overwhelmingly large number of seniors who access the health care facilities around the site. I will admit, there do seem to be some clinics and medical offices around 5 and 13 Lake Avenue South. But most of them have their own parking. The LifeLabs clinic across the street has its own parking. The Shoppers Drug Mart across the street has its own parking. Hell, even the two health care-related locations that abut the soon-to-be-removed 57 parking spaces - a denture clinic and an alternative health care office that provides things like iridology and reiki treatments - will still have access to the dozens of other parking spaces in what will remain of the lot and the paid street parking directly out front of these businesses. AND there’s a bus stop on that block!

Okay, that was just me being angry at the notion that a parking lot could be “important” to anyone. Needed to get that off my chest. The main thing here is what came after that line.

The important line from the letter reads more like a threat: “I wonder if the mayor will be surprised next election when she only gets votes from the new Stoney Creek residents.”53

It is hard to quantify “new”. I don’t know if that means new Canadians, new occupants of new units, or simply people who have moved to Stoney Creek from “away”. Taking a look at aggregated census data, only 66.8% of Stoney Creek residents have lived in the community longer than 5 years. When compared with census data from “old” Hamilton, 62.4% of us have been here longer than 5 years.

But let’s break it down by poll. I took the 2021 census data for Stoney Creek and aggregated it to our municipal polls. There’s an interesting mix of tenures in the area, with some of the more established parts of Stoney Creek’s Ward 10 featuring polls where nearly 80% of the population has resided in the area for over 5 years. Compare this with the new developments in Upper Stoney Creek where under 40% of residents have lived in the area for more than 5 years.

When we compare this with the mayoral vote, we get an interesting picture. Mayor Horwath’s vote was lower in the parts of Wards 5, 9, and 10 where more residents had lived for more than 5 years.

But that doesn’t really matter, does it? The idea is that the mayor will only earn support from the “new” people she imported into their community without their approval.

And there’s the rub.

Opponents of amalgamation worried about how a merger with Hamilton would erase the unique culture that their communities had forged over the years. The Bloc Deamalgamation folks hated the idea of being all mixed up with a place like Hamilton. The exclusionary localists to whom the three “Made in Stoney Creek” councillors are appealing worry about “those people” coming into their communities and changing things.

The Spec’s letters to the editor reflect this sentiment.

A letter from today reads “Have these out-of-town armchair critics actually seen the area?” An April 2 letter said “these pro-housing contributors live in communities far away from Stoney Creek.”

You’re not from here so your opinion doesn’t matter. This kind of thinking becomes dangerous quickly. “You’re not from here” takes on new meanings when you start to assume something about someone based on how they look or how they dress or how they think. We all know where this is going.

These writers, and many others, have submitted letters that say something akin to: “oh yeah, well how about we get rid of parking near you?”

My instinctive reaction is to say “oh, hell, yes, rip it all up babyyy.”

But they’re not saying this in the context of wanting housing everywhere. They’re assuming this would be an act of retribution. “You’ve harmed Stoney Creek by taking away 57 of our parking spaces, so now we’re going to come for an as-yet-undetermined number of your precious parking spaces, you gross Hamiltonian!”

That’s why this is “exclusionary localism”. They’ve demonized the foreign “other”, they’ve called for retribution against enemies of their community, they’ve dismissed that which they see as invasive. Were this logic applied to the scale of an entire country, it would be some of the most extreme right-wing nationalism. It would be seen as dangerous.

Here’s the thing: we don’t have much of a future as a community when people in different parts of the city still believe that out-of-towners are coming for their homes and their jobs and their culture.

I have long called for community councils to give residents across the city a greater say in how their neighbourhoods. Adding councillors could help to address this issue as well. But I do not know what to do about the culture of exclusionary localism that keeps popping up every time we run into an issue.

Each of Hamilton’s communities, all of our neighbourhoods, every one of the people who have lived here and contributed here and cared about here have made this place what it is. But just because one has a long history in this city does not mean they get to be a gatekeeper. Just because someone’s lived in the same house on the same block in the same community for 20 years does not mean they get to veto new neighbours. Because new neighbours aren’t going to make any place less that place. Stoney Creek will always be Stoney Creek, no matter now many new affordable apartments are built.

A “Made in Stoney Creek” housing plan is a “Made in Hamilton” housing plan. We are one city with one government working toward one goal of making this little corner of the world the best damn place to live, to thrive, to contribute, to be whomever you want to be. It doesn’t matter if we have a council of 16 under one government or a region with 59 representatives; we have to work together instead of picking at the threads of the past in the hope that we can somehow unravel the present and, below, will be some imagined, utopic, impossible past.

Whether we like it or not, this is one city. Let’s stop throwing all our energy into pointing fingers and dividing residents based on the city blocks they live on. Let’s get to work to do what’s right by all of us and what’s right by the future. We live in the shadow of amalgamation, but we can’t let the petty little arguments we had 23 or 50 years ago define who we are now. We have to move forward and we have to work together.

We’re all in this together.

Cool facts for cool people

• In light of the fact that it took me a week to write this and I’ve included 50-odd of the 200+ articles I read for background, there will be no cool facts this week. Have fun!