Rule, Britannia!

On Saturday, a new King of England will be crowned. This has practically nothing to do with the local or provincial politics of Hamilton or Ontario (aside from the astronomical number of things here named in their honour). I’m only mentioning it to say that, if we want to carry on with this grand federal Canadian project, then we should be a free and independent republic with a head of state chosen by, for, and from among Canadians (I’m partial to a system similar to how the Germans do it).

Any form of government that isn’t radically democratic and centres the people is a form of government I’m not that keen on promoting. And I’m not alone. As the Twitter account for Polling Canada (one of the last remaining reasons I’m on that garbage site) shows, the majority of Canadians aren’t too keen on the monarchy either.

And always remember:

Okay, that was just some personal politics to get out of the way. Now on to our regularly-scheduled newsletter!

Do you even bollard, bro?

Let the bollarding begin!

Hamilton’s current city hall was opened on November 21th, 1960. Okay, it officially opened on Halloween Day, 1960, but the formal opening took a couple of weeks because they needed to truck in the Governor General to cut the ribbon. Two people died during construction, which took 28 months, and whole swaths of the core had to be demolished to make way for the great modernist palace of bureaucracy that now stands at 71 Main Street West.1 In yet another example of the Erl Family being pursued by this city's obsession with urban renewal, the very first home my grandparents lived in after moving to Hamilton from Bavaria in the 1950's was a German-run boarding house at the corner of Main and Bay, which was later demolished to make way for city hall.

Said structure is the fourth real city hall we’ve had. The first town council meetings were held in Thomas Wilson's Inn and Tavern at the corner of John and Jackson, before moving into a combined Town Hall/Fire Station in 1836. That didn’t last long, with the town council moving into a new market building at the corner of James and York by 1839. It was from that second town hall that Hamilton quickly became a city in 1846.

That Market Hall was the scene of some of Hamilton’s earliest political fights. Mayor Charles Magill, a Liberal, invited Sir John A. MacDonald, a Tory (and still in his pre-knighthood days), to Hamilton to celebrate the end of the Siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War (yeah, I know I’m getting deep into the history of the British Empire, sorry, but an undergrad degree in history has to, like a muscle, be worked in order for people to know you have it). Alderman Teddy “The Bear” Brannigan (a nickname I just made up) wasn’t a fan of ol’ Johnny A, so he led a protest that saw opponents of the Tories storm council and take over the chamber. Mayor Magill ordered the Chief of Police to arrest Brannigan, but the Chief wasn’t feeling it that day and simply refused. Magill then went all colonial on Brannigan, arresting the rogue council member by himself. He then literally read the Riot Act, which led the crowd to disperse.2

Side note on that: could you imagine how wild it would be for the mayor today to just up and arrest a member of council? A council meeting gets raucous and Mayor Horwath whips out handcuffs and does her thing. And you definitely know Cameron is the one getting arrested. Knowing Cameron, I’m sure he’d take that as a compliment.

By the mid 1880’s, civic leaders knew it was time for a new city hall. City council packed up, moved to the old post office on James Street, and waited for a new city hall to be built at the old location. By 1890, it was ready. That was technically the third purpose-built location for Hamilton’s local government to hang out.

It was a beautiful building, if not one that was poorly constructed. So poorly constructed, in fact, that it earned the nickname “The Old Stone Pile”. In 1891, according to the Spec, a piece of the ceiling fell onto the mayor’s chair. While Mayor David McLellan wasn’t in it at the time, the paper noted:

The Spec lobbied hard against the third city hall. Through the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, the paper lamented the poor state of the old building. In 1947, city hall’s resident cat, Smokey, fell from one of the pinnacles. While Smokey was unharmed, the paper used this as proof that something needed to be done.4 Also please bring back pro-cat reporting.

The infamous Faludi Plan of 1947 took aim at the third city hall as well, with the planner noting:

Faludi’s plans involved relocating city hall back to where local leaders first set up shop: Main and John. Except without the tavern this time.

Faludi had eyes for city hall’s current location as well, planning an art gallery and public auditorium around an open central plaza.

By 1950, the third city hall’s days were numbered. Falling ceilings, tumbling cats, the whirlwind of urban renewal…the Old Stone Pile could withstand all that. But it couldn’t stand up to a one-term-school-board-trustee-turned-mayor named Lloyd D. Jackson. Mayor Jackson wanted a shining new city with free flowing traffic and sparkling new concrete buildings, complete with a city hall only a technocrat could love.

Plenty of different ideas were pitched. Alderman Jack MacDonald dreamed up a UN-style building. Alderman Mac Cline wanted to bring the new city hall home to the west end and proposed building a “miracle mile” on the city dump along Chedoke Creek complete with shops, amenities, and public services. Mayor Jackson even pitched the idea of dropping city hall down at John and Rebecca.6 But, eventually, they all settled on the densely packed blocks between MacNab and Bay.

Fire insurance maps from 1911 give you a good idea as to the layout of the area. The new city hall was built in the area highlighted in blue. Over the years, those blocks were home to a coal and lumber yard, a Knights of Columbus Hall, a synagogue, a Christian Science church, an undertaker, and an early location of the G.S. Dunn Mustard Co., which is now at Vine and Park.

Importantly, in creating their own tabula rasa in the core, they could create a new building that was set back in a plaza, allowing for a more controlled and easily monitored gathering space around municipal functions.

Contrast the new location with the old city hall. The second and third city halls were purposely surrounded by public spaces and small businesses. The “Market Square” was an inherently public place. People shopped there. They met people in the 10+ hotels or the countless restaurants, Turkish baths, theatres, and apartments that lined the square. It was a centre of civic life, a bustling hub of activity, a place you wanted to be, even if you didn’t need to go to city hall. Importantly, it was designed before cars, meaning that private automobiles needed to fit into the human-scaled landscape. In some cases, like in the small alleys between MacNab and James, shops lined streets that were off-limits to cars. This was a civic centre by, for, and of the people of Hamilton.

The new city hall was designed with the car in mind. Set back so as to allow for road widening, it stood as a monument to the world Jackson and Faludi desired. As Rockwell notes:

The public space around city hall is, almost by design, under-used. Urban renewal provided an opportunity to create a controlled, surveillable, securitized space. Scholars like Becker and Müller, in examining other urban renewal schemes around the world, have tied grand urban projects similar Hamilton's new city hall within the context of "rescuing" urban centres from undesirable elements and ensuring the will of the market and of police forces reigns supreme.8 

Sure, we can look at the present city hall in the context of grand plans that were scaled back due to taxpayer skittishness, or the misguided aspirations of out-of-touch scientific-rational planners obsessed with cars, renewal, and personless renderings of concrete landscapes. And even if the notion was to create a clean, legible urban space for the people, the follow-through was poorly executed.

Ultimately, the space lends itself to control. The actions of civic officials, even in the recent past, have shown how this space is so easily micromanaged and controlled, even to the point of preventing free and peaceful political expression from happening on city hall grounds.

Of course, this doesn’t extend to everyone who wants to use the city hall forecourt (now named The Robert Morrow Forecourt because nothing says “we want to repair our relationship with queer Hamiltonians” by naming the plaza in front of city hall after a wildly homophobic mayor). Throughout 2019, far-right extremists, white supremacists, and conspiracy theorists all united under the “Yellow Vest” banner in a bastardization of French protests against a proposed fuel tax (and including many folks who would go on to organize the Convoy), and occupied the forecourt for months. The city manager hummed and hawed over doing anything about them. This inaction emboldened the far-right protesters, who then united with Christian nationalists and other fascist-leaning groups to attack Hamilton Pride that year.

A counterprotest in August of 2019 led to a bus, emblazoned with anti-immigrant slogans, driving up onto the forecourt in an attempt to intimidate Hamiltonians calling for justice and action. The anti-immigrant agitator was asked politely to leave while Hamilton Police violently arrested an anarchist-affiliated protester.9 Since then, there have been regular anti-vaccine, anti-immigrant, pro-Convoy rallies at city hall, including, for a time, a weekly Sunday gathering for supporters of the far-right People's Party of Canada (I was first alerted to this by someone hurriedly walking down my street, asking all "working people" to come out of their homes and head to city hall so we can make up plans to "hang" the prime minister and "take back our country"...definitely makes a queer nerd feel safe in their own home).

In response to the waves of hate that keep crashing over us, the decision was made to erect bollards in front of city hall. The bollards will cost $700,000 and be finished in July.

In one sense, it makes sense to try and keep people safe from fringe extremists who want to use vehicles to attack people they disagree with. In another (and I can’t believe I’m saying this), Councillor Tom Jackson makes a good point when he said it would turn city hall into “a fortress.”10

Moving city hall to the current location was, in part, to ensure a more legible, clear, controlled space in which civic affairs could occur. But the dithering of some at city hall has allowed the space to be overrun by extremists. In response, bollards are going up and surveillance has increased. But that does little to reduce the tensions in our community that can lead to physical violence.

Will turning back the clock and stopping the destruction of our old city hall also stop hate? No. It would bring some humanity to the core, but it wouldn’t stop the cascade of social and economic problems that have led us to here.

In many ways, the spirit of urban renewal and scientific-rational planning imposed on people from the 50’s to the 80’s is all part of the political and social philosophy that saw the state and community retreat in favour of the individual and corporation. Get in cars, drive from suburb to work to a sterile concrete civic centre and back to home again, avoid people, focus only on your family unit and your work, make money, buy houses, shop at malls, live the dream we tell you to live.

Hamilton’s present city hall is a monument to that spirit of individualism. To capitalism. To a future poorly planned and mostly unrealized. And now it will be surrounded by thick posts, blocking access, acknowledging that the world around it now - the world its creators thought would be free and open and hopeful - is more frightening, more harsh, more desolate than anyone could have ever imagined.

Boat!

In cool boat news: The SS Keewatin, a ship built in 1907, is presently resting at dock in Hamilton Harbour undergoing some repairs before it heads off to Kingston to be part of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes in 2024. Apparently you can catch a glimpse of it at the end of Hillyard Street for the next while.

Something super cool about the Keewatin is that it was built for Canadian Pacific to be part of the cross-Canada train route. It was built in Scotland, sailed across the Atlantic to Lévis (across the St. Lawrence from Quebec City) and then taken apart, so that it could be reassembled in Buffalo, since the pre-modern Welland Canal system couldn’t handle a boat of that size. Cool, eh?

All this got me thinking about ferries on our waterways. Sure, I’m partial to ferries (insert gay laughter here), but Hamilton has a long history of ships bringing people from port-to-port in the area. The Macassa and the Turbinia were two popular ships (joined by the less popular Modjeska) that ran the Hamilton-to-Toronto route, with occasional stops in Burlington, Oakville, Mississauga, and Port Hope. For around 30 years, the ships provided regular service between Hamilton and Toronto before their eventual owner, Canada Steamship Lines (of which future Prime Minister Paul Martin would become President and CEO of some forty years later) ended service in 1927. The Macassa was sold, renamed the Manasoo, and began transporting people and cargo between Owen Sound and Sault Ste. Marie. Just a year later, on September 14th, 1928, the Manasoo, with a crew of 20, took on a cargo of 116 cattle and 2 passengers. The cows became agitated and restless in the night and all moved to one side of the ship, causing it to list and take on water. In the icy waters of Georgian Bay, just off Griffiths Island, the Manasoo sunk, with 17 people and all the cows perishing, and sending part of Hamilton’s marine history to the bottom of the bay.11

There have been attempts since to bring passenger ships back to Hamilton. The most promising was the Macassa Bay, self-built by Ernie Kablau down at the same Hillyard Street docks where the Keewatin is now. It didn’t really have a direction, though, and eventually ended up as a river cruise boat in Sarnia.12

Just for fun, I plotted out what a route from, say, Pier 8 (roughly where Hamilton once had a commuter ferry port) to Toronto’s international ferry docks near Cherry Street. Overall, that’s approximately 63.6 km.

The Keewatin reached speeds of 30 km/h, meaning the trip from Hamilton would probably take around 2.5 to 3 hours. The MS Chi-Cheemaun, the ferry between Tobermory and Manitoulin, has the same speed and would likely take the same time. BC Ferries operates 36 vessels, the largest of which is the MV Spirit of British Columbia, running the Delta to Saanich route. It gets up to 36 km/h, meaning that trip could be cut down to about 2 hours, 15 min.

Back in 2004, a private company launched the Spirit of Ontario I, a catamaran ferry between Rochester and Toronto that only ran for about two years before the company operating it went belly up. That poor ol’ boat is sitting idle in the port of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela after bouncing around the world for a few years. But, when it ran the Lake Ontario route, it zipped along at 83 km/h. At those speeds, you could get from Hamilton to Toronto in about an hour.

Point is: boats are cool.

No. Wait. I think the point here is that maybe offering some water-based alternatives for transportation around the GTHA is something we should consider. As with other fields, innovations in ship building and operation are steadily reducing the carbon footprint of lake-going vessels. Could be an interesting alternative to consider in the future, especially since ferries and other lake-going ships were an important part of Hamilton’s early history.

Until then, check out the Keewatin while you can!

Trafficking in boring ideas

The development around the intersection of King Street East and the Centennial Parkway in Stoney Creek is, to use a planning term, isn’t exactly realizing the “highest and best use” for the space at the present moment. Sure, the southeast corner features Battlefield Park, a vast open space on which, in 1813, a fairly consequential battle occurred between British and American forces during the War of 1812. That’s the battle where Billy Green became “Canada’s Paul Revere” by allegedly learning American secrets from his brother-in-law, then riding across today’s Hamilton to Burlington Heights, informing the British as to where the Americans were, and helping them with their underdog attack, where 700 British soldiers and allies defeated an American force of 3,500.

I told you that history degree needs to be flexed every once and a while. And twice in the same newsletter! Okay, three times if you include the bit about the sinking of the Manasoo in the “Boat!” segment. Story crossover!

Anyway, across Centennial is a lot that, while once a gas station, has been vacant for about a quarter of a century. It was bought by the city in 2013 with the intention that it would one day be home to a War of 1812 Interpretive Centre. That plan didn’t really go anywhere so, in 2018, the city sold it off.13

By May of that year, an initial application for a “Formal Consultation Meeting” was submitted to the city by the new owner, the inspiringly named “2626364 Ontario Inc.”14 A whole term of council passed by while the process crept along with a noticeable lack of speed. By November, 2023, the owner had enough, skipping over public consultation and heading straight to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) on the grounds that the city didn't act "within the 120 days required by the Planning Act."15

The site is back in the news now after the OLT hearing about the issue got “testy” (gross word) in late April. Apparently the city is doing the whole “cone of silence” thing on the project and isn’t engaging with the applicant in good faith.16

When asked about this development back in January, newly elected Ward 5 Councillor Matt Francis called it “crazy”, saying that it would have negative visual impacts on the “sensitivities” of Battlefield Park and the Escarpment, that it was too intensive for “an already incredibly busy intersection,” and that traffic would be an issue:

So let’s look at the intersection and the plan for a sec.

The lot for the proposed development is at the intersection of two 4-lane roads that widen as they intersect. Three bus routes serve the intersection, there’s extremely modest cycling infrastructure along King, and the site is an 8 minute drive/15 minute bus ride/40ish minute walk from the new Confederation GO Station or a 5 minutes drive/bus ride/15 minute walk to the future LRT terminus at Eastgate.

Urban Solutions tells us the proposal is for this:

A “North Tower” of 20 storeys and a “South Tower” of 18 storeys connected by a 6 storey podium that includes retail space and an upper deck amenity space. The whole development has a parking ratio of 0.75 spaces per unit.18

Honestly, not too shabby. I make a habit of not being an uncritical shill for developers, but this seems like a pretty okay development.

So why does Ward 5 Councillor Matt Francis call it “crazy”?

The line about wanting to avoid visual impacts on the “sensitivities” of Battlefield Park and the Escarpment is…rich.

The City of Stoney Creek had no problem approving an entire sprawling community of single-detached homes bordering this “sensitive” spot, nor was there any issue allowing residents to drop in-ground swimming pools along the edge of Battlefield Park. Creating a buffer zone of low-density development around a site because it was the site of a 45 minute battle held 211 years ago is nonsense. There’s already a park. The “battlefield” is being preserved. They haven’t planned the condo on top of Billy Green’s grave.

As for the Escarpment, there wasn’t any issue ripping a four-lane highway up the side of this “sensitive” natural feature, atop which we’re building more car-dependent suburban-style houses.

And then there’s the old line: but what about the cars?

So there’s a solution to that as well. See, looking at the city’s own zoning map, the density and use along Centennial Parkway is abysmal. Most of the lots abutting the roadway are zoned for single detached homes and for car-centric small commercial establishments. In fact, the only time you get higher density is past Eastgate in Riverdale, and those are all towers-in-the-park pushed off the major roadways.

Simply put: Centennial Parkway is wildly inefficient, serving as nothing more than a “car sewer” to quickly transport private vehicles from commercial establishments to home and back again.19 Increasing the density all around the site - ensuring there is space for commercial establishments, especially grocery stores, pharmacies, cafes, bars, and small restaurants - will help get people out of their cars, reducing overall traffic problems. Plus, the proposed HSR map has two more bus routes running by the location, including a snazzy new express bus that will connect people to Heritage Greene, Elfrida, Eastgate (meaning the LRT), and Confederation GO. Throw in real cycling infrastructure (separated lanes and real safety installations pleaseee), and the traffic issue diminishes.

“We can’t support new development because it’ll mean more traffic” is a line that just screams unoriginality. Like, think outside the box for more than one second, folks. Just think about it: do you need to drive the 15 minutes down the road to the Fortinos at Eastgate? Could you maybe take a bus or walk? Sure, the environment isn’t super friendly for walking, but more people walking along Centennial means when Councillor Francis knocks on doors in 2026, he’ll be hearing calls to improve pedestrian infrastructure instead of just hearing from “constituents [who] were “loud and clear” in opposing the plan [for 2900 King East].”20 But there are other ways to get around in the area without a car. Hop on the LRT or the GO to get to work, cycle to downtown Stoney Creek, start a walking school bus and help guide neighbourhood children to school using active transportation. The options here are almost endless.

We can only start building better, healthier, stronger, more connected, and more meaningful communities when we accept that not everyone needs to drive everywhere all the time. That other methods of transportation should take priority. That we deserve walkable, vibrant, engaging communities. If we started building our cities in such a way where walking, cycling, and taking transit were actually preferable to driving, then we could start chipping away at the North American overreliance on a method of transportation that is both meant as a convenience and a luxury.

Sure, the plan for 2900 King East puts the cart before the horse (the car before the…engine? I don’t know, I’m spitballing here), but Councillor Francis’s opposition to the project on these tired, old grounds is just one more indication that there are still some community leaders who are satisfied with the status quo and remain entirely uninterested in thinking creatively about how we can build better communities.

Here’s hoping that former gas station is the spark for better development in east Hamilton and Stoney Creek.

Hell hath no Furey like a Sun columnist spurned, baby

Up the road in Toronto, the mayoral by-election to end all mayoral by-elections keeps rolling on. Over the past few days, candidates have taken aim at Metrolinx and the new Eglinton Crosstown (Line 5) LRT project.21

Far-right candidate Anthony Furey, a former Toronto Sun columnist who is running on a Rob Ford-style platform (law-and-order, jobs jobs jobs, respect that taxpayer, drive everywhere, having more than enough to eat at home, etc.), announced he would sue Metrolinx for $1,000,000,000 over delays to the Eglinton Crosstown project. That’s about 20% of the entire project’s budget.

To give Furey a modicum of credit, it has taken forever. The project was first devised 16 years ago as part of David Miller’s “Transit City” idea. One of six proposed LRT lines, the Eglinton Crosstown was supposed to connect Pearson with Kennedy Station on the Bloor-Danforth Line.

The current plan has it shortened to Mount Dennis station (where users can connect to the Union-Pearson Express because nothing says “we have an efficient transit system” like making users have to ensure a billion transfers onto different lines) and the LRT will be about half underground and half on-street. Construction began in 2011 and has been plodding along ever since, despite an initial estimate that Line 5 would be ready to go in September, 2021.

The recent uproar about the project comes after a Toronto Star investigation into the secrecy coming from Crosslinx Transit Solutions (CTS), the multi-firm consortium that was awarded the contract to build Line 5. Metrolinx couldn’t answer reporter Lex Harvey’s questions because CTS hasn’t told them when they’d be done. And CTS isn’t talking to anyone.

Turns out, as with most things that are broken in this province, we need look no further for a culprit than to Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party. The Fords, through Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney (dynasties for days, darling!), have instructed all parties to keep quiet. Ford is even micromanaging the project to the point where he wants to see the fluffy informational video updates about the project before they are released to the public.22

Harvey’s article includes these great lines:

So it would seem that Metrolinx, a body created to help build transit projects across the GTHA, has been curtailed under Ford and can’t even get answers from the consortium they hired to build one of their flagship projects.

Furey, like any extreme right-wing populist, is opportunistically targeting a government agency that a slightly different flavoured right-wing populist government (I want to say grape? Maybe just general “purple drink” flavour?) has undermined.

Give it to the hard right: this is a great way to undermine confidence in a system that is already faltering.

And that should be the real issue. It should not, under any circumstances, cost billions and billions of dollars to build new transit projects.

When regional staff in Waterloo announced it would cost almost $4.5 billion to build another 17.5 kilometres of LRT from Waterloo to Cambridge, their local councillors rightly flipped. As Cambridge’s former mayor said: “No government is going to give $4.463 billion to Cambridge to run an LRT.”24

As U of T prof Matti Siemiatycki told Matthew Van Dongen of The Spec, cost increases are “pretty much inevitable,” at this point:

We must find ways to build new transit projects for less than it would cost to build a new stretch of highway. We have to have transit projects proposed, built, and operational faster. We can’t keep throwing billions at public-private partnerships and shady consortiums and assume that the public will be on board with the next proposed transit project.

If fast, efficient, and affordable public transit is a key component of our efforts to stop the climate crisis, build strong communities, and reduce our dependence on alienating, inefficient private automobiles, we have to make transit a viable alternative. Not just using what’s already here, but building new transit.

The problem is, even transit-forward centres are seeing costs jump.

When Nice, France built a new tramway network in 2007, it constructed 27.5 kilometres of track with 53 stations and hundreds of tramcars for the equivalent in today’s currency of around $825 million Canadian. A 2019 expansion of just over 11 kilometres ran them the equivalent of $1.1 billion Canadian.

With persistent cost increases and delays, “higher order transit” projects may be under threat. We’re going to have to come up with new and innovative ways to bring costs down and speed up construction. Maybe this means creating ways to provide more of the components for transit project locally. Maybe it means holding contractors to higher standards. Maybe it means working with universities and research groups to figure out ways to bring costs down through efficiencies in engineering, planning, design, maintenance, and operations.

But one thing’s for sure: retribution won’t fix our transit problems. Suing Metrolinx for $1 billion isn’t going to solve anything. Not that I’d expect a Sun columnist to know any better.

Cool facts for cool beople

• Don’t door people. Like, use the Dutch Reach, people. Think of others on the road, PEOPLE. Cyclist Michael Gilroy recently shared a video of he and his partner being “doored” by a careless motorist on Locke Street a few weeks back. I ride Locke frequently, so this doesn’t surprise me. Still, the incident, which left Gilroy with a broken wrist and two ribs and his partner with a broken wrist as well, isn’t okay. Nor is it okay that the driver didn’t provide any insurance information and that they had to go to David Shellnutt, the Biking Lawyer, to get help. Locke is in desperate need of some cycling improvements and motorists in Hamilton need to be more careful around cyclists. #ShareTheRoad.

• This one is a little upsetting: The Sex Worker’s Action Program (SWAP) is reporting that, after an event on April 30th, former Ward 3 council candidate Walter Furlan assaulted a SWAP volunteer. They’ve posted photos to the SWAP Twitter account, which I will link to here, but fair warning: they are slightly graphic. As I am not a journalist and do not have the capacity to independently verify, I am waiting to hear from other news sources about this and am eager to see if the HPS does anything about this allegation. The incident is a disturbing escalation of already troubling behaviour from some folks in the area who have forgotten the humanity of their neighbours. If you’re looking to support SWAP at this time, resources can be found here.

• The Hamilton Public Library’s 29th Power of the Pen competition has opened. For any readers age 12 to 18, get off my lawn! No, wait, sorry, ever since I turned 30, that’s just my automatic response. What I meant was: this is a great opportunity to practice your creative writing and poetry! Not many folks know this, but I submitted to that contest a few times and never won because my teenage writing was very unpolished and angsty. Definitely different now. But this is a really amazing opportunity for Hamilton’s young writers to get some recognition and feedback on their writing. So for those eligible or those who know a talented young Hamiltonian, let them know they have until September 29th to submit! More info on the HPL website.

• Bobby Hristova over at CBC Hamilton has been killing it with the Freedom of Information requests, recently. Too much of what happens with important institutions in this city is kept secret unnecessarily. Maybe because these bodies are worried about lawsuits, maybe because they’re trying to protect their image, or maybe just because of a culture of distrust toward the public, big and powerful institutions don’t share nearly as much info as they could and should. On Monday, CBC Hamilton published a story about a serial bike thief on McMaster’s campus. For over three years, the same person - with whom McMaster security has interacted before - has been suspected of stealing bikes from campus with brazen audacity. There were nearly 70 bikes stolen from Mac’s campus last year and, while both Mac security and the HPS aren’t talking about the suspect, they know who the person is. The data focus in the article is really cool, so check it out here.

• Milton will be hosting their very first Pride parade and celebration on August 20th of this year! The group working to put on the festivities there seems very enthusiastic and that’s so heartening to see. In a time when hate crimes against us folks in the queer community are on the rise and an especially viscous spate of hate and laws are being directed toward our trans comrades, Pride events are needed more than ever.

Thanks for reading through this week! I’m off to a conference this weekend, so I’m not sure how long next week’s edition will be. In the mean time, stay awesome, all you cool cats and kittens!