Next round’s on Doug

Part 1: Rumrunners

A Hamilton Beach Iced Tea

Sometime after midnight on a cool, cloudless weekday night in October of 1924, a familiar scene played out on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The usual summertime crowd had long since left Hamilton Beach. The quiet sandbar that splits Hamilton Harbour from Lake Ontario was, at the time, a vacation hotspot, with cabins and amenities and refreshing lake breezes that offered a respite from the stifling heat and smog of the city in summertime. But, by mid-October, only the stalwart year-round residents of the sandbar remained.

As the Waxing Gibbous moon threw shards of light onto the subtle waves of the lake that night, some of those year-rounders were awoken by the sputtering sound of two motorized trucks. The noise would have been out-of-place enough (the first Model T had only rolled off the assembly line 16 years prior) to draw their attention, but familiar enough for those who heard to know what was about to happen.

The vehicles slowly made their way down Beach Boulevard before stopping in front of Beach Bungalow School, the small community institution that, in order to meet growing demand, had just expanded to three rooms. Those residents now awake gingerly pulled back curtains to look out as the familiar scene unfolded.

They all knew the basics. A large freighter, anchored about two kilometers off shore, would send a few small motorboats carrying crew and cargo toward the shore. When they got close to the beach, the men on the boats would cut their engines and signal their compatriots on shore. The men from the boats would meet men from the trucks, with the former tossing “bulky packages” to the latter. Working quickly in the cool autumn air, the men would finish the transfer in a matter of minutes, before going their separate ways. The trucks would sputter to life and rumble down the street toward the city while the motorboats would quietly push back from shore, before roaring to life and speeding back to the freighter.

The exchange was a strange affair. It was done with some speed, due to the nature of the cargo, but was also conducted with ease, as few of the people involved seemed worried that they would be busted. For all the talk of Prohibition, it seemed like no one - not the bootleggers, not the Beach Strip residents, not even the province - was taking it very seriously. Indeed, for the rumrunners on Hamilton Beach, it was just another way to make money.

The local residents didn’t seem to mind, either. In fact, they seemed to quite enjoy the drama of it all. “During the past summer, similar occurrences of this nature have not been uncommon. The affair furnished week-end gossip,” wrote one “Beach Resident” to the Hamilton Spectator.1 

But that “Beach Resident” wasn’t just recounting some lakeside gossip. They had written into the Spec as part of a running debate in the lead-up to the October 23, 1924 referendum on the status of the eight-year-old Ontario Temperance Act (OTA).

Whiskey Sour Grapes

By 1924, many Ontarians had grown weary of the moralizing anti-alcohol laws that were put in place by social reformers who sought to curb vice by dealing with a symptom of social problems, rather than the problems themselves. An unnatural coalition of labour activists, middle-class social reformers, and Protestant conservatives that had advanced Prohibition, and remained its last true defenders, though fault lines were forming in the united front against alcohol.

Within the Conservative Party of Ontario, a battle between “wet” and “dry” (eww) factions had been raging for years, with the former believing Prohibition would unnecessarily impact business interests and the latter advancing the interest of those aforementioned Protestant conservatives who saw liquor as a dangerous vice.

After the zealous Methodist from Sault Ste. Marie, William Hearst, became Premier of Ontario in 1914, the Prohibition movement finally had a friend in government. Under the auspices of protecting Ontario from drunkenness and sloth during World War I, Heart introduced the first version of the OTA, which was a half-step in the direction of Prohibition. There would no longer be bars, drinks sold in restaurants, or the free sale of alcohol, but people could still get prescriptions for alcohol from doctors and keep it at home for personal use - something around 650,000 Ontarians did by 1920.

“Hey, doc, I have a bad case of the ‘boring card game’-itis. Hows about yous write us up a note for some hooch, eh?”

The man who introduced Prohibition to Ontario was also one of its biggest liabilities. Hearst was, by all accounts, a terrible politician. Hearst was never elected by the people of the province, assuming the leadership of the Conservatives after the Tory caucus picked him (there were no leadership elections in those days) following the untimely death of their original leader, James Whitney, just three months after the 1914 election. The Premier Ontarians got in Hearst represented the worst combination of all possible character traits: a meek, pretentious, classist, anti-democratic micromanager with an uncomfortable religious streak. He had little charisma, cared more for the British Empire than democracy at home, and thought rural Ontarians complained too much. All these characteristics, combined with near-zero political acumen, meant that, when an election was finally called for 1919, his Conservatives fell to third place and his constituents in the Sault sent him packing, replacing him with a candidate from the Labour Party.2

Labour joined forces with the party that won the election - the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) - and went full-in on Prohibition, holding a referendum in 1921 polling the residents of the province if a full ban on importing liquor should be implemented. It passed with nearly 60% support and Ontario became a “bone dry” province.

During the UFO’s mandate, the Conservatives were desperately trying to settle their “wet” and “dry” (again, eww) war. That battle spilled over into Hamilton’s municipal politics during the 1917 municipal election. The eccentric school trustee, Charles Goodenough Booker (actual name), stood as an anti-Prohibition Conservative, much to the anger of the “dry” Conservative-aligned Spectator and the Liberal-affiliated Herald. Despite the relentless attacks from his opponents, Booker won and served until 1920, giving local “wet” Tories (still gross) a boost.

It was in 1920 that the Ontario Conservatives held their first open leadership election, which was won by the shrewd right-winger George Ferguson. While hostile toward immigrants, Francophones, organized labour, and all the nasty trees that grew across Ontario (he was previously Minister of Lands, Forest, and Mines and sold logging rights on public land to pretty much anyone who asked), Ferguson was a big fan of increasing government revenue. With Prohibition not going super well and government coffers running…dry…Ferguson decided his government would hold another referendum. This one would be a simple binary question with two options:

1. Are you in favour of the continuance of the Ontario Temperance Act?

2. Are you in favour of the sale as a beverage of beer and spirituous liquor in sealed packages under Government control?

Bourbon balloting

The referendum had two major campaign teams: The Ontario Plebiscite Committee, which supported retaining the OTA and question 1, and The Moderation League of Ontario, which was in favour of question 2.

The Ontario Plebiscite Committee ran newspaper ads with outrageous and incendiary claims, rattled off in numbered lists. In their ads, the OTA was credited with reducing poverty, improving the province’s morals, and giving people more spending money to use on “necessities and comforts for the whole family.” In contrast, “Government control” was going to raise taxes, reduce revenue (not sure how that would have worked), strengthen bootleggers, shrink tourism, harm children, and negatively impact the province’s “self-respect”.3 The imperial haughtiness of The Ontario Plebiscite Committee was on full display in their advertisements, which positioned Prohibition as a way to safeguard the Anglo-Saxon order here and abroad. One ad lamented:

The Moderation League of Ontario, on the other hand, marketed themselves in a more clever way. Their campaign pointed to the increased revenue for the province and the possibility that taxes might go down, discussed how government sales would mean safer alcohol, fewer bootleggers, and an end to what they called “the prescription farce”. One ad laid out the choice very clearly:

The Spec ran daily competing columns where pro-temperance and pro-Government Control advocates could write in with their thoughts entitled “Go To It!” The Prohibitionists flooded the paper with letters in early October, with groups like the Hamilton Temperance Federation echoing the claims of the Plebiscite Committee, throwing in a little fear-mongering about the need for more police and that we would soon become as immoral and unethical as Alberta where, in Medicine Hat, “there was one place that was called The Women’s Oasis, where the women especially were invited to indulge their appetites.”6

The paper’s editorial board acknowledged the strength of the pro-temperance side, though pulled back slightly from their vehement “dry” Tory position from the early days of the OTA. They called for residents to consider both sides, but made a specific appeal to those opposed to the OTA to write in to the “Go To It!” section.

And so they did. As the election drew nearer and nearer, anti-Prohibition forces began writing in, offering facts and perspectives on why Prohibition had failed. The “Beach Resident” who shared the story of rumrunners on Hamilton Beach did so in that column, as did residents who hated the restriction on their personal liberties caused by Prohibition, the lawlessness caused by bootleggers, and the lost revenue for the province.

The Tuesday before the vote, the Moderation League held a massive rally at the I.O.O.F. Temple on Gore Street (today’s Wilson St. downtown) where speakers whipped up the crowd making the case for Government Control. Excitement grew as election day approached, with local garages announcing parties on election day where residents could gather around radios and listen to the returns. The real estate agency selling lots in the new Westdale subdivision took out ads spoofing the ballot question, asking residents to vote in favour of a lovely new home in the community. People became genuinely invested in the question and momentum seemed to be on the side of the anti-Prohibitionists.

When the results came in, it was clear Hamiltonians were all-in on the booze. Of the 42,727 ballots cast (a little over 50% of those eligible), 28,259 - or 66% - were in favour of Government Control. As the Spec put it:

The rest of the province wasn’t quite sold on the issue, though. Just under 51.5% of Ontarians votes to retain the OTA. The closeness of the election showed Ferguson that people were growing tired of Prohibition and, with Ontario’s largest cities voting overwhelmingly in favour of Government Control, it was clear change could be made without losing the support of the electorate.

In early 1925, Ferguson allowed the sale of low-alcohol beer, announced there would be no further referendums on Prohibition, and that the Conservatives would campaign on repealing the OTA in the 1926 provincial election. In that vote, the Tories lost only three seats, but increased their share of the popular vote to a staggering 57.6%. The following year - 1927 - Ferguson repealed the OTA and replace it with the Liquor Licence Act, which created two new entities in the province: the privately-run Brewer’s Retail Inc. to sell beer as “The Beer Store”, and the publicly-run Liquor Control Board of Ontario to sell all other spirits as the “LCBO”.

The days of the beachfront rumrunners was over. Now, Ontarians could buy regulated and quality-tested alcohol from a store that returned revenue to the province.

Ontario was wet once again.

Part 2: A drink of convenience

Ready-to-drink neoliberalism

Now, 100 years after the referendum that helped create Ferguson’s LCBO, the employees of the government liquor store are out on strike. The union that represents them, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) contends that the LCBO’s management has eroded the ability for employees to survive in this economy. Around 70% of employees at the LCBO are part-time, have no benefits, and have less job security than ever before. OPSEU also argues that Ford’s quick shift to privatization means the LCBO won’t provide the revenue the government desires, creating the conditions whereby a future government might see little value in keeping the institution alive.

The move toward private alcohol sales is in line with two core pillars of Ford’s political philosophy.

First, never pass up an opportunity to make money. To the Premier, who inherited his dad’s label company, business interests are public interests. Fancy little business boys are the ones who create jobs, provide services, and keep the economy going. If there’s something the state does that could otherwise make a private business money, it should be carved out, sold off, and turned around for a profit because a fancy little business boy knows how to help the economy better than some overeducated government hack. In the Premier’s mind, the tools of government should be used to make life better for business people so they can make life livable for everyone else. It’s trickle-down economics at it’s finest. Complete nonsense in reality, but, when you have millions of dollars and daddy’s company to run back to, reality isn’t something you really need to engage with honestly.

Second, Ford’s long-term goals are to reduce any revenue streams for the province to prevent any future provincial government from implementing new programs. It isn’t enough to simply reduce the size of the government as it is; the shrink must be institutional, wide-reaching, and permanent. If a Liberal or, the ghost of Milton Freedman forbid, an NDP government is elected, the tools of the state should be so thoroughly smashed as to prevent anyone slightly to the left of the current government from implementing their agenda. That government will promise changes, find they can’t fund those changes, backtrack, alienate voters, and pave the way for a Tory return to power, just as it should be, praise be the Family Compact.

To the Premier, this is a “two birds with one stone” situation. You reduce provincial revenue (thereby reducing the capacity for the government to do anything of value) and you create a new opportunity for businesses to make money.

Business like convenience stores.

A Convenience Cosmopolitan

Under the new liquor privatization plans, ready-to-drink cocktails were added to the list of beers, ciders, and wines that could be sold privately, the previous caps on how many grocery stores allowed to sell alcohol were raised, and, controversially, convenience stores could apply to sell alcohol as of September 5, 2024.

Nowhere else in Canada allows the sale of ready-to-drink cocktails outside government-run or standalone liquor stores. And, with the government’s estimates of 8,500 new locations selling alcohol, Ontario would have the “third-highest density” of booze retailers in the country.

But, an article last week from the CBC’s Mike Crawley raised some concerns, namely that very few grocery stores had signed up for new licences (mainly because they’d also have to accept bottle returns) while thousands of convenience stores had applied to sell liquor.

The article said that 86 convenience stores in Hamilton had been approved to sell liquor as of last Thursday. So I decided to look into that.

Turns out, the article was only kinda right.

It was actually 129 stores.

On the government portal, if you search “Hamilton” under the category “Convenience Store Licence”, you only get those businesses who listed their address as being in Hamilton. A whole 39 locations listed their address as Ancaster, Binbrook, Dundas, Hannon, Stoney Creek, or Waterdown.

And, when I checked again on Tuesday, that overall number had gone up to 131.

So, like any good nerd, I dug into these locations to figure out a little more about them.

When applying for a licence, each convenience store needed to give the name of their corporation or the individuals listed as owners. Of the 131 convenience stores that have applied for licences, only 13 come from individual owners. The remaining licences are for incorporated entities. The most licences handed out to a single company is 8, and those have been granted to a numbered company out of Mississauga that runs a chain of Petro-Canada locations across the city.9

A couple things of quick facts:

• 82 (62.6%) of the licences have been granted to numbered companies.

• Only 57.6% of the companies that have been granted licences are headquartered in Hamilton.

• 22% of the companies are headquartered in Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, or Burlington.

• 66% of licences were applied for within the first 5 days the program was extended to convenience stores. 53 of them (40.5% of the total) were applied for the day after the program opened.

Okay, so now let’s look at where these locations will be across the city.

At present, there are 21 LCBO and LCBO Outlet (small-format kiosks generally in rural areas) locations in Hamilton. They’re spread across the city’s population centres, though there is some unevenness to their locations; Ward 12 has two LCBO locations and two LCBO Outlets for a total of four, while Wards 3 and 14 have no LCBO locations.

The expansion of sales to convenience stores changes this map dramatically.

If it looks like some of the LCBO locations on the second map are being obscured, that’s on purpose. In some instances, the distance between an LCBO and new convenience store selling liquor will is only 40 metres. In one instance, a licence was granted to a convenience store in the same plaza as an existing LCBO. In two cases, licences were granted to tuck shops in multi-storey apartment buildings. Two other licences were granted to “specialty stores”, namely cigar vendors.

Troublingly, 35% of those convenience stores that have been granted a licence to sell alcohol aren’t just convenience stores. They’re gas station convenience stores.

That seems like a glaring problem to me. Why would we want to make it easier for people to drink-and-drive? Offering ready-to-drink cocktails beside the wiper fluid and pine tree air fresheners just seems like an invitation to engage in dangerous behaviour.

Overall, the massive expansion means that we will soon have 131 new places to buy beer, wine, cider, and ready-to-drink cocktails, spread across the city, in many gas stations and businesses run through numbered companies in the GTA.

The question remains: who is this good for?

Old Fashioned nonsense

A Leger poll from a few days ago shows a plurality (damn near a majority) of Ontarians support OPSEU’s goals in the strike. The LCBO’s management is clearly in this for the long-haul, though, especially considering their aggressive ad spots targeting the union and gleefully discussing how the Premier wants to gut them. But they’re digging in their heels and refusing to budge. The issue of ready-to-drink cocktails seems to be the hill everyone is prepared to die on, as Ford and LCBO management say they’re not pulling back their plans and OPSEU says it will not negotiate on that point.

So the strike will probably last for a long, long time. (Friday afternoon edit: lol nevermind)

For their part, the Tories have trotted out their odd little bespectacled buddies in the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation to back them up. Those business-casual weirdos say that the whole plan will mean “more choice and more convenience”.

But here’s the thing. The government knows this is going to hurt. They know their changes will cost Ontarians between $200 million and $510 million a year in lost revenue. They know what they’re doing will reduce government revenue and diminish the capacity for the state to perform basic functions like provide schooling and hospitals to people.

Back in 1995, just months after taking power in Ontario, Mike Harris’s PCs were hard at work implementing the most brutal program of austerity and neoliberalism this province had seen until that point. There was no program they would not cut, no ministry they would not gut, no public resource they would not destroy, all in the name of the corporate market.

John Snobelen was Harris’s Minister of Education. During the summer of 1995, Snobelen was caught on tape discussing the government’s plan for getting people on board with their policies, which would have made life worse for the overwhelming majority of Ontarians. On the tape, Snobelen was heard saying the government needed to “invent a crisis” so they could, effectively, bankrupt the Ministry of Education. “Creating a useful crisis is what part of this is about,” he said.10

The main idea was that the Tories could not just gut the Ministry. They would have to get people on board with the idea of gutting it, cut off the funding, and sell what they could for scrap so that we could never have the same standard of public education again.

Ford is far less sophisticated. Harris and Co. were more interested in precision and subterfuge, enacting a brutal policy that cut to the bone by selling their slices as good for the economy. The Ford approach is more hack-and-slash. Smash everything you see and hope that people are content with the destruction than with the status quo.

A whole bank of empty seats at Toronto City Hall, mayors with unchecked power, schools that are overcrowded, emergency rooms that turn people away, online casino ads on every billboard, cheap mini-mansions sprouting up where farmer’s fields once sat, a billion little broken things dotting this province. He’s gambling on the same thing with this strike and his foolish pursuit of a drunker Ontario.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t in pursuit of the same aims. All Ford cares about is what’s good for business and what will make it harder for the state to do anything to help people.

Come September 5, 2024, there will be at least 131 new monuments to that philosophy here in Hamilton.

The next round’s on Doug.

Well, bully for you

A funny thing happened at last Friday’s council meeting.

Agenda Item 7.2 was supposed to be a fairly standard motion. The building that houses the Worker’s Arts and Heritage Centre (WAHC), a much-beloved community institution, is in need of repairs. The WAHC runs out of the Hamilton Customs House, which was built in 1858 and served as the primary point of entry for many people coming to this city from across Canada and the world. It is a beautiful, important, historic building that WAHC has lovingly maintained. Still, it is 166 years old and needs some work.

The WAHC has estimated a few thousand dollars worth of restoration and maintenance work has to be done, so Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch moved a motion that would provide a grant of up to $30,000 from the Ward 2 Capital Reinvestment Reserve (area rating money) to help them ensure an important part of Hamilton’s built heritage is given adequate care and maintenance.

Kroetsch gave a very brief statement to explain this need, optimistic that council would approve the motion with little pushback.

Enter JP Danko.

Danko starts off simple, asking why the motion came to council instead of going through the Public Works Committee. Real “inside baseball” council stuff.

Kroetsch responds that, in consultation with staff, he brought it to council because they believed that was the best place for it to be discussed.

Danko continues: “I’m struggling to reconcile how funding a third-party with city tax dollars meets the provisions of the Special Capital Re-Investment Reserve. My understanding of that reserve is that this is strictly for city infrastructure.”

The mayor calls on staff to answer. A member of staff clarifies and says, no, it isn’t out of the ordinary that we’d see this kind of motion.

But Danko’s not done. With a touch of sarcasm added to the first word, he retorts: “Okay, but the point of this is, $30,000 of funding that’s going to a third-party from the Special Capital Re-Investment Reserve, which was put in place specifically to fund city infrastructure, not for grants, not for third-parties, so does this meet the policy for that reserve?”

Again, staff says yes, this is okay. There are provisions in the policy around social infrastructure and discretionary funds for the councillor.

And then, Danko says what he had previously danced around.

“Okay, thank you, so, you know, I know nobody really wants to hear this, but again, this is porkbarrelling. We’re using city tax dollars to fund…”

He’s cut off by the mayor, who cautions him on his language.

He waves that off and continues, saying council has previously been harsh toward Premier Ford for spending on his friends, and then throwing hypotheticals around like Councillor Esther Pauls bringing forward a motion to fund a church or him bringing a motion to fund the socially-conservative Christian think-tank Cardus, which occupies the historic Balfour Mansion on the west mountain. His comments are scattered, but accuse Kroetsch of trying to buy votes and saying the policy around council spending is being abused with abandon this term.

After a comment from Councillor Brad Clark, Kroetsch is given a chance to speak, and replies by saying “all I can at least say about trying to pay for votes or abuse any process…I know that it seems fun to continue to impugn me for these things, but I think it’s inappropriate and I wish you’d stop it.”

The motion passed 14 - 1 with Danko opposed.

The feud spilled over onto social media on the weekend, with Danko subtweeting that Kroetsch should resign.

Ten minutes of a council meeting and one tweet have revealed a lot about the way our municipal government is functioning right now. Whereas in the past, there were testosterone-driven ward-heelers shouting and berating and intimidating their colleagues, staff, and political opponents, now we have a very different dynamic at play. Now, it’s a little less UFC and a little more high school cafeteria.

It would seem that Danko - locked in a battle with less capable and less charismatic figures to lead the city’s opposition caucus - has stumbled upon one of the city’s favourite political tactics over the past few years.

It is something that the NIMBYs and heritage gatekeepers and ultraconservatives and r/Hamilton users and former councillors and former mayor and the Hamilton Police Services Board and a cavalcade of other naysayers have already discovered. It isn’t unique or interesting or useful, but it seems to really work.

You earn political points by bullying Cameron Kroetsch.

Various councils and council hopefuls have found their punching bags to pummel when the going gets tough. Previous councils did so with folks like Nrinder Nann and Brian McHattie. But the target of choice this term is, undoubtedly, Cameron Kroetsch.

There’s so much that’s wrong with that. It’s a cheap tactic that councillors use to gain favour with the city’s chattering commentator class, which is, itself, indicative of an inability to see beyond the city hall bubble. It isn’t productive, it isn’t democratic, and it isn’t healthy.

Danko should take a step back and re-assess what he’s doing. Acting like a common bully is not okay. We need more constructive city-builders on council, not more cruel politicians with grudges.

A show of farce

One last thing before we go.

I don’t actively use X/Twitter anymore. The platform is, at best, sad and, at worst, actively dangerous. And, as of a few days ago, its current owner has pledged $45 million to help the former US President win the upcoming election.

That said, I still check the platform on occasion, like when the aforementioned former President was nearly assassinated on Saturday and during Tuesday’s Rainmageddon in Toronto. While poking around the emaciated husk of the site on the latter occasion, I noticed that an old familiar hashtag was trending. Over in the sidebar, #HamOnt was trending under “business and finance” for some strange reason. I clicked on it to see what that was about, but found no business or financial news at all.

Instead, I saw what X/Twitter wanted me to see, which is the content from those people with Blue Checks who actively pay Musk for the privilege of having their content boosted above everyone else’s.

The third post was from chronically-online local user Peter Dyakowski, whose Blue Check pushed his content way to the top of the #HamOnt feed. The post the site promoted was troubling, to say the least.

In the post, Dyakowski announces he conducted a “Show of Force Patrol” in Gage Park.

Citizen “park patrols” rarely have positive intent. The far-right Islamophobic Sons of Odin group conducted “park patrols” in Hamilton back in 2017 as part of a campaign to soften their image and make them seem less like Brownshirts and more like friendly neighbourhood guys who want to keep the community safe. Another branch of the movement - the Soldiers of Odin - conducted similar “patrols” across the country and in Europe to “protect locals from Muslim immigrants.”11

Of course, that’s what it’s about. It’s about keeping one group safe from a nefarious “other”. Hell, Dyakowski puts that in his tweet: “When can we have our park back?”

“Our” park.

As though the people forced to live there are some nebulous “other” to be expelled. Dyakowski, storied local landlord and former Conservative Party candidate, is the one to tell people - people who have been renovicted and displaced by the ruined housing market he profits from, people who are suffering from mental health crises and addictions without being able to access services because of devastating cuts done by his party, people who live in his community and are in dire need of help - that they aren’t welcome here. That they aren’t part of this community. That they aren’t worth anything.

Many of Dyakowski’s tweets reference a potential mayoral campaign in 2026. It’s usually in the form of jokes about Chad Collins, promises to bring back the Aviary because its closure “brings great shame upon the City of Hamilton”, and threats to “lock the admin and directors of CityHousing Hamilton in a room” until they singlehandedly renovate all their units and rent them out. They’re jokey and cringey and indicative of a right-winger who is more online than not, but his previous Tory campaign and his prolific donations to conservative local councillors show there’s a hint of seriousness there.

Which is a problem, because that would give him a huge platform to amplify even more of this dehumanizing drivel. Another bully on another stage spouting more exclusionary rhetoric would be so damaging our democracy (not that he’s a fan, tweeting recently about the “need to restrict the voting franchise somehow,”.)

We deserve a politics of compassion that recognizes encampments aren’t the answer and that meaningful supports and investments in housing are the key. We deserve a politics where no one is made to feel like they don’t belong in Hamilton. We deserve a politics of real ideas and real progress, not reactionary anger and populist rage.

His candidacy would, to quote another one of his tweets, bring “great shame upon the City of Hamilton.”

Cool facts for cool people

• There’s been a lot of news this week and I spent a while on the liquor mapping, so here are the last three articles I had open on my phone:

  • Bad traffic causing locals to consider leaving Toronto: survey (CBC)

  • The Enshittification of Everything (The Tyee)

  • After the Freedom Convoy, she turned her focus on local politics. What followed was an alt-right siege of this Ontario city (The Star)