I’m on Bluesky! I’ve pretty much abandoned Twitter (the thing is 98% read-only for me now), so once I get a few more followers on the ‘sky, I’ll start posting on there. Check out my profile here. Once I get invite codes, I can start giving those out too.

Radical relaxation

This is a twofer: first, I’m going on a camping vacation next week, so there actually honestly definitely won’t be an edition of the newsletter on August 10th because, this time, I’m leaving my laptop at home. That’ll teach me to be productive!

Second, there’s been some chatter about meetings, city council, and time off. I’m specifically referring to the fact that some council meetings have failed to make quorum because many councillors are away at the moment and the ongoing fallout from the mayor’s trip to Italy. There’s been talk about all this, and, to all of that, I say:

Leave Britney alone!

Wait, no, hang on. That’s not right. But that’s the spirit of what comes next, so buckle up.

First thing’s first… there are too many meetings of our municipal government. Not everything needs to be a meeting. Honestly, the meetings sometimes seem like opportunities to replace actual action with political theatre. Why develop policy when you can have a meeting to berate staff for not doing that and accuse your colleagues of ruining the city because they’re doing it?

Second, scheduling has to be done in a better way at city hall. Like, no meetings (or, at the very least, fewer meetings) in July and August. When MPs and MPPs leave the legislature and Parliament for summer break, they’re still doing work in their constituencies. They aren’t just kicking back on a beach and relaxing. They aren’t senators. There’s work to be done on drafting bills, dealing with constituent issues, connecting with the community, etc. Council members should have the same opportunity.

And maybe admin staff should consult with council members about when they are available, rather than just setting up a meeting and hoping someone shows up? This sounds like one of the reasons city hall’s administrative staff side needs a little shake up.

Third, and I know this is going to sound weird, but politicians are human beings. Decades of hard right anti-democratic propaganda (helped along by some truly terrible politicians, for sure) has solidified in the minds of North Americans that politicians aren’t regular humans. They’re a combination of personal servant, whipping post, parasitic narcissist, and solver of every problem that’s ever existed and ever will exist. “Customer service” oriented politicians like Rob Ford played into that stereotype, handing out personal business cards complete with direct cell phone numbers and offering to take out people’s trash for them.

Literally.

Again, pulling from Ford Nation (Doug’s manifesto that also serves as a glorified portrayal of his brother):

Riveting dialogue. 12/10 writing. Send my compliments to the ghostwriter.

That reorientation of the role of a local leader - from an experienced legislator with strong ideas that are based in fact and compassion to an ideologically-bankrupt salesman cosplaying as Homer Simpson as Springfield Sanitation Commissioner - has shifted the public’s expectations and has resulted in some fairly intense clashes between the two very different types of local leader.

And so now we come to the discourse. Oh, the discourse. How you wither me!

“Why are my taxpayer dollars being wasted on these quorumless meetings and your stupid vacations?”

I don’t know, Brenda, maybe because people deserve time off? Log off Twitter or X or Elon’s Personal WeChat or whatever its called this week and touch grass.

I’m being flippant (as I tend to be), but this is something that has been eating away at me. There’s a cry that erupts from the masses come election time that follows the line “why can’t we get better local leaders?” or “where are all the good politicians?” or “is this really the best we can do?”

And the answer is yes. Yes it is.

You don’t just get the politicians you deserve because you vote for them. You get the politicians that are willing to withstand the toxic environment we’ve created. Who wants to serve when you’re bombarded with death threats, attacks on your character, manic emails and breathless phone calls asking why you haven’t fixed every problem under the sun, or blaming you for not filling the pothole down the street, or for smiling wrong, not smiling enough, wearing the wrong shirt, attending the wrong event, being ill, being too healthy, having a social life, not letting people know about your social life, being too kind to pigeons, being a pigeon murderer, making a mistake, being too perfect, caring about people, or taking a goddamn vacation?

Why is anyone surprised that good politicians call it quits way before bad ones do? Hamilton had Brian McHattie for 11 years and has had Tom Jackson for 35. Toronto got Joe Cressy for 8 years and Giorgio Mammoliti for 18. Why did Jacinda Ardern last as New Zealand’s PM for less time than Donald Trump has been running for president? Why do progressive councillors turn over every couple of cycles but Rob Ford managed to stay in office for 14 years!? 14 years of homophobia, bigotry, racism, petty horseshit politics, and actually bad policies. Because he could be the Teflon salesman with the $5 smile, $10 suit, and 100 metre stare.

A young mother who works at a non-profit, is struggling to pay rent, is still paying off student loans, and just wants to make her community a better place - the kind of politician we need - will look at the reality of local politics and want to stay 500 kilometres away from city hall. You think she wants someone questioning her every time she has to skip a Wastewater Management Subcommittee Meeting on a report about a report about a consultant’s findings re: a $0.10 gasket so she can pick up her kid or help a constituent who is being renovicted or meet with an elderly neighbour with mobility issues who has concerns about traffic safety?

We will start getting high quality leaders when we start realizing that we want good people in office and working to get them elected. Many voters across much of Hamilton did that in the last election. But, far too often, people default into cynicism and doubt…even those who helped get good politicians elected. They can unwittingly create a hostile environment that may push those good politicians out, not because they expect too much, but because their expectations are misaligned.

It is fair to expect a lot of a local leader when it comes to planning expertise, a willingness to learn on the job and hear different perspectives, having big ideas for the future, and a commitment to working with the community on pressing problems of the moment. But we cannot expect those same politicians to be at our service every moment of every day or to have no social life, no hobbies, no personal interests, no spouse or partner, no family, no friends, no need for sleep or food or time away.

Let our councillors take some time off or not attend a meeting. If the meetings keep getting in the way of things, those politicians should work with staff to reschedule them at a time that works better for everyone. If they keep getting scheduled at inconvenient times despite the desire to have them moved, replace the person doing the scheduling. Or maybe have more colleagues and more staff who can help lighten the work load. Or organized groups on council that can decide how they’ll advance an issue before hand. Or something, I don’t know.

All I know is that I need a vacation from all this vacation discourse.

That train doesn’t stop here anymore

Two big things happened in the world of transit over the past two weeks: on Monday, July 24, a car on the Scarborough RT derailed, injuring five people. Then, on Friday, July 28, the first section of the new Réseau express métropolitain or REM opened in Montreal, featuring a five stop line from the Central Station to Brossard on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. And then promptly broke for three of the three days it was in operation.

The RT derailment closed the line until late August, after which point it will only be in operation until November when the whole system was set to be retired anyway. The REM, on the other hand, is just getting started, and will soon open more of the 26 stations across the city, which will provide an essential north-south link for the city under Mount Royal and link into the airport, which has been poorly served by transit for pretty much its entire existence. And, for the first weekend it runs, it was free.

As one city loses a transit line while another looks forward with optimism to opening a brand new system (that’ll hopefully work better soon), it might be time to remember that Hamilton was supposed to have a version of this system back in the 1980s.

What unites these two lines is the fact that they are both grade separated and automated. This means that they are lifted up over (or sometimes buried below) the road and that they are controlled remotely without an onsite driver.

The Scarborough RT is actually the cousin of the system proposed for Hamilton, which was called an “Intermediate Capacity Transit System” (ICTS). The name meant exactly what it sounded like: it was an intermediate step between a low capacity bus and a high capacity subway. While we look to LRT as that step now, back in the 70s and 80s, the ICTS was the way to go.

There’s a lot of history behind the development of the ICTS, including how a PC Premier created a crown corporation (the Urban Transportation Development Corporation or UTDC) that was supposed to enter the mass transit building business and compete with private companies, but the main point of importance here is that, in 1972, Premier Bill Davis outlined some new transportation priorities for Ontario, which included developing ICTS lines in Toronto, Ottawa, and Hamilton.

There was a lot of work that went into the Hamilton ICTS plan, including social impact studies, routing analyses, and debates over how to get the thing down the mountain.

Public consultation gave residents of Hamilton a few options. Three options (the X, Y, and Z alignments) would have used tunnels under the Jolly Cut and some variation of a downtown loop, while the W alignment was tunneled under the Claremont and came out on James Street.

Around 50,000 mailers were sent to Hamiltonians, asking people to vote on their favourite alignments. About 1.5% of those who received a mailer returned them, and the plurality of those respondents selected “none of the above” as their preferred option. Of those who did pick a route, 14% went with alignment W.

By 1981, we had a firm idea as to what the ICTS would look like. An elevated system with small, driverless trains, running from the mountain and then looping around downtown. And the renderings are just…so 80s.

Here’s what the futuristic MacNab Station was supposed to look like:

And here’s the ICTS on Mohawk:

Alignment W: The idea was to have the system start at the intersection of Mohawk and Upper James, in the parking lot of today’s Canadian Tire which was, at the time, a Miracle Mart.

It would have made a second stop at the former Mountain Plaza mall in an underground station before slowly making its way down the mountain and popping out by the Mountainview Apartments and St. Joe’s Fontbonne Building. There would be a stop at the corner of James and Charlton before the ICTS would shift onto Hughson. When it got to the GO Centre on Hunter, the lines would split. The northbound train would head over to Catharine, turning on King William, where there would be another station (at Club 77). It would head down King William until James, where it would snake up and over onto King, before turning into the main MacNab Station, where the big HSR terminal is now. It would then head down MacNab, go wide around Whitehern and into the city hall parking lot before joining the dual routing at Hunter again.

Phase Two would have extended the line east along Mohawk to Upper Wentworth, where it would have been connected to the new Lime Ridge Mall development.

While the Region of Hamilton-Wentworth voted to accept the recommended alignment in July of 1981, a coalition of anti-ICTS advocates had been organizing against the proposal for some time. Called the “Coalition On Sane Transit” or COST, the group opposed the fact that the trains would be elevated on giant concrete pillars, looming over the city, almost 6 metres (close to 20 feet) in the air. From a CBC story looking back on the ICTS fight, many were worried that “the elevated waiting areas would be too hidden from the street and thus would attract urban scourges like drug dealing and offensive graffiti.”2 🙄

Ultimately, between the opposition in the community and the fact that alignment W had a very low projected ridership, the Region voted against moving ahead with the plan in December of 1981.

The UTDC helped build the Vancouver SkyTrain and Scarborough RT, both of which opened in 1985 before the crown corporation was privatized the following year. Hamilton was supposed to be a test case for a revolutionary new form of public transit, but public opposition and the skittishness of local leaders shot it down. While that might be a shame, it is also hard to imagine what the city would look like with a gigantic overhead automated train system in place right now.

As the RT winds down and the REM gets up and running, we have an opportunity to look back and consider what might have been. Importantly, this gives us a chance to think about what the city will look like once a more common and universally-applied form of intermediate transit - LRT - is built.

Save a horse, redraw a riding boundary

This is a little note to let folks know that my submission to the Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission is up on the commission’s website. After each census, a new electoral boundaries commission is required in each province to determine if we need more ridings or if riding boundaries have to be changed. After the 2021 census, Ontario gained 1 seat and the commission set about changing the riding boundaries accordingly.

Unfortunately, they kept most of Hamilton the same. I objected, noting that we should bring back four ridings that used to exist: Hamilton West, Hamilton East, Hamilton South (with Binbrook), and a modified western rural/suburban riding called Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Wentworth. A new Hamilton-Stoney Creek-Grimsby Lakeshore would round things out to the east. My proposal was pretty radical, since it called for ignoring the Escarpment as a boundary and getting rid of Hamilton Centre and Hamilton Mountain in favour of more equal west and east end ridings with a new south mountain riding that could provide representation to the growing suburbs there.

I was actually super impressed with my math on this one. None of my proposed ridings deviated more than +1.03% from the set 2022 “quota” for number of constituents per riding, whereas the commission’s ridings ranged from +5.94% for Hamilton Centre to -0.82% for Hamilton Mountain (meaning Hamilton Centre has less of a voice than the Mountain).

The commission didn’t buy it and they opted to stick with a modified version of their original plan. This means that Hamilton’s ridings will change a little for the next election, so get ready. HWAD gets the Carpenter neighbourhood (where I grew up), Hamilton Centre now stretches to Kenilworth and encompasses Rosedale, Hamilton East gets upper Stoney Creek (one of the things I actually did propose), the Mountain is pushed southward to the hydro lines from Rymal, and, the biggest change, Flamborough-Glanbrook has the northern portion of Brant County added to it, creating a giant, unwieldy, almost-certainly Tory riding ringing Hamilton. An early congrats on your reelection, Dan Muys.

Here are the new official boundaries:

Check out my full submission here and the commission’s report here.

The WRDSB is at it again

Yeah, we’re talking about the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) again.

On Monday, July 31, WRDSB trustee for Kitchener, Mike Ramsay, announced that he was the subject of a second code of conduct review in as many years. This was confirmed by the board on Wednesday.

Speaking about the review, Ramsay said: “The school trustee Game of Thrones continues.”3 If this is like Game of Thrones, then it’s Season 8.

Ramsay has been a trustee since 1989. In 2022, he earned the second highest number of votes for a WRDSB trustee for Kitchener (the City of Kitchener elects 4 trustees to the WRDSB at large, meaning across the whole city instead of in wards). Few of the 17 challengers could even come within 3,000 votes of defeating him. He describes himself as an immigrant, former soldier, police officer, and civil servant.

And he has some fun views. From his own 2022 re-election website:

Ramsay’s 2022 code of conduct review, the result of which was his being barred from meetings for the remainder of that year, was allegedly about some pretty awful behaviour. I have to say “allegedly” because the WRDSB never actually released a reason, but Ramsay himself tweeted enthusiastically about the issue.

The issue goes all the way back to January of 2022. At a meeting of the WRDSB, a woman named Carolyn Burjoski, who claims to be a retired teacher, gave a presentation at the board about books she wanted banned from local schools because, in her words, “some of the books make it seem simple, even cool, to take puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones.”4 

Sure, Carolyn. All the kids are getting into gender dysphoria. TikTok is making everyone trans. Puberty blockers are the hip new street drug.

Board chair Scott Piatkowski stopped Burjoski’s presentation on the grounds that her comments were violating the Ontario Human Rights Code. Burjoski is now suing the WRDSB for violating her right to free expression, but her story obviously made the rounds across far-right media and was written about extensively by Jonathan Kay, the “journalist” and hard-right provocateur (save for his ties to Justin Trudeau).

Kay’s story framed Piatkowski (who is a fairly open supporter of the NDP) as the big bad villain, which directed a considerable amount of hate toward him as the board chair. Ramsay re-tweeted one of Kay’s tweets about the issue (that tagged Piatkowski and, again, directed plenty of hate his way) with the words “Dear (@)wrdsb parents, students and staff, please read. Timely and relevant.” Which, honestly, kind of reads like an invitation to cyberbully one of your colleagues.

He tweeted about his code of conduct review a few days before the 2022 election, claiming that his 2018 election had been “overturned” because of “sharing Tweets from respected Journalist (@)jonkay that were critical of (@)ScottPiatkowski treatment of Teacher (@)carolynburjoski.” Not really how that works, but go off I guess.

He followed that tweet up with another saying that the board was wasting money defending the “divisive identity politics they are pushing on our community” while teachers “scramble to find a working copier each day”, providing evidence that you can be a school trustee for 34 years and still not understand what the powers of a school board are (funding for copiers is a provincial issue that is overseen by boards).

Ramsay has refined his message slightly, responding to the latest code of conduct complaint thus:

Radical left NDP (don’t threaten me with a good time, Mike). Refusing to accept the results of the election. Focus on achievement. Ramsay sounds a lot like a former US President.

Ramsay’s been ingratiating himself with the fringes of the Canadian right for a while now. He’s been retweeting radical transphobe and failed Ottawa school trustee candidate Chanel Pfahl. He’s been posing for photos with far-right Toronto mayoral candidate Anthony Furey and Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy. He’s been tweeting Brian Lilley columns about how its okay when minority communities protest Pride events, calling that “balanced reporting”.

Make no mistake: Ramsay is a hard right trustee. A fringe figure who spends ample time amplifying the voices of the right wing fringe and of hateful bigots while disguising his championing of their ideology as “promoting student learning and achievement”.

But that might not be what this most recent code of conflict issue is about. Sure, maybe it has something to do with his retweeting an account attacking both of the newly appointed trustees (one of whom is female-identified) to the WRDSB on June 28, which was also the day of the violent misogynistic attack at the University of Waterloo, which Ramsay definitely knew because he literally tweeted: “Thoughts and 🙏 are with the victims of this violent act at (@)UWaterloo” Or could have something to do with the mystery trustee/trustees who attended a potluck put on by fringe anti-vaxxers and anti-queer militants in Waterloo Region that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe it could have to do with what Ramsay claims is the cause, relating to “something I supposedly said in meetings and on a radio show years ago.”5

Or maybe this is something else. We don’t know. The WRDSB is saying it involves “one or more” employees, so it could be an entirely unrelated incident altogether.

This speaks to a need for more awareness about trustee elections and the kind of organizing that’s happening in far-right circles around education issues. They love this stuff because appeals to parents about the “safety” of their children are particularly powerful. As I’ve noted before, they’re going to keep organizing to contest elections, muddy the waters of public discourse with their fringe theories, and make the life of women, queer folks, BBIPoC folks, and anyone who disagrees with them hell.

Regardless, this is going to be another interesting case to watch.

Have you Reddit?

Hamiltonians can’t enter their parks. The parks, that taxpayers have created, are off limits to them. There is barely a patch of grass left that doesn’t have the markings of a tent on it and every remaining square centimetre is covered in needles. Not a single child enters a park any more. Most parents have sent them off to safety in Burlington. The city is nothing but addicts. The cops don’t do anything. The mayor is spending billions of taxpayer money on European vacations. Everyone on my block has had their car broken into at least three hundred times since last week. All of my neighbours want to sell their homes and move to somewhere where homelessness and poverty don’t exist. And I’m going with them.

^ The above is a slightly exaggerated sample of the kind of posts one finds on the r/Hamilton subreddit these days.

I’ve mentioned the poor quality of the discourse over on the Hamilton subreddit before, specifically in the context of the Encampment Protocol discussion that’s been bubbling for a while. The sheer nastiness is getting to be a lot and fringe right wing talking points are becoming common place in the comments.

The fact that this comment has 11 upvotes on a post that itself only has 87 positive votes is telling.

So let’s take a look at r/Hamilton and why all of this matters.

Using a helpful tool called Subreddit Stats, I was able to take a look at the overall trends for the r/Hamilton subreddit.

At the beginning of 2022, r/Hamilton had ~68,700 members. Last count, the subreddit was at ~99,800. That seems to match the growth in other similar subreddits in the area, with many experiencing double digit growth from January to August 2022, with a slow tapering off of their growth into 2023. The r/Hamilton subreddit has seen a modest improvement in its growth (up 0.56% from the second half of last year), but that doesn’t match the bounceback r/Burlington has seen or the consistently slowing growth of r/Ottawa.

“Encampments” is the 10th most common key word on the site. That mindwarpingly sad “I’m so done” thread about how a resident near Central Park has lost all their empathy for people experiencing homelessness is the third most popular thread on r/Hamilton this year. Its the 22nd most popular thread on the subreddit of all time. It beat out this amusing “Hamilton as the many faces of Homer Simpson” meme. Hmm…two Simpsons references in one newsletter. Am I a Gen Xer now?

So that’s the background on the subreddit itself. But the big question here is: does any of this matter?

While folks may be quick to dismiss the discourse on Reddit as irrelevant to our reality, we have to remember how important Reddit is to the formation of community identity.

Gaudette, et. al. considered the role of subreddits like r/TheDonald in forging a sense of community identity. They observed that the members of that subreddit, which was dedicated to promoting the former US President, forged an identity by attacking and ridiculing outsiders. As they write:

Posters would join the subreddit, get a feel for the group dynamic, then post in the group based on what they believed that dynamic to be, hopeful that their posts would please the group and earn them praise in the form of upvotes, signaling their becoming “one of the group” in much the same way that socially awkward kids in after-school specials try to impress the delinquent burnout crowd by committing acts of petty thievery or making fun of former friends.

If a Hamiltonian, maybe someone new to the online community in the city or a new Hamiltonian in general, is searching on Reddit for the city’s little corner of the site and stumbles across r/Hamilton, they’ll join and immediately get an idea as to what the dynamic on the site is. They’ll read, comment, and vote on posts based on their underlying ideologies but also in a way that doesn’t get them ostracized from the group. Not everyone is like me, happy to be attacked by fellow Redditors for calling them out (-4 votes and counting!). Many will either stay silent or agree with the majority to feel like part of the community.

As Mills notes in his study of subreddits:

Mills says that two prominent US Presidential subreddits failed to do this, instead becoming echo chambers and places to validate the preconceived notions held by their followers. He writes:

There is a fear that r/Hamilton becomes this kind of subreddit: one where the hatred and vitriol directed at people experiencing homelessness, drug users, progressive politicians, and anyone deemed a dangerous “other” by the most vocal users becomes the subreddit’s identity.

This already happened to r/Canada, which became a far-right fringe backwater after poor moderation and a sustained campaign by neo-fascist users was successful. There’s a great Canadaland podcast episode from 2018 about it you can hear at this link.

r/Hamilton is the face of the city on Reddit. For it to become a bastion of far-right grievance politics and a venue in which sad, alienating views are not only the norm, but are encouraged, is a bad look for everyone.

We deserve a better presence on Reddit. And online in general. If good, forward thinking, compassionate people don’t speak up, then the current discourse on r/Hamilton will come to define more than just the subreddit. To many outside the city, it’ll seem that all of Hamilton shares these backward views.

Kojo’s Corner tomorrow

Well this will be a great chat! Kojo will be chatting with York University’s Zach Spicer about strong mayor powers and issues facing municipalities. Check it out tomorrow (August 4) from 5 to 6 PM on the Kojo’s Corner Twitter (linked here).

Cool facts for cool people

• Bob Hepburn has “ranked” the Ontario Liberal Party leadership candidates and, unsurprisingly, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie is the number 1 pick. Now, I’m not a member of the Liberal Party and have never cast a ballot for the federal or provincial wings of the party (I’m uninterested in conservative policies with feel-good branding, thanks), but I still don’t understand the appeal. There are two options: 1) she’s too dull to make an impact and Ford gets another mandate (or whomever replaces him, since word is he’s getting bored) while the Liberals and NDP fight over the same handful of seats or 2) the Tories mess up so badly that people go back to their default of voting Liberal and she comes to power only to carry on the same policies as Ford and leaves everyone disillusioned. Erskine-Smith genuinely seems like a likeable guy and, while it would almost certainly never vote for a candidate from his party, I wouldn’t hate having him as Premier, so why the Liberal establishment isn’t more interested in him, I don’t know.

• The aging Toronto ferry fleet isn’t going to be replaced until 2026. I’m not sure how I missed this, but the Sam McBride, the main ferry that brings people to Centre Island, keeps crashing? Last August, the ship failed to stop and rammed into the pier at the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal. The ships were supposed to be replaced by next year, but they won’t be in service until 2026. That’s after Island residents have been asking for new ships since the mid 2010s. We all know my stance on the issue: more boats! Ferries everywhere! Take to the sea! Avast, me maties! Etc.

• Way outside of Hamilton on this one, but I thought it was interesting. Newbern, Alabama can’t figure out who their mayor is. The town has about 200 people in it and, despite it being 80% Black, the town’s leadership has been handed down from one member of a white family to another for years. Many of the town’s residents don’t even remember the last time there was an election. So a local contractor and volunteer firefighter named Patrick Braxton (who is Black) decided he wanted change in Newbern, so he registered to run for mayor. He’s the only one who qualifies, so he is acclaimed as mayor. The outgoing town council, who apparently forgot to register, decided to bypass the official election and have a secret special election where only they qualified to run. The former (and claiming to be current) mayor, Woody Stokes III (who is white), is refusing to hand over power to Braxton, claiming that the special election they held in secret is the real election. The whole thing is a mess that’s now in a federal court, so we’ll have to wait to see who the mayor of Newbern is. Just goes to show that, sometimes, you have to have an outside body take care of elections.