Dogs on Roof, Hamilton, ON

This is one of my favourite photos of Hamilton. I forget exactly where it was taken but I believe it was near Wentworth and Burlington Streets. It was taken on 19 July 2008.

It shows two dogs who are getting some fresh air and exercise on the roof of a front porch to a modest town-house, in a poor neighbourhood of Hamilton.

They apparently got onto the roof through a small sliding window directly above the porch roof.

This photo raises some interesting questions:

Did the dogs go out the window on their own or were they encouraged to so by someone?

One possible scenario: the dogs were sent out there because they needed ‘to get out’ and the window was the most convenient exit. Is this what happened?

Are the dogs in any danger of falling?

Do the dogs enjoy being on the roof?

Do the dogs urinate and defecate on the roof?

What do the dogs think of someone taking their picture?

Is having dogs on the roof a common occurrence or did I just happen by the only time it occurred?

Are there people in the room behind and what are they doing?

Is this a display of some kind of civic or personal dysfunction or is there something else going on?

Ben and Liam grooving before their Holiday Concert

Two events over the holidays had significant positive effects on our twin boys. One was a holiday concert performance in which the boys played in the beginner violin section. The other was an impromptu violin recital the boys gave to our extended family on Christmas Eve.

Liam and Ben during their mini-recital on Christmas Eve

Both events were great successes and earned them an enormous number of brownie points–especially with my mother-in-law. The boys could appreciate their new, slightly-elevated status after these performances and liked what they saw. Since then, it has become much easier to get them to practice violin.

They both started beginner violin in the Fall when they joined the admirable West Hamilton Strings programme. This is a mass experiment in teaching hundreds of ordinary school kids in the public school system to play stringed instruments. Hats off to their talented and committed teacher Jennifer Spleit.

With these music lessons they had no idea what they had agreed to do before it too late. They didn’t know that the turnstiles into violin lessons work only in one direction (for the first year at least). Their situation reminded me of ads for the Roach Motel: ‘Kids can check in, but they can’t check out!’

The first few orchestra practices were absolute misery for all concerned. Their revulsion at the demands of violin was total. Their conception that this little wooden instrument would take years and years of dedicated practice before they could begin to master it was completely lacking. For them, it was all too absurd to even consider.

They used the most forceful language to express their displeasure, including:

‘We signed up for violin only because we thought it would please you and we thought you would get mad if we didn’t.’

‘We hate the violin, we hate practising it, and there is no way we will ever do this again unless you force us to.’

Fortunately, now the situation is much easier to take. I have managed to retire the usual suspects–those authoritarian reasons that parents trot out when they want to get their kids to do something their kids see no reason to do whatsoever, including:

‘We paid the money for these lessons and we don’t have money to waste on lessons you don’t attend.’

‘Once you make a commitment for something like music lessons, you have to at least complete the first year or else we may not sign you up for anything ever again.’

‘We really don’t like quitters around here.’

Or, their favourite–the full-frontal Drill Sergeant

‘You will practice your violin and you will do it NOW!’

This authoritarian approach works remarkably poorly with our boys. Being twins growing up in a permissive family, they often gang up on their parents and freely express their derision of our parental authority. They are completely willing to live in a world where adult demands are a hazy concept that really need not concern them:

‘We don’t need you because we have each other!’

We frequently attempt to shift the balance of power over in our direction but this can be painfully ineffectual when done in the typical control-and-command manner.

The most effective approach is to plant the virus in their heads that their interests actually coincide with their parents’ interests. This type of magical thinking goes something like this:

‘If you practice the violin then everyone wins!’ [which in the great scheme of things is actually true]

‘How many kids can read music at your age? You guys are so lucky!’

‘I heard some violins at a concert last night and I was amazed how well the musicians played! You guys would have really enjoyed it.’

You really can’t force a child to have a genuine interest in a musical instrument. You have to lead them to that goal indirectly.

In the long run you have to think up reasons why they might like to pursue this activity on their own volition. For example: because it is fun; because you can perform to admiring crowds; because it sounds really cool to hear dozen of other kids play violin at the same time; because some really cool people play violin [e.g. Ashley MacIsaac, Stephane Grappelli, and Itzhak Perlman]; because the violin is the sweetest-sounding little instrument in the world and it’s been around relatively unchanged for hundred of years.

Now, especially after their performance successes, it is mostly smooth sailing for all of us. The boys practice right after school without complaint. There are no more metaphysical discussions about the legitimacy of authority in parent-child relationships, or the meaning of discipline in a decentralized, post-modern world. Leading graduate seminars with ten year olds is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Now it is more about playing notes with the correct pitch, playing the score as it’s written, and trying to create the sweetest tone with the bow.

Charles and Camilla at Dundurn Castle, Hamilton

Hamilton proved not to be a hotbed of republican sentiment last week on November 9, 2009 when Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, visited Dundurn Castle.

Dundurn Castle (completed 1835) was built as the stately home of Sir Allan MacNab, an influential and wealthy settler of Hamilton who just so happens to be the great-great-great grandfather of Camilla. Dundurn Castle is now a well-loved civic museum in west Hamilton. It is one of the most attractive 19th century buildings in Canada and as a museum gives an excellent idea of the upstairs-downstairs life in an early Canadian estate.

Dundurn Castle is located a few blocks from where I live, which made it for me the most convenient royal visit ever. I simply had to stroll over to its grounds and wait for the royal excitement to build. And build it did. Hamiltonians, as it turned out, were very excited to see Charles and Camilla.

We don’t get many royal visits here in Hamilton so we didn’t know quite what to expect. Would we be dazzled by the celebrity status of the visiting royals [yes!], would the royals make us feel unworthy and unloved and treat us like residents of a simple steel town [no!], would we tire of the artificiality of an heir to a foreign crown visiting a former colony [not at all!]. We lapped it all up. There was nary a voice of dissent; no discouraging words were heard. Overall, it appeared to be a very successful visit.

I think the fact that Dundurn Castle has a direct family connection to Camilla had a positive effect on the mood of the visit. I think it would be impossible to predict this result prior to their visit. Through skill, some shared history and good luck, Charles and Camilla struck gold this time. They encountered something for which all royals must occasionally yearn: an adoring crowd of loyal subjects.

I am by no means a monarchist but I must confess I too enjoyed the royal visit. I enjoyed the fact that it brought publicity and recognition to the charms of Dundurn Castle and Hamilton. Charles and Camilla appeared to be a stable middle-aged couple who are happy in their own skin. They are not glamour-pusses in the manner of Diana but they appeared to be quite skilled at small-talk with the locals, of asking pertinent questions and of understanding to perfection their mind-numbingly ceremonial role.

In anticipation of the royal visit to Canada there were several newspaper articles detailing how Canadians were quite apathetic about the monarchy, didn’t think much of Charles, or had no idea that Canada was configured as a constitutional monarchy. But based on my experience during the royal visit, I don’t think Charles should worry about his family’s future prospects in Canada. Canadians are clearly in no hurry to get rid of their monarchy. There is a greater chance that Canada will vote to become a Vegan Republic or a Bolshevik Protectorate than that it will cease to be a parliamentary democracy with a British monarch as Head of State. The concept of the ‘Crown’ is deeply embedded in the Canadian system of government and psyche; it would be hard to imagine Canada without it, regardless of what its citizens might think about any one particular heir or monarch.

The whole concept of a ‘constitutional monarchy’ seems to be a little counter-intuitive. You would think that monarchies would tend to be deeply conservative places, but there are so many exceptions to this rule (e.g. the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) that it doesn’t appear to hold water. Republics are not necessarily more progressive and can sometimes veer in odd directions, as our neighbour to the south demonstrates. There is some evidence that Canada’s position as a stable, sometimes progressive democracy is not only in spite of its monarchist history but also because of it. Or maybe this is just the Kool-Aid talking.

Prince Charles meeting the crowd at Dundurn Castle

Charles is the scion of a wealthy, multi-national corporation who has spent most of his life waiting to become a king. It appears though that he spends his money in interesting ways. In architectural circles he is notorious for his interventionist and anti-modernist stance, but overall as an heir apparent, he seems harmless enough–perhaps even progressive in some ways. He is a patron of many causes, some of which could directly benefit Canada, such as heritage architecture, urban sustainability, environmentalism, support for disadvantaged youth, organic farming and alternative medicine. Interestingly, the current Conservative government in Ottawa has absolutely no interest in such causes. Clearly, their brand of conservatism is quite different from Charles’s.

Elmo and the Pirate Pickle

This year for Hallowe’en Ben decided to be a Pirate Pickle, while Liam dressed as the Sesame Street character Elmo.

Ben may have been inspired from the VeggieTales series, or he may have come up with the idea all by himself.

By dressing as Elmo, Liam was motivated by a desire to ‘leave childhood behind.’ We remain unclear how dressing up as Elmo will further this goal. Liam apparently doesn’t even like the Elmo character. We suspect he is working at an ironic level that is beyond our adult understanding.

The Pirate Pickle had been sprayed with an eco-friendly spray paint applied to bubble-wrap. This paint continues to flake off as we speak, while the Elmo costume was cleverly recycled from a cat costume. To maintain the Pickle’s bright green sheen (so it lasts until tomorrow) we may have to re-coat the pickle with eco-unfriendly paint, such as car enamel.

After much late-night handiwork by their mother Cornelia, Ben and Liam showed these costumes to their public this morning at school. When dropping off the boys at school it quickly became apparent that a Pirate Pickle held much more resonance with its Grade Four audience than did Elmo (which was discreetly stored in a plastic bag). Ben was like a rock star the instant he stepped out of the car [we chose to drive them to school because of the difficulties in transporting an over-sized Pirate Pickle by foot]. Ben hoisted his Pirate Pickle costume on a stick, like a medieval Crusader entering the gates of Jerusalem (which may be an appropriate simile given the Christian message behind the VeggieTales franchise).

Atrium of the Atrium building at MIP

The McMaster Innovation Park (MIP) had its official opening on October 26, 2009. I took a tour with several others and found the experience enjoyable and interesting.

MIP is a research park and technology transfer facility whose goal is to take technologies developed at McMaster University and transform them into viable businesses. MIP joins dozens of other university research parks in Canada.

The main building in which the opening took place will be known as the Atrium @ MIP. This renovated building was the former headquarters for the former Westinghouse/Camco facility. In the Atrium the commercialization firm Trivaris is an important tenant, under whose umbrella several local start ups have found support.

A new CANMET (Canadian Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology) building is under construction next door to the Atrium. In this new building CANMET’s Materials Technology Laboratory will be housed. This lab appears to be an excellent tenant and anchor for the MIP and will produce over a hundred high-quality research jobs. Such stable, federal agency jobs are a great find for Hamilton and may help turn this part of West Hamilton into a little slice of Ottawa or Kanata.

Observations

The Atrium is an attractively-renovated industrial building with a large, bright atrium. It appears to provide high-quality office and workshop space in a convenient location. The Atrium already houses several high-value and viable-sounding businesses.

The site plan for the MIP appears ambitious. It may take awhile to build out the entire MIP site since it offers lots of land for expansion. Its proximity to McMaster University, to attractive residential areas, and its convenient highway-side location are advantageous.

MIP represents the capital-intensive end of business development: the kind of innovation that requires significant investment from government, universities or venture capitalists to bring to fruition.

Currently, from an urban design perspective, MIP is relatively isolated from surrounding urban areas. If MIP’s site were connected to Frid St it would become much more accessible to the residential and industrial neighbourhoods that lie to the east.

The ideas that appear to motivate MIP are the following:

• Utilize McMaster R&D as a business resource
• Focus on areas for which McMaster has research expertise, such as engineering, material science and medical technology
• Support, through R&D, traditional Hamilton industries such as manufacturing and steel production
• Take an entrepreneurial approach to business development
• Provide support and infrastructure to growing businesses
• Follow a business development model of incubation, acceleration and ongoing support.

Some of these strategies rely on the prediction that manufacturing and steel production have a future in the region. This, I think is plausible, despite the fact that manufacturing and steel production in the region have been severely hit during the current recession.

I’m not sure, though, that all eggs should be placed in that one basket.

Innovation

The word ‘innovation’ takes on a slightly civic-booster quality at the MIP. When the word ‘innovation’ is used in a general, non-specific way it can become a motherhood-type issue that loses meaning and significance. The word ‘excellence’ is in a similar category: nice to have but just saying it doesn’t make it so.

Remember too that innovation is not always required to make money and to create employment. Stelco may not have been the most innovative steel producer in the world but it did employ many people.

If you are trying to establish a successful university research park, of course, what you profess to encourage is innovation. In all of the other university research parks in Canada innovation is also the method for creating value. But if everyone is doing it, then there is little differentiation from your competition.

Getting true innovation started in a place like MIP is tricky to design and depends on fortuitous blends of interesting research, discoveries that are commercial exploitable and the overall business and social climate in the region.

Innovation also depends on the type of people who end up working at MIP. If they are motivated, connected, well-trained and interesting then innovative work might result; or it might not. Innovation is a difficult quantity to conjure on demand.

In academic settings and in industry innovation is not always encouraged, but combining academic research with industrial production can be a potent combination, as witnessed by successful research parks near Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Tokyo, etc.

Lacking a real insider’s perspective on what is going on at MIP, it is difficult to assess whether what I saw on the tour was innovative or not [with the exception of Crazy Daisy, a firm that links awareness of mental health issues with floral design--now that's a cool idea].

What MIP lacks

View from the Atrium building to CANMET

At MIP, there was little mention of green development or alternative technologies. Canada currently is very weak in these areas, despite the fact that green technologies will likely provide substantial future employment in all developed countries. It is this exclusion that makes the MIP seem much less interesting and progressive than it could have been.

At the MIP Opening there were few cultural, social or community aspects to the project beyond the display of art on the walls. The art I did see seemed like a token inclusion.

What would have been interesting is to see an art installation, involving technology found at MIP, that occupied the entire building atrium.

Technology and business development appear to be king at the MIP. It appears to be a button-down kind of place. Scruffy artist types, or grad students with wild hair were nowhere to be seen.

MIP is focused on domains such as material science and biomedical engineering. These are inherently less glamorous and engaging to the popular imagination than research areas such as media arts, green design, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.

However, investment and employment growth do not always require glamour. Many cities earn lots of money working on the dullest things.

For the Supercrawl, James St North was closed to traffic between York/Wilson and Cannon. This moved the centre of gravity of the event a couple blocks south. Usually, most Art Crawl action happens between Cannon and Barton. Moving it southwards made the Sonic Unyon building on Wilson feel more central, which during normal crawls feels like an outlier. Several live music stages had been set up. Covered stages were necessary that night because otherwise musicians and equipment would have become completely drenched. The wet weather discouraged crawling along James St. It appeared that fewer galleries than normal were open. The Loose Canon Gallery, as is usually the case, had some of the most interesting art on display. The you me gallery, which is often our first port of call, was closed.

The Art Crawl is primarily a linear event, much like that portion of Nuit Blanche that runs along Queen St West in Toronto. On the strip lots is going on. Off the strip the neighbourhoods are quiet. In my opinion the Art Crawl should include more of James Street, both North and South. It should stretch all the way between Liuna Station at Murray to St Joseph’s Hospital. It this way it would include most of the urban highlights of downtown Hamilton, including Gore Park. The Art Crawl has a way to go before there are sufficient attractions to encourage people to tramp all this way, but one can dream.

To attract crowds to the Supercrawl (which it sounds like they were successful in doing) live music became the main attraction. Overall, this made it less of an art-focused event. This may have been because of the weather or it may have been by design. Although live music is enjoyable to see anywhere in the city (the Locke St Festival is especially good in this respect) I’m not sure how successfully live music on fixed stages relates to the pedestrian movement inherent to an Art Crawl. With an Art Crawl you want people to promenade and explore art venues; with fixed music stages you want people to stop and listen to music. Therefore, the Supercrawl for me was like a regular Art Crawl, but with less crawling and less art.

Dogs on roof in Hamilton, ON

Hamilton has the reputation of being a classic rust-bucket city with an economy excessively dependent on heavy industry. It is seen by its critics as an unclean, rough and slightly dangerous place, where reckless civic decisions are made behind closed doors. It is the Golden Horseshoe’s version of the dark Satanic mills of industrial England combined with the inter-ethnic tensions of a seething, immigrant-fueled city like Chicago.

Mall parking lot in Burlington, ON

Burlington on the other hand is a classic North American bedroom community, where the ills of post-Victorian society have been scrubbed clean and suburban comforts can be enjoyed guilt-free. In Burlington, civic decision-making is seen as more sober, with less chance of overt corruption. By moving from Hamilton to Burlington people could avoid industrial blight, poverty, intractable social problems and historical decay. Hamilton has industrial production, including steel, as its native industry. In Burlington the native industries are suburban tract housing and real estate development. Hamilton is left-leaning politically while Burlington is right-leaning. Hamilton is Scorsese’s Mean Streets while Burlington is more Leave it to Beaver.

History of building

One important axis in which Hamilton/Burlington differ is that of history. Hamilton has lots of history while Burlington appears to have very little.

In Hamilton, history cannot be marginalized simply because there is so much of it. From mid-Victorian churches, to worker’s cottages, to aging factory complexes, history–as far as architectural infrastructure is concerned–is in great supply. However, demand for this history does not correspond to the abundance of its supply.

As in many historical industrial cities, the historical richness of the place is confounded with its current, marginal economic value. This tends to grossly undervalue these resources. With diminished value, old dilapidated buildings are destroyed without outcry. A movement to create money from these old bricks, say, through industrial tourism as found in England and Germany, has yet to appear.

Burlington was purposely built to escape history and to start afresh. Nowhere in Burlington is there much evidence of settlement prior to, say, 1900. Burlington first grew as a post-war bedroom community to Hamilton. It has shifted its focus to being more a bedroom community to Toronto, or a viable edge city in its own right. Burlington also has a surprisingly diverse industrial corridor along the busy QEW, which divides Burlington in two.

Burlington is presented as a modern solution to a traditional Victorian city like Hamilton: in order to build the modern city it was necessary to escape the burdens of the past. Burlington encourages one to forget about history and focus more on consumption. Residents move there not in spite of the lack of historical context but rather because of it.

History of ethnic enclaves

When immigrants move to a rough and tumble place like Hamilton, the resources provided by ones ethnic community and church are a vital source of support. In the absence of money, support comes from the community. Immigrants often live near their supportive communities in urban enclaves.

Hamilton has the remnants of urban enclaves, such as the Italian and Portuguese North End. However, these are losing its ethnic flavour as residents acquire sufficient mobility to move to cleaner, relatively bucolic suburbs like Burlington. As older communities move on, newer ethnic communities like the Vietnamese or Somalis take their place.

Burlington was from the start a post-ethnic type of place. In Burlington, support comes less from community and more from cash-in-hand. In Burlington, the average household income is much higher than in Hamilton. The more money you have, the less dependent you are on support from your community.

In Burlington there is ethnic diversity in the population, since like Hamilton, it has inflows of immigrants. But you would not know this from driving around town. Neighbourhoods in Burlington tend to look all the same. There is some differentiation in neighbourhoods, but this is caused more by variations in income than in ethnic make up.

Avoidance of poverty and ambiguity

To move to Burlington, due to its elevated property prices, you need to earn a certain income. This is a crude stereotype, of course, but as a general rule being a resident of Burlington indicates a certain base household income. This means that if you move to Burlington you can successfully avoid much contact with the urban poor. For some, this is an attractive proposition.

In Hamilton, the chance of poverty avoidance is much reduced. Hamilton, like Buffalo and Pittsburgh, has lots of poor people. But there are also considerable numbers of not-poor people too. Therefore, saying you are a resident of Hamilton imparts less information than saying you live in Burlington. In Hamilton you might be poor, or you might not be. You might be living there because you have no other options, or you might be there by choice. This ambiguity of rank and position creates opportunities to move between social strata.

In larger cities such as Toronto and New York, enormous wealth lives side by side with striking poverty. Diversity of income and circumstance are the marks of most traditional cities. Hamilton is traditionally urban in this respect: if you want to avoid poverty then Hamilton is not your kind of place. Burlington is the opposite: if you want to avoid poverty, Burlington might be just the place for you.

Property maintenance and social diversity

One striking difference between Hamilton and Burlington is their approach to property maintenance. Hamilton is full of buildings that require huge amounts of maintenance. Their bricks need re-pointing, parapets are falling down, flashings are corroded and need to be replaced. Typically, this maintenance work is done inadequately, presumably because of the huge expense of doing it well.

Burlington, on the other hand, is perhaps overly-maintained–despite being a place where low or no-maintenance finishes such as vinyl siding are common. Burlington is full of house-proud home-owners who edge their lawns and power-wash their car-ports to an itch of their lives. There is a great sense of keeping up your property so that the neighbours have no reason to complain. In Burlington, with its relatively homogeneous population, there is concern about what neighbours might think.

In Hamilton, with its more diverse population, there is less concern to conform in this way because there is less likelihood your neighbours are similar to you.

Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY

I am lucky to live in a border region of Canada. Over the weekend I visited some old friends in Buffalo, NY. Driving to Buffalo takes about an hour from my home in Hamilton. Passports are now required for travel into the States. This prevents those without passports from making the crossing. This tends to discriminate more against Americans than it does Canadians, since the proportion of Americans without passports is higher. Going into the USA from Canada is a more unsettling experience than the reverse journey (regardless of your nationality). The heightened American border paranoia discourages casual tourism between the countries and overall this policy of treating all visitors with heightened suspicion appears contrary to American interests. But they do let me in.

Quality of architecture

Buffalo has a reputation as being an iconic rust-belt city whose fortunes have fallen on hard times. It tends to reinforce the Canadian attitude towards the States as a place where social and political problems somehow seem more intractable. However, from an architectural perspective it might surprise some that Buffalo contains many architectural jewels. The eras before and after the Gilded Age have been kind to Buffalo, at least for buildings you might find in architectural guide books. Outstanding architects such as Wright, Richardson, Sullivan, Upjohn and Olmsted left their mark in way that cannot be matched on the Ontario side of the border, even in the larger cities such as Toronto. Whatever appeal Canada might have does not appear to be caused by the quality of its architecture or urban planning.

End of Steel

Despite its wealth of architecture, Buffalo appears to suffer from the processes of post-industrialization much more severely than does Ontario. In Buffalo and nearby Lackawanna (the Buffalo equivalent of the East End of Hamilton), the mills pulled out quickly, leaving behind a wealth of industrial ruins, which are photogenic in that post-apocalyptic style I so admire. As in its sister city of Pittsburgh, the steel producers decided very quickly that there was no point in pretending that steel production had a future there. In Ontario, they apparently didn’t make such a decision and the steel factories continue to belch smoke and to provide employment. The industrial districts of Hamilton continue to appear much like Lackawanna did thirty years ago. It is not at all clear why the two nations have had this different trajectory despite being located in what seems to be similar geographical and market contexts.

Geography

Buffalo, even though it is the second largest city in New York state, is an outpost for the state on Lake Erie. It is separated from the main population centres in eastern New York state by the Appalachian mountain range. Buffalo faces the sometimes obscure northern country of Canada and depends on the Great Lakes for its water-bound transportation. A major factor in Buffalo’s history was the construction of the Erie Canal system, which connects the inland waterways of the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. When the canal first opened in 1825 it provided a direct link to the fast-growing regions of the West. This geographical advantage, which encouraged the early growth of Buffalo, has now disappeared. Canada is a country for which proximity to the USA is a fundamental factor in development. The USA has a huge internal market. This means it’s not too dependent on exposure to its northern neighbour.

Population and population decline

Ontario is the centre of population density in Canada. Hamilton is near the geographic centre of the so-called ‘Golden Horseshoe’ area of Ontario, situated at the western end of Lake Ontario. It is part of one of the few regions in Canada that approaches the population density of the eastern seaboard of the USA. Hamilton not only functions as an industrial centre [in probable decline], but also as a city which is in commutable distance to several dynamic, growing cities in the region, such as Toronto and Waterloo. Hamilton is geographically at the centre of its own national context whereas Buffalo is off to one side. Buffalo, like Pittsburgh and other rust belt cities has suffered de-population due to the processes of de-industrialization. This appears to be a major factor in the overall morale of the city. It is harder to feel good about your city if your friends and neighbours are continually ‘voting with their feet.’ Hamilton has not experienced such de-population and its morale seems correspondingly higher.

Race Relations

Hamilton has a predominantly white population and has, until fairly recently, been populated predominantly by those of European descent. This is now changing after the introduction of more equitable, colour-blind immigration policies in Canada in the 60’s and 70’s. Hamilton now sees the growth of new communities by immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. If immigration trends continue Hamilton will follow the lead of Toronto and increasingly have a foreign-born population whose ancestral ties are not with Europe. This demographic change is welcomed from most quarters and adds to the attractiveness of the city for both investment and daily living.

In Buffalo, there is a similar population of Europeans who were attracted during the last century to jobs in industry, as can be found in Hamilton. An important aspect of American social history is the Great Migration of blacks from the southern states to work in northern industrial cities such as Buffalo. This internal migration, which has had such a dramatic effect on racial politics in the USA, has no equivalent in Canada.

In Hamilton, as in Buffalo, there are blighted neighbourhoods where property values are low, environmental degradation is severe and overall morale and opportunities are limited. What appears to be different is that in Hamilton the racial composition of these neighbourhoods does not appear to be a factor in their blight. In Buffalo, and in other American cities such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit, the racial composition of neighbourhoods plays an important role in urban geography.

Gallery Opening on James St. North, Hamilton

Hamilton’s Art Crawl occurs on the second Friday of every month. My wife and I try to go to it every month. What attracts us is not the only the art, which can sometimes be quite interesting, but also the street life and crowd scenes that the crawl attracts. These types of crowds we find very enjoyable. There is a variety of people who form these crowds: young hipsters, middle-aged people with interest in art or culture, people who happen to be walking by and those who simply wish to enjoy the streets of Hamilton.

The Art Crawl is located on James St North–the heart of the historic core of Hamilton. On its route are the Hamilton Armory and the Anglican Christ’s Church Cathedral–two of the more attractive architectural landmarks in downtown Hamilton. Along the route there is some retail, several galleries, a few restaurants. The Mixed Media store at the corner of James and Cannon is a major crowd attractor. In the galleries not much art appears to get sold. On the surface not much money appears to be changing hands. At times other than during these once-monthly events, the neighbourhood goes back to its normal role as a downtown street with shops, sports bars and restaurants that serves a lively, mostly Portuguese community.

Art crawls provide not only a means to revitalize a city but also provide glimpses of alternative lifestyles. One group found at the Art Crawl are young people trying to establish identities as artists or designers, or to flirt with the possibility of creative, possibly unconventional lifestyles. In larger cities, with well-established cultural industries, the sight of such young people are commonplace. In Hamilton, they are a new development.

Such young members of the ‘creative classes’ I think are important for the future of Hamilton. In the current Canadian economic climate, which does not favour Hamilton’s economic base of heavy industry and manufacturing, an Art Crawl appears to be a low cost way to experiment with possible futures. It will not provide all the answers, but it does provide new ideas for a city dependent on declining smoke-stack industries.

If I were someone who wishes to invest money in the Art Crawl (as opposed to merely attend them) I would think about some of the following issues:

The Art Crawl only happens once a month. Is that enough to make a real impact on the city?

In my mind the Art Crawl is a big development in the cultural life of Hamilton. By their nature Art Crawls can’t be continuous events, since then there wouldn’t be time for artists to produce art or put together new shows. Art Crawls depend on the production of new art to remain interesting and authentic. In a city like Hamilton there is only a limited supply of such work.

Where could the Art Crawl lead for Hamilton?

The Art Crawl will likely have the effect of bringing development to James St North. If this development process is successful, practising artists who are dependent on cheap rents may eventually be driven out. In Hamilton’s case though, James St North is adjacent to regions of Hamilton such as the Beasley and Barton Street that should have cheap rents for the foreseeable future; a stone’s throw from James St North are some of the most poverty-afflicted urban areas in Canada.

What Hamilton needs are not just areas that might support development or gentrification (which is not necessarily a good thing) but in the creation of cultural industries where people might be able to find stable employment. In this respect I think the Art Crawl is very promising.

Should Art Crawls be about art or can they be generalized to other things?

Art Crawls depend on the existence of artists studios, galleries and other aspects of cultural production to become viable. Doors Open events on the other hand depend on the existence of a body of architectural and urban design resources that can be visited. They could be called ‘Architectural Crawls.’

Other possible types of crawls might be:

• Crawls within and between neighbourhoods (e.g. Jane’s Walks)
• Crawls between bars and restaurants (Pub Crawls)
• Crawls that show the inside of factories or other workplaces (Factory Crawls)
• Crawls between houses of worship (God Crawls)

What is common to all of these is that they involve people willing to engage in their city and to interact in a way that may not have been possible without them.

Art Crawls are cool and fun, but do they actually earn anyone any money?

Art Crawls are initially intended to support artists and galleries. It is usually the arts communities that initially promote them. If they become popular and start attracting crowds then these crowds can be put to many uses.

One of the most common side-effects is that they can increase property values in artists districts, which often has the effect of eventually displacing artists from these districts. I think the potential to create new markets for cultural goods is real yet the probability that artists will necessarily benefit from this process is uncertain.

Art Crawls are like websites that provide a service of real value yet are free to users. The initial goal is to attract an audience. Often the revenue stream that might be derived from this audience is not always clear at the beginning.

Are Art Crawls elitist events; do they alienate as well as attract segments of the population?

To become excited about an Art Crawl one presumably needs to have some interest in artists, galleries and cultural expression. This will likely remain a minority interest in an industrial city like Hamilton. Yet, being a minority interest is not necessarily elitist.

There appears to be no attempt by most participants to gain extra privilege by attending these events. Most participants just seem to want to enjoy art. People who enjoy art are not necessarily members of an elite group despite fine art’s occasional connection to those with power and influence. In fact, artists are often among the lowest paid members of society.