Mush Hole, Brantford

By michael | Published: 15 March 2011

Last weekend, I went with my sons to a powerful art show at the Brantford Arts Block called Mush Hole Remembered: R. G. Miller by the accomplished Mohawk artist R. Gary Miller-Lahiaaks (This show runs until April 9, 2011).

The best commentary on this show is that which is included in the show itself. The artist and curator’s statements are powerful and moving. These statements are found at the end of this post.

The show consists of paintings and drawings inspired by Miller’s experiences as a child inmate at the Mohawk Institution, a.k.a. the Mush Hole. The Mohawk Institute was Brantford’s local Indian residential school, closed down in 1969. This former school lies about 3 km from downtown Brantford, near the banks of the meandering Grand River.

The fact that the artist refers to himself as an inmate, as opposed to a student, is indicative of the nature of the place. It was more a prison than a school. The brutalizing tendencies of this institution was more prominent than any educational intent or result.

Attending the Mohawk Institute was an extremely painful experience for the artist, which has reverberated throughout his adult life. Miller’s experiences at the school included beatings, rapes and hunger.

The fact that places like the The Mohawk Institute exist is an inconvenient truth in Canadian history.

Not surprisingly, this early trauma created demons for Miller, which he has had to overcome. One way he battles these demons is by producing art and exhibiting his work. His process of healing is an ongoing one.

Commentary

The art

The works in the show are in a variety of media. The most prominent are paintings of native boys and girls standing in front of the Mohawk Institute.

The children seem happy enough and appear to derive support and camaraderie from each other. One message you might derive from these paintings is that although the Mohawk Institute may have been brutal and racist, at least the children had each other. I’m sure the reality was more nuanced than that.

There are drawings in the exhibition that suggest the Mohawk Institute was a site of inhumanity on par with other physical and cultural genocides, such as the Jewish Holocaust and the Cambodian killing fields. There are images of skulls and of death cults. There is a drawing of an emaciated figure reminiscent of the liberation of death camps in WWII. One large drawing of a crying child reminds me of the famous photograph of the Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack. A painting of a very young child suggests that the abuse and horror of the Mohawk Institute were inflicted on even the youngest inmates.

The Mohawk Institute is clearly represented by Miller as Brantford’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’

Buildings have a prominent role in Miller’s paintings. They are painted in a lurid, expressionistic style that suggests that despite a facade of Victorian respectability, unspeakable cruelties occurred inside.

Also prominent in the artwork is the so-called Mohawk Chapel, which still stands across the road from the Mohawk Institute. The Mohawk Chapel, whose official name is Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks (St Paul’s), was the first Protestant church in Upper Canada and is now the oldest surviving church in Ontario.

In Miller’s paintings these two institutions are joined together. In the daily routines of the children, they were probably either at the Mohawk Institute or they were across the road at the chapel.

However, the proximity and relationship of the Mohawk Chapel to the Mohawk Institute is a disquieting one. It was a close relationship between the two power centres of the time: the church and the state. However, it was a relationship that did not bode well for the humane treatment of native children.

The overall message of the exhibition is clear: native children suffered greatly at the Mohawk Institute, that the artist was one such child who suffered there and that this oppression was systemic, institutionalized and supported by church and state working together.

The final solution

As the curator Neal Keating writes: The Indian residential school system was an attempt at a “final solution” to Canada’s Indian problem.

The reference to a ‘final solution’ is clearly eliminationist in spirit. This is what ties the practices of the Mohawk Institute into instances of genocide in other parts of the world.

There is this two-fold aspect to such genocidal tendencies: one, that the mere existence of a people presents some kind of threat or problem to a dominant population, and two, that simply getting rid of the minority population is a sensible way to address the manufactured problem.

The Mohawk Institute closed in 1969, after 140 years of “killing the Indian in the child.” That is a long time for a system, which is today widely considered as fundamentally racist and abusive. This system was not a flash in the pan. It lasted far, far longer than the Nazi regime in Germany, the killing fields era in Cambodia, the genocide in Rwanda and even the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Having your kids taken away

A particularly appalling aspect of the residential school system is the fact that it involved forcibly separating children from their parents and other communal care givers.

Children were often removed from their families at an early age. The level of care at residential schools was typically brutal and oppressive. The mortality rates were shockingly high. Some children spent most of their childhood in places like the Mohawk Institute. The only reason that many native parents sent their children to residential schools was because the government forced them to.

Children were not allowed access to their language or culture. Indeed, this was the whole point of the residential school system: to break the bonds of traditional culture within aboriginal families.

If the government does not trust you to raise your own children adequately, this in effect devalues all of native culture. Indeed, the history of Canada like most other New World countries is noted for its pervasive devaluation of native cultures. This process of devaluation continues to this day.

A childhood spent in such appalling conditions is not conducive to forming habits of self that serve you well in adulthood. A process of self-alienation is expected to result in dissociative psychological disorders and self-destructive behaviors. This is what Miller reports happened to him. His experience at the Mohawk Institute is still a raw wound.

The system

As students of Canadian history are aware, the Indian residential school system is one of the darker episodes of Canadian history.

For those who study the system, it appears less like a curious anomaly in Canadian history and more of an inherent aspect of native and non-native relations in this country. The residential school system was systematic and bureaucratic in nature, fully supported by the Government of Canada.

In 2008, The Government of Canada apologized for the residential school system.

At the time, it seemed like the apology was of some significance to First Nations people but that it meant much less to those outside that community. It is this asymmetrical nature of the apology that strikes me as odd.

True apologies involve some moral cost to those making the apology. It should bring some sense of shame to some people. I am not sure that this apology was of that type.

When this apology occurred in was just another news item. It was like it happened long ago and did not necessarily affect people today. Yet we know from Miller’s work that the effects of the system reverberate loud and clear in the minds of its victims.

Therefore, I saw little psychological or emotional connection between the non-native population–most of whom see it as an issue which doesn’t affect them directly–and the very real psychological pain felt by First Nations people. The Schindler’s List of the residential school system has yet to be made.

Canadians haven’t arrived at the point where they see the racism and brutality of the residential school system not as an incidental aspect of sending native children away to learn from a supposedly superior culture, but as its fundamental aspect.

Conclusion

Standing in front of Brantford’s Mohawk Institute is a weird and disquieting experience. You really do get the feeling that if these bricks could talk they would tell a sad and painful tale.

There is something about this city of Brantford, its meandering Grand River, the former residential school with its spooky facade and grounds, the nearby Mohawk Chapel, all of which are down the road from the largest Indian reserve in Canada. There is a strange confluence of forces there, which do not appear to be benign or entirely in the past.

The children in residential schools were inmates. Their only crime was that they were aboriginal. Despite being completely innocent these children were treated as if they were guilty of some unspeakable crime. The fact that trauma was inflicted as a matter of government policy is a continuing source of pain for First Nations.

The artist R. Gary Miller suffered greatly under this system. His way forward–his means of survival–was not to remain silent. He expresses clearly through his art what the residential school system has done to him. I applaud his courage.

As the curator Neal Keating writes “The curriculum of the Mohawk Institute taught the artist that aboriginal culture was wrong, that aboriginal language was forbidden and that aboriginal spirituality was particularly abhorrent.”

This suggests that the opposite is likely true: that aboriginal culture is as correct as any other and is worthy of respect, that aboriginal languages are the bedrock of native culture and cannot be denied without harming the culture in fundamental ways, and that native spirituality is not only not abhorrent but likely presents the best approach in healing from wounds afflicted by an aggressive and brutal alien culture.

Statements from the exhibition

Exhibition title

MUSH HOLE REMEMBERED: R. G. MILLER

“Mush Hole” is the nickname for the Indian residential school that was
officially known as the Mohawk Institute. R. Gary Miller-Lahiaaks (Mohawk, b. 1950, Six Nations) was put into the Mush Hole in 1952, when he was 2 years old. He was kept there for the next 11 years, until 1963. As a child-inmate in the Mush Hole, Miller was subjected to severe beatings, repeated rapes, and chronic hunger. All this delivered by the non-Native adult supervisors who exercised total power over the Indian children’s lives; this in the name of Christianity and Civilization.

Artist’s statement

This exhibition represents a combination of vague, mundane memories of years at the school, and flashes of horror experienced there. They are the strongest memories I could approach without descending into a place I would not be able to emerge from.

This project evolved from decades of need to express my personal outrage at the world, combined with a moment of political timeliness. I thought it would be groundbreaking and exciting to tackle – it turned into four years of nightmares and breakdowns, until I realized I had a more fragile grip on my center than I knew. This was as close as I could come with sharing my story.

Perhaps other Residential School Survivors will take up the gauntlet and excise their demons in their own way. Mine have only been exposed – not destroyed. l know now that I cannot carry on living on the surface of my self. My artwork previous to the conception of this project has always been an attempt to find a raison d’étre and self-respect. I am incomplete and l need help to heal and achieve peace with my past. You cannot cauterize an infected wound.

R. Gary Miller-Lahiaaks, 2008

Curator’s Statement

Sometimes art is created for the purposes of revealing truths that hurt, and performing a rite of exorcism. This is one of those occasions. Like tens of thousands of other First Nations people alive in Canada today, R. Gary Miller-Lahiaaks (Mohawk, b. 1950, Six Nations) is surviving the Indian residential school experience. This exhibit is about that experience, and the memory of trauma induced by a genocidal system aimed at achieving a “final solution” to Canada’s Indian problem. The residential school that Miller was in was the Mohawk Institute, a.k.a. “the Mush Hole,” which finally closed down in 1969, after some 140 years of “killing the Indian in the child.” It is significant that the first opening of this exhibit is taking place on the site of the former
Mush Hole, which is today the Woodland Cultural Centre.

R. Gary Miller was put into the Mush Hole in the early 1950s, when he was very young, two or three years old. He remained there for the next 11 years, until 1964. In the four decades since then he has been hospitalized numerous times for a variety of psychiatric disorders. He has repeatedly attempted suicide, been arrested for assault, wrecked his marriages, and developed severe substance abuse and other health problems. A common pattern is evident in the thick file of medical and police records for Miller: when the doctors and nurses asked him why he did it, he invariably answered that it was because of what happened to him in the Mush Hole.

What happened to him? Like many others, Miller’s childhood was burned up in the aboriginal holocaust of Canada. His young body was regularly beaten for some nine years (starting at the age of four or live), serially raped and molested for more than six years, and undernourished for all eleven years. In addition to this, the curriculum of the Mohawk Institute taught him that aboriginal culture was wrong, that aboriginal language was forbidden, and that aboriginal spirituality was particularly abhorrent.

Neal Keating, 2008

Posted in Canada, Ontario, Peace, Writing | 3 Comments

If Charlie Kaufman were to write Cucumber design scenarios

By michael | Published: 11 March 2011

A long-standing interest of mine is how best to encourage real creativity in design. One way is to write design scenarios, which express that which we hope to see designed. If this process were to be open so that a diverse group of stakeholders could participate, then the quality of the design process and the resulting design product should improve.

An excellent design and specification tool for software projects is called Cucumber, described briefly in an earlier post. Cucumber is one tool in an innovative approach to software engineering called agile or extreme programming, in which tests are written before the software itself. Using tests this way kills two birds with one stone: it describes what you want in the software, as well as enables automated testing about whether these requirements are satisfied. As you build the requirements you construct the software that satisfies them, all at the same time.

Software design then becomes a cumulative exercise. Therefore, you don’t have to think of all of the good ideas at once. This is expected to reduce the cognitive load on software designers and increase their quality of life, which are two of the basic goals of the agile programming movement. Developer happiness tends to increase the quality of software. With the increasing role that software plays in our lives, this is not a trivial concern.

If inventing software involves creating interesting scenarios, this implies that how these scenarios are written becomes more relevant. Are software scenarios capable of showing the stylistic and genre variations as seen in other types of scenarios?

One industry in which scenario writing takes a central position is the film industry. Is storytelling in film making similar to storytelling in software design? Are software designers a type of screenwriter?

What a normal Cucumber scenario looks like

Courtesy of the Cucumber website:

Feature: Addition
In order to avoid silly mistakes
As a math idiot
I want to be told the sum of two numbers
Scenario: Add two numbers
Given I have entered 50 into the calculator
And I have entered 70 in to the calculator
When I press add
Then the result should be 120 on the screen

This scenario tests whether addition in a software application is performed correctly. This might be the first step in a Cucumber-driven process. It could lead directly into software development in Ruby, in which the software development part — the part that involves writing actual Ruby code — is not really any more difficult writing the scenarios and features. Therefore, scenario writing not only informs the process but it actually drives the process.

As you can see above, the way in which features and scenarios are written in Cucumber is readily understandable by anyone who can read English. All of the words in bold are key words in that they have special meaning in Cucumber. Overall, it is simple and straightforward way of expressing actions, motivations, characterizations and possibly, narrative arcs: things that are important to the dramatic arts in general.

Cucumber scenarios form a good interface between those who can read or possibly write them (most of the population) and those who write computer code (a small minority).

It is important to remember that Cucumber specifications are executable. Cucumber takes them and checks your code to see that you’ve have actually implemented what the specifications demand. This is what makes them magical.

However, the scenario above is quite dull and software-specific. It lacks a compelling narrative arc. No one would read this scenario for pleasure, as one might a film script or a Jane Austen novel.

What a more interesting Cucumber scenario looks like

Feature: Heritage preservation
In order to keep communities healthy
As a citizen
I want old heritage buildings to be preserved
Scenario: Preserve unoccupied heritage buildings
Given old building is heritage quality
When no one is using the building productively
Then the owner should preserve the building

Here, the example is less trivial and begins to talk about things that some might find interesting. It expresses a policy specification for urban preservation in a compact form. This could affect cities in a real way.

Such a scenario might be a good first step in creating an architectural heritage inventory for cities in which heritage buildings are under some threat (such as the city in which I live). One could craft a heritage building application in the web application framework Ruby on Rails, starting with simple scenarios just like that.

What a Kaufman Cucumber scenario looks like

Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter and director, known for such wildly creative films as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Synecdoche, New York. He is one of the most creative people working in Hollywood today. Not all people like his work or find his humour to be hilarious, but I do.

Kaufman started as a screenwriter before becoming a director. His brilliant cinematic ideas begin as words on the page — much as a software developer working in an agile programing or behavior-driven development, begins as words on the page.

In Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman tells the story of a troubled theatre director who puts on an absurdly ambitious theatrical event, which last several decades. This theatre piece recreates New York in its entirety. It takes place on a sound stage built in a warehouse in New York.

Since the warehouse in which the piece occurs is also part of New York, this means within the recreation of New York you also find the warehouse in which the recreation takes place. This creates the opportunity to represent an infinite recursion of warehouses inside of warehouses ad infinitum. The fact that Kaufman attempts to represent this recursion dramatically is brilliant and very funny.

What would the Charlie Kaufman Cucumber scenario look like for this?

Feature: Infinite recursion in dramatic representations
In order to show the absurdity of excessive
representational ambition in theatre
As a film director
I want to show that infinite recursion may lead to absurdity
Scenario: Warehouse in a warehouse
Given all of NYC is portrayed dramatically
in a warehouse
When this warehouse is also part of NYC
Then this leads to recursive representations of
the warehouse, ad infinitum

As a film Synecdoche, New York combines a touchingly melancholy tale of a man’s mortality with the most absurdist type of humour. This means you laugh and cry simultaneously when matching the film. This is no mean feat in cinema. If only software were to inspire such emotions in their users!

To encourage more interesting software it must be a good idea to encourage more creativity in the writing of software scenarios. As the Charlie Kaufman example demonstrates this creativity can be quite open-ended, humorous and lead in potentially absurd directions.

Posted in Design, Software | Leave a comment

Executable design requirements in Cucumber

By michael | Published: 3 March 2011

A fundamental issue in design is that designers must interact with clients in formulating design requirements. It is difficult to come up with a means of expressing design requirements that is both comprehensive, capable of expressing creative ideas and aspirations, and is of use during the entire design and implementation process. This knowledge representation must enable and encourage participation from a diverse community of stakeholders, all with different concerns, expertise and frames of reference. Successful design projects are ones in which diverse concerns are integrated at an early stage.

It is also important that design requirements are testable throughout the design process, such that the following questions are managed: ‘Are we designing the things that we started out designing?‘ and ‘Is what we are designing fulfilling the requirements that we assembled over the course of the project?’ In complex design projects it is extremely easy to ‘lose the plot.’

Recently, I discovered a software development tool called Cucumber, which is scenario-based software for the computer language Ruby. Cucumber enables you to write software specifications in a format that is quite close to natural English and then guides you step-by-step as you implement your software. Once parts of a scenario are satisfied, then it tells you what feature you need to work on next. Therefore, Cucumber is a design and specification environment, but also a work-flow generator as well a testing framework. This combination of aspects appears to make it very powerful.

Cucumber encourages interactions between stakeholders, since the design specifications can actually be read (and possibly written) by those without technical backgrounds. This, I think, is enormously helpful. Not only that, but these testable specifications (the holy grail for many types of design process) stick around the entire design life-style. Cucumber helps right at the earliest stages of a design process, where ideas are free-flowing and ill-defined, but it also helps at the end of implementation stage where the integration of disparate parts may be more the issue. It encourages an agile process in which design and implementation are better integrated. You become less afraid to add new features or design ideas late in the game because the cost of integrating new ideas with things that work becomes manageable.

Design is not only a technical exercise, but is also a creative one in which stories or scenarios, which express our hopes and desires for a brighter future, must be created, refined and managed–in a collaborative setting. Cucumber is an exciting step towards that goal.

Posted in Design, Software | Leave a comment

The value of automated design requirements testing

By michael | Published: 9 February 2011

The other day I was reading a software book called The RSpec Book [Behaviour Driven Development with Rspec, Cucumber, and Friends, by David Chelimsky]. It deals with the specification and automated testing of software. This might sound as dry as dust to those lacking a geeky inner-core, but actually it raises interesting issues about design processes and requirements engineering.

In design, defining what is required is a complex task. What design requirements are and whether they have been fulfilled is one of the more central issues in design.

In large projects, a large book of requirements is often compiled at the beginning of the design process. This documentation is often brimming with interesting ideas and insights, much like a Victorian novel. However, the problem is that this impressive pile of documentation is usually not referred to as often as it should be later in the design process. The greater the length of this documentation, the harder it is to use. It is extremely easy to forget what you know.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all the content in the entire requirements documentation is executable so you can never miss that important nugget of wisdom buried deep inside?

By executable what I mean is that you can send a command to RSpec: ‘Check all of the specifications now, and report back whether they all still pass.’ If they pass, then they are coloured green, if not, red.

RSpec derives from an innovative approach to software engineering called Extreme Programming or Agile design methodologies, in which tests or specifications are written before the software itself. In order to make sure you are on track, you simply run the specifications that you have accumulated over time to see that they pass. If they do pass, then you can rest easy, otherwise you know where your work lies.

This, I think, is a revolutionary idea. RSpec currently works only on software written in the programming language Ruby but the idea could be applied to other design domains.

A non-software example

Recently in Hamilton Ontario the citizens were witnesses to a particularly farcical site selection process for a new stadium. It migrated from one site to another, like a travelling minstrel show, to land at the eleventh hour at a place which most consider not just a compromise but a true head-scratcher.

Some of the requirements for this stadium were:

  • Spend the least amount of money to accommodate an audience of a certain size
  • Accommodate both a professional football team as well as an amateur summer games
  • Improve the urban quality of the city core
  • Make it possible for people to get to the stadium using both public transit as well as private cars
  • Make the venue visible so that people travelling past the city are made aware of the stadium

Most of these requirements are typical of such sports stadium and are non-controversial. Surely it wouldn’t be that difficult to manage these requirements? However, no: the final site decided upon actually didn’t satisfy some of these basic requirements. It appears that requirements tests were not run as each new site was introduced. If RSpec could have been run, it would still be glowing bright red.

Adequate requirements documentation was almost certainly produced at the beginning of this project, but wasn’t referred to later, or was ignored. This politicization of design requirements is not that uncommon, but it is a setup for the depressing waste of civic resources. This, in a community that can ill afford such waste.

Of course, there is no RSpec yet for the site selection process of new municipal stadiums, nor are the design requirements in form that a tool like RSpec might understand. But this day is coming and I look forward to its arrival.

Posted in Cities, Design, Hamilton | Leave a comment

Demise of The Pearl Company

By michael | Published: 24 September 2010
The Pearl Company, Hamilton, ON

The Pearl Company, Hamilton, ON

A surprising event happened recently in Hamilton, The Pearl Company announced it was shutting down. The Pearl Company is a cultural enterprise owned and operated by Barbara Milne and Gary Santucci in the Landsdale neighbourhood of Hamilton. The reasons given for their decision to pull out was that they were no longer willing to fight City Hall in a long-running zoning dispute, which apparently has cost them a lot of money over the years.

The Pearl Company has been instrumental in bringing cultural events to one of the most distressed neighbourhoods of Hamilton. It is well known locally for putting on an almost absurdly large number of musical, theatrical and artistic performances in their converted industrial space. They also operate the successful Art Bus, which conducts tours of Hamilton’s art galleries twice a month. By all accounts, and from personal experience, their cultural contribution to the city is of the first order. They are the energizer bunnies of cultural entrepreneurship within the city. In any sensible regime they would be made heroes of urban renewal or be given the keys to the city. But not here.

There has been some discussion about the procedures involved in zoning applications and whether these procedures were followed, but the bottom line is that the good The Pearl Company is doing is readily apparent while the bad they might be doing is not apparent at all.

Development resulting from cultural initiatives such as the James St North Art Crawl gets a lot of press in Hamilton. But running The Pearl Company out of town seems not only to be a bad idea, it seems like a crazy idea. What would be ‘no-brainers’ in other places [e.g. supporting venues like The Pearl Company] are controversial here. Could this be another example of Hamilton shooting itself in the foot? Has Hamilton completed its transition from the ‘Ambitious City’ to one in which no good deed goes unpunished? Many people seem to think so.

Polarization

What newcomers to Hamilton quickly learn is that how they view the city may be diametrically opposed to how many long term residents view the city. We see the same place but may come away with sharply differing conclusions. This disparity of perspective is typical of polarized social, economic and political environments, which I suppose is what we have here in Hamilton. In some respects it is like a northern industrial version of the Deep South. Some benefit from the status quo while others do not.

The epicentre of polarized viewpoints is in the Lower Town of Hamilton and most particularly in its East End near King and Steven — exactly where The Pearl Company bravely set up shop. This is Hamilton’s Downtown Eastside. Poor people tend to live in this part of town, rich people elsewhere, and never the twain shall meet.

Micro-managing investment

You would think that a poverty-stricken city like Hamilton would try to encourage as much private investment as possible in this age of declining public coffers. Yet, City Hall appears to chase away people with real money to invest – with a stick. This city is not always open for business.

City Hall in its planning policies seems to have a preference about where private money ought to be spent. It has a desire to funnel investment into officially-sanctioned areas such as James St North, Locke and Ottawa Streets. These are attractive areas, with great potential to be sure, but what about the rest of the city? Neighbourhoods such as Landsdale are ignored and marginalized even though physically and architecturally there is not much difference between it and its more fashionable cousins.

Surely the city should focus on the fact that money is being invested rather than on where it is being invested. Trying to micro-manage private investment decisions through the planning and building departments seems absurd.

The power structures of some cities work against artists while some work against business people. In Hamilton they manage to work against both these camps. Those on both the left and the right wings of the political spectrum can experience the neglect of City Hall!

Marginalization of neighbourhoods

Hamilton, partly due to its archaic planning and zoning systems, intentionally concentrates poverty in areas such as Landsdale. Despite this concentration of poverty one can easily see the attraction of opening an arts and performance space in the middle of it. This is what normally happens in cities lucky enough to have entrepreneurs like the Pearl Company’s owners: investment takes place in distressed neighbourhoods since costs there are low. Fighting City Hall year on end obviously adds to investors’ costs.

In the US, neighbourhood marginalization and red-lining often has a racial component. But not so much in Hamilton — ethnic minorities can be found in most parts of the city. Here, marginalization is more poverty and environmentally based, with poor people coming in all colours.

Another important factor in the marginalization of neighbourhoods is environmental degradation. As in many cities, especially those with heavy industry, the East End is poorer than the west due to prevailing winds and the particulates they carry. Anything near or downwind of a steel plant is bound to suffer some marginalization. But this does not explain The Pearl Company’s case since areas further east of it that are much closer to the belching furnaces (e.g. Ottawa St) are on the upswing.

Architectural resources

One of Hamilton’s greatest resources is the huge number of old brick warehouse buildings that dot Lower Town and elsewhere. The Pearl Company is an excellent example of adaptive reuse for this type of building. It is surprising how few of these industrial buildings are converted into productive uses as you might see in larger centres. This huge resource exists here but is not being exploited. Indeed, City Hall appears to actively discourage its exploitation. This is puzzling.

Conclusion

There is a battle of ideas going on here but it’s difficult to sort out exactly what kind of ideas are in play. The politics are certainly parochial, the processes of neighbourhood marginalization are severe and the planning policies appear to be self-defeating. However, I can’t quite understand this situation.

What The Pearl Company episode does suggest is that private investment in unfashionable areas of Hamilton is extremely risky even though some of these areas appear to be full of economic potential.

This can’t be good.

Posted in Cities, Hamilton, Renovation | Leave a comment

Machine Shop Paradise in Guelph

By michael | Published: 3 May 2010

Cooling pond and Entrance screen at the Linamar Corporation

Cooling pond and Entrance screen at the Linamar Corporation

Introduction

As part of Doors Open 2010, Guelph channelled its inner Stuttgart with tours at the Linamar Corporation.

The Linamar Corp makes precision machine parts for various manufacturing sectors, including the automotive industry. Judging by the tour it appears to be a successful, high-growth multinational corporation, with operations in Canada, US, Mexico, Europe and Asia.

It all started in Guelph, when a young Hungarian immigrant named Frank Hasenfratz set up a one-man machine shop in the basement of his home in 1964. Lucky for Guelph, he found the city to be a supportive environment for what later became an industrial empire. This appears to be a classic tale of a highly-skilled immigrant with ambition and marketable skills doing very well indeed in the New World.

At the entrance to Linamar there is a decorative screen with air-foil shaped blades. These expensive building components create the impression that something highly technical, perhaps aesthetically-inspired is going on inside. Linamar clearly wanted to build an architectural show-piece that impresses the local community. I would say they have succeeded in that goal.

But the architectural aspect of this place is not what is most interesting. Behind the impressive lobby is a large factory floor in spotless condition. It is a high-end machine shop in the European tradition. There are banks of Toyoda CNC machines. There are boxes full of metal filings and gleaming parts machined from blocks of high grade steel. There are signs showing how things should be done. Obviously, process and quality control is of prime concern.

In one room they were testing parts for the McLaren Group, the famous UK race car builders. Not knowing too much about the parts manufacturing business, I would say that working with McLaren is something to brag about.

The whole place has that unmistakable whiff of success. I remarked to my sons, who were reluctantly along on the tour, ‘You know guys training as machinists or CNC designer/programmers might not be such a bad career path.’

Blue-collar knowledge work

At Linamar, relatively small number of people perform highly skilled work. The workers seem to enjoy their work, tending to the CNC milling machines, making and testing metal prototypes. It is clear the instant you walk in the door that this would be desirable employment for many people. There is a sense that people working here have an enviable degree of autonomy.

This is what could be called blue-collar knowledge work.

Canada is not known for blue-collar knowledge work, despite Southern Ontario (and the metropolitan area of Montreal) being the industrial heartlands of the country. We seem much more content with the basic extractive and resource-based industries like mining, forestry, fishing and farming. This has made the country rich, but it means Canada often lacks the skills to produce innovative new products and also makes it vulnerable to the vagaries of basic commodity pricing. The has been true since the foundation of the country.

Southern Ontario has a substantial auto sector, but most of the main action in this industry such as design and development is done elsewhere in California, Germany or Korea. For those interested in industrial design, this puts Canada on the periphery.

Counties such as Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland have much stronger craft traditions than do Canada. These lend support to blue-collar knowledge economies through extensive apprenticeship programs and government support for precision manufacturing.

In Canada, there is not the sense that machine-dependent trades, ones that people typically go to vocational school to learn, are the preferred ways of making a living. Knowledge-based industries such as software or telecommunications get much more attention. High-end machine shops like you find at Linamar get much less attention.

In Canada, the dominant and sometimes naive idea is that the only really desirable jobs are white-collar ones.

Mittelstand in Canada

Linamar appears to have its roots in a type of company that in Germany would be part of the Mittelstand, that is, small to medium-sized, family-owned businesses.

In Germany in the 1960′s the explosive post-war period of economic growth called the Wirtschaftswunder was largely a triumph of the Mittelstand.

In German-speaking countries, Mittelstand-type firms have become experts at producing well-designed, highly technical products. Such small, but sometimes extraordinary capable companies have created much of the industrial wealth that provides such high living standards in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Linamar has obviously grown way past the boundaries of the Mittelstand and has become a North American style multinational, but its Mittelstand roots seem clear.

In Canada, an anonymous corporate model is more common, where the allegiances to a skilled workforce or to craft ideals are much less focused. With large corporations the quality of the end product depends more on trans-national economic factors and tends to have little relation to family pride.

Conclusion

At Linamar, it is obvious that Frank Hasenfratz and his family are the original motivating force behind this corporation — or at least, this is how it is presented.

It appears that Frank Hasenfratz brought his machine shop ethos with him when he immigrated to Canada. Without him and his family, there would likely be nothing similar to Linamar on the outskirts of Guelph.

You find this pattern often in Canada. Here we tend to import our expertise rather than develop it in-house. It is unclear whether this is a sustainable industrial development strategy.

For an industrial culture to produce machined objects of high quality, as at Linamar, you have to hold the work of machinists in high regard. In this sense Linamar is both a product-focused workplace, where beautiful gleaming parts are staked neatly in boxes, as well as a worker-focused one where each worker is encouraged to take great pride in their work.

For these reasons a visit to Linamar is refreshing. Unfortunately, it seems like a bit of an anomaly in the current Canadian industrial context.

Posted in Cities, Doors Open | Leave a comment

My Life as a ‘Doors Open’ Tourist

By michael | Published: 15 April 2010

Model of Gore Park at the Steam and Technology Museum, Hamilton

One of my favourite times of years is the Doors Open season. This season starts in the early spring and ends in late fall. One of the great rewards of spring is for Doors Open events to begin.

When this event occurs in Hamilton, I am giddy with excitement as I plot my route–to see how many sites I can cram into each day. I have created online maps in order to better organize my assault of cultural consumption–and to help others do the same.

I have learned that almost every single site is worth visiting The architectural, cultural and community resources of this city, and surrounding communities, are remarkable. For example, lining Barton Street, Hamilton are an impressive number of large churches, built at a time when Barton was a major commercial thoroughfare. Eventually, I hope to visit every one.

You don’t have to be an architect to appreciate such sites; they are often captivating for all who walk in the door. Usually, there are well-informed guides to help you see and appreciate the social and architectural history that infuses these places. It’s like an ‘embarrassment of riches’ scenario; incredible riches but few crowds. You sometimes feel very privileged to participate.

Doors Open events tend to be social. They connect you with people who care deeply about buildings and are active in these buildings’ attached communities. A building without a community is often not that interesting. What makes them really come alive are the dozens of people who are passionate about preserving, inhabiting or simply telling about them to strangers. It’s like you stumble into a compelling interactive museum, guided by experts in the field, all for free. I must confess I really like the ‘for free’ part.

The above is all well and good, however, one problem with such cultural consumption is that in my case it is a high-carbon pastime. I drive to these places in a car because the sites tend to be far-flung and because I want to visit as many as I possibly can. So, for me there is a bit of cognitive dissonance. Knowing what lurks inside of heritage buildings (usually splendid places and dedicated, kindly people) clashes with my desire to moderate my consumption and keep our embarrassingly-large car parked in the driveway. The building preservationist side of me wants to work better with the tree-hugger side, because both should be working on the same team.

Getting around to Door Open sites appears to be the only environmentally-suspect aspect of these events.

I could concentrate on one geographical area but then I would miss out on some out-of-the-way gems. I really do want to see it all.

It’s this fear of ‘missing out’ I suppose is one problem. I want to see all the sites, but perhaps I don’t need to see them all at once. Slow-eating is clearly a good idea (as we often tell our ravenous twins). Perhaps slow-Doors-Open-touring is as well. Buildings that may have taken hundreds of years to acquire their ‘patina’ may require more than a rushed afternoon to fully appreciate.

Other ways of being more environmentally responsible would be to use public transit, which is often possible, or to use an alternate means of personal transportation such as a bicycle.

I think, though what might prove most sustainable is to do the touring with other people so that a larger group could pool their carbon consumption. This is similar to the Art Bus concept–a highly successful Hamilton enterprise that encourages communal gallery touring during Hamilton’s monthly Art Crawl. I’m sure a similar idea could be applied to Doors Open touring, where the attractions are similarly dispersed and the rewards of participation are equally as great.

Doors Open events are all about community. This community focus should also apply to how people get to far-flung sites. A communal approach to transportation would make Doors Open touring more environmentally-friendly and more fun as well.

Posted in Cities, Doors Open | 1 Comment

Urban destruction in the heart of Brantford, Ontario

By michael | Published: 18 February 2010

Introduction

in Brantford

Buildings from many periods in the Colborne St Demolition Zone, Brantford, ON

Two days ago, on a whim, I took my first visit to downtown Brantford, Ontario. I wanted to walk around, take some photographs and get a feel for the place. South-western Ontario tends to reward such impromptu exploration.

I drove to the densest part of old downtown Brantford, the place where the buildings are closest together and the streets the narrowest. This I usually find to be the most interesting and historic part of any town. There in Brantford, I found to my horror that a large chuck of the historic core was under threat of imminent demolition! Workers were preparing to dismantle one of the most interesting and historic street scapes in town. The hammer-swinging may have already begun.

After doing a few Google searches once I got home, the full reality of the situation dawned on me: I happened to stumble upon what might be one the most flagrant instances of urban vandalism in the province. I confidently categorize it as vandalism because it doesn’t appear, from what I have read, to make any sense whatsoever. They are taking down something of great value and replacing it with nothing at all.

This is not the demolition of a single building that has fallen into disrepair, or an urban redevelopment proposal that lacks architectural style. No, this is far worse. This is the wanton destruction of an entire downtown street scape, parts of which date from Victorian times. The site appears to be dripping in urban and historical significance. It literally anchors one corner of the historical district of Brantford. Its buildings, street scape and composition speak deeply of a social history that stretches back to the founding of the city of Brantford.

It is a puzzling situation to see something of such great apparent value about to be eliminated.

What is there

The block to be demolished is located in the central historical core of Brantford, along the south side of Colborne St. It is a long block that includes, apparently, 41 separate buildings, some of which date from the mid to late 19th century. Colborne St lies on top of a small bluff rising above the meandering Grand River.

Buildings on the south side of Colborne St are built with sub-structures that go down several stories. Elaborate steel and masonry structures prevent the buildings from tumbling down the bluff. These buildings are a bit run-down at this point but are definitely picturesque. The age of the buildings vary and the overall design of the block was incremental and unplanned. This is what gives it its charm.

Building on stilts, to be demolished, Colborne St, Brantford, ON

Building on stilts, to be demolished, Colborne St, Brantford, ON

It reminds me of several hill or ridge towns I have seen in Europe or North America where a neat row of attached buildings presents a unified elevation up above on the street, but tumbles down a slope on the other side. This usually creates interesting town scapes that old-style landscape painters might find attractive.

Old Victorian industrial buildings, to be demolished, Water St, Brantford, ON

Old Victorian industrial buildings, to be demolished, Water St, Brantford, ON

Below Colborne St are streets called Water and Wharfe. Streets with such names tend to be at the central historical core of cities — typically located along original shorelines. This suggests that not so long ago, along these streets in Brantford, there were warehouses and  small port operations connected to the nearby Grand River.

Brantford itself is a small city, currently not especially prosperous, known for its associations with Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone and as the hometown of hockey’s ‘The Great One’ – Wayne Gretzky. It is also close to major settlements of First Nations peoples at the nearby Six Nations reserve and has an attractive location on the bio-diverse Grand River.

Brantford has a small downtown. There are some beautiful buildings in the downtown core. From an architectural and urban design perspective there is much of interest in Brantford, including, fine churches, law courts, civic buildings and a modernist City Hall. Brantford has a central square in the form of an Union Jack around which some of its most prominent buildings are grouped. Outside of Brantford’s historic core is a variety of low density suburban housing and big-box retailing typical for this part of Ontario.

Brantford, despite recent pain due to de-industrialization in the manufacturing sector, is clearly a city with some agreeable cultural, historical and natural assets. These could be spun into something quite attractive. Clearly, demolishing a prominent street scape in the heart of downtown works against such a goal.

My take on this situation

I think demolition of this street scape is a terrible idea. It should have been preserved for the following reasons:

As a mixed-use place to live and work

One of the best ways of creating vitality in downtown cores is to create mixed-use developments that enable people of various incomes to work and live in close proximity. The block being destroyed is an historic and extremely charming example of this type of development. On Colborne St it enabled people to live over pet shops, diners and clothing stores. This is exactly why people sometimes travel to the ‘Old World’ — to see charming scenes of ordinary people living over places like pet shops! Clearly, Brantford is working according to a different model of perceived value.

Art Deco commerical building, to be demolished, Brantford, ON

Art Deco commerical building, to be demolished, Brantford, ON

The condemned block once housed people, was a place to work and was likely an interesting place to shop. All these people associated with the area will now have to live, work and shop elsewhere. The city of Brantford is in effect telling these people to get lost. This ‘communication strategy’ seems harsh, anti-democratic and completely counter-productive to the economic and cultural development of a distressed community. It makes no sense.

Overall attractiveness and urban integrity

The block provides Brantford with urban integrity and texture. The block blends in perfectly with surrounding buildings and anchors the downtown both visually and architecturally on the edge of a bluff. The individual buildings are attractive. The street scape in which they are housed is also attractive. The buildings are currently run-down but this only indicates a lack of investment in their upkeep rather than any inherent lack of value in the buildings themselves.

This condemned block — due both to the quality of its individual buildings as well that of its overall assembly — is probably near the top in terms of overall civic quality and interest for threatened urban street scapes in Ontario. Brantford definitely cannot afford to lose an architectural and historical assembly of such quality.

As a conduit for history

Mixed-use Victorian housing and commercial block, to be demolished, Brantford, ON

Mixed-use Victorian housing and commercial block, to be demolished, Brantford, ON

It takes a certain insensitivity to  tear down buildings that have withstood the trials and tribulations of the last century and a half. Each age produces its own sets of buildings. These buildings will not come back. Once they are gone they are gone.

This is not to say that all old buildings should be saved. But it does mean that ones of noteworthy quality at the centre of the historical core of cities should be given special consideration and protection.

This is also not to say that cities can’t build modern buildings. Preservation of historic buildings does not put modern architects out of work. The combination of the qualities of old buildings with modern design is often a winning combination.

However, demolishing old buildings in some absurd, nihilistic notion of ‘modernity’ makes no sense.

What were they thinking? Some theories

The question is for me was not whether it is a good idea to get rid of this street scape — it is one of those situations where the inappropriateness of the demolition is not in question even for a nanosecond. I can conceive of no world in which the demolition of these buildings would make any sense.

The question then becomes ‘What were they thinking?’

The decision to demolish the south side of Colborne St was not made in a vacuum. It was made by upstanding citizens of Brantford, likely with support from parts of their community. Here are some theories of what might have factored in their decision-making process:

Elimination of decay and devaluation of the old

Old, historic buildings — especially ones that that are attached to one another in an urban block that falls down a little bluff, are expensive and troublesome to maintain. As well, some people simply don’t seem to like old buildings. They associate them with bad conditions, bad lifestyles, bad choices and all around moral decrepitude.

Clearly, in Brantford, old attached buildings as on Colborne St are associated with the underclass — those who are seen not to have the sense or the resources to live in a more mainstream suburban setting.

Elimination of venues for marginalized businesses and residents

When you demolish an old, sketchy part of town, you usually displace marginalized businesses (e.g. tattoo parlours, head shops, crack dens) and marginalized residents (e.g. prostitutes, drug addicts and those on welfare). Getting rid of a venue for such things lets people imagine that they don’t exist.

Whenever an urban block is threatened with demolition there is also a natural process of marginalization. Who wants to put money into a part of the city that people in power want to eliminate? The threat of elimination is the opposite of a vote of confidence. City Hall thinks so little of residents’ homes and lives that they are willing to go to the expense of sweeping them away for a simple, but seriously deranged idea — an idea based on the concept of ‘eliminationism.’ This eliminationism applies equally to the architectural and social context of Colborne St. Eliminate ‘bad’ buildings and the ‘bad’ people will also magically disappear. It is a fearsomely destructive idea.

Collapse of multiple owners into simpler entities

When you have a street scape with 41 individual buildings, you may have 41 separate owners. If all the properties are bought or expropriated then 41 owners can magically collapse into one easier-to-administer entity. Making it single ownership makes it more similar to the suburban areas of Brantford where the lots are large and the ownership patterns uncomplicated.

The Colborne St block is the opposite of the suburbs: it consists of a messy warren of interlocking spaces and relationships. Getting rid of this simplifies things for some people but at the cost of overall vitality for the city.

Getting rid of this block of old buildings is like clear-cutting an old-growth forest. In both cases you replace diversity with a less stable and less valuable mono-culture. This destruction makes no sense and goes against all we now know about how to develop and revitalize cities.

Provision for higher-returning developments

Sometimes old buildings are demolished to be replaced by higher net-revenue developments. This explains why parts of Toronto have high-rises vs. lower-density row buildings, which were once common throughout its core. But the goal in Brantford does not appear to be a search for higher-returning, higher-density development. There doesn‘t appear to be any preferred future use for the site, except as the site of a bizarre culture war. Previously, the site  had assured income. No firm plans have been presented to replace this income. Something was traded for nothing.

Conclusion

Usually when I travel around small town Ontario I am impressed by the quality of architecture and the overall charm of settlement. This was even the case in Brantford for me before I saw the ominous blue demolition fences surrounding an area of prime architectural significance.

The decision by the City of Brantford to demolish a good chunk of their historical core is indeed unusual. The buildings to be demolished are quite interesting and their site appears to be absolutely central to the history of the city. Like many such crimes against heritage and common sense it was not committed by outside forces intent on the destruction of Brantford, but appears to be a curiously home-grown affair.

This decision to demolish buildings along Colborne St takes a marginalized city and further marginalizes it. It is such a complete reversal of things I value that I remain stunned and saddened.

Posted in Cities | 14 Comments

Dogs on Roof, Hamilton

By michael | Published: 27 January 2010
Dogs on Roof, Hamilton, ON

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?

Posted in Cities, Hamilton | Leave a comment

The subtle rewards of violin practice

By michael | Published: 26 January 2010
Liam and Ben grooving before their Holiday Concert

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

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.

Posted in Child-rearing, Hamilton | Leave a comment