…but first, a word from The Incline.

I want to thank all my friends and readers who contributed to my fundraiser for this year’s Pride and Remembrance Run in Toronto. So far, I have raised 99% of my goal, which is absolutely amazing! The Run supports some wonderful queer support programs in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area that do extremely important work. Pride is a lot of things: a protest, a party, a vigil, a learning experience, a chance to connect with friends and allies. A core part of Pride for me is building community and reminding each other that we are here for one another, through the good times and the bad. So thank you for your support and your generosity.

I suppose if I hit $750 in donations, I may have to do something special…

If you would still like to donate, you can do so at the link below. The Pride and Remembrance Run is a registered Canadian charity, so any donation over $20 earns you a tax receipt!

The Fourth Estate

Photo by Melpo Tsiliaki on Unsplash - edited by author

It should have been another sleepy Tuesday in late May. But, when word leaked that two major political events were going to fall on the same day, the scene at City Hall transformed into one of frantic excitement. Staff began buzzing, reporters raced to the scene, and residents across Hamilton were glued to their devices, refreshing their social media feeds for updates.

Quietly, as if to cut her opponent off at the pass, the embattled 58th Mayor of Hamilton, Andrea Horwath, quietly slipped downstairs from her second floor office and, in a modest room with election staff, filed her re-election paperwork. No backdrop of supporters like in 2022, no weeks long media circus, no flashy announcement. When she emerged to the gathered reporters, she put on a smile and said she was here to work for Hamilton. She didn’t need the pageantry and the show of some grand unveiling. This time, it’s 2026 and the Steeltown Scrapper has a job to do. It was deliberate and calculating, putting her approach to the job in stark contrast to that of the man who was poised to, within hours, join the race alongside her.

The reporters packed up and raced east. The second event would start any moment now. Winding their way through the city, they clacked out the first part of their stories and readied themselves for their next interviews.

They all arrived at the same time, descending on the corner of King and Jones in Stoney Creek in a flurry of cameras and microphones and notepads. As expected, this event looked to be far more choreographed. Smiling supporters decked out in matching red shirts, all holding signs with the candidate’s last name and slogan, huddled behind a lectern. A trio of councillors milled about awkwardly, periodically checking their phones with blank expressions on their faces. Some of the more astute amongst the assembled reporters noted the symbolism of their presence and the location of the press conference, some 300 metres from the parking lot that was, thanks to Horwath’s mayoral veto, soon to become a new housing development.

A few minutes behind schedule, the candidate appeared, flashing his trademark boyish smile and waving to the crowd. He stopped to shake the hands of some of the more recognizable faces in the crowd and, like his former boss, tried his hand taking a selfie with some young supporters in the lineup. He stepped to the waiting mics and made his speech. It was as everyone expected; Hamilton had lost its way, the mayor was not up to the task, and the voters of this fine city deserved the seasoned leadership that only he could provide. He had the credentials, after all: 26 years on council and four on Parliament Hill. That would be the core of his campaign. Chad Collins would get the job done.

When some of the reporters returned to City Hall that day, they spotted Horwath meeting with a group of students who had some to 71 Main West as part of a civics class trip. She was caught off guard so, when a reporter lobbed a question about Collins’ announcement at the mayor, she fired back, saying she had done more for Hamilton in four short years than Collins did in 26. His was a campaign that would be coordinated by backroom boys and the political elites, she said, while she would bring her message to the people. Her staff quickly intervened to move the chief magistrate along, but not before she could take another jab at her main opponent, reminding the press that, while he was busy defending Justin Trudeau and losing, she was standing up for Hamilton and winning. The media had their soundbite, and the tone of the election was set.

It was an exciting burst of activity and a striking portent to a long and brutal five months.

…or it would have been, had any of that actually happened.

***

Like many aging millennials, I rely too heavily on Instagram as a platform. I try to avoid the cringe habit of posting on main (apparently a once-a-year wrap up is enough for the primary feed) and, instead, use it to connect with friends, send memes and clips from old TV shows, and view all the two week-old runoff from TikTok.

The platform is not perfect. Indeed, in many ways, it is actively bad and growing worse by the minute. Case in point: at the beginning of this month, news broke that a “flaw” in parent company Meta’s AI support assistant allowed hackers to gain access to any Instagram account they wanted just by asking it nicely. Tisk tisk tisk bad computer.

But social media sites like Instagram have become enmeshed in our everyday lives. Just a couple of weeks back, StatsCan released figures from their “Insights on Canadian Society” series that showed 54% of Canadians get their news from social media platform. That’s two percent more than TV, 16% more than radio, and a whopping 33% more than print media. For those under 35 (wow, it couldn’t just be “35-and-under”? Thanks for making me feel old, StatsCan), a staggering 78% get their news from social media.

This is despite the fact that, since 2023, Meta has effectively banned legitimate Canadian news on its platforms in response to Bill C-18 - the “Online News Act” - which they felt would hold them responsible for news posted to their site. So while over half of Canadians are getting news from social media, the largest major news outlets in the country cannot post their stories to those platforms.

Kind of makes one wonder where people are actually getting their news from then…

Enter small digital news creators.

These plucky little producers are often little more than an Instagram page with compelling graphics, snappy headlines, and an ever-present prompt to “check link in bio” for more.

There are a few local accounts that follow this model - the social news aggregator - as well as a bunch of digital content creators who work much harder to make themselves appear like formal news outlets. And one social news aggregator has been appearing on my feed a lot, lately.

***

Over the past month, I have been subjected to regular ads for something called the “Hamilton Digest”. They’re visually simple, yet eye-catching, thanks in part to their strategic use of the Hamilton Ti-Cats colours and because of their ambiguous messaging that leaves you curious.

Screenshot of a Hamilton Digest Instagram advertisement - screenshot from author.

After being served a Hamilton Digest ad for the billionth time a few weeks ago, I decided to take a look at their profile page. Billing themselves as “Hamilton’s heartbeat 💛”, they purport to offer “news, food, events & stories from The Hammer”. Their Instagram page is the advertising side to their real operation, which is a newsletter housed on Beehiiv (like The Incline is).

Each of their posts is expertly branded, featuring consistent fonts, banners, and a healthy heaping of emojis. And their headlines are designed to draw you in.

“🛣️ Hamilton did it again,” reads one, with the subhead “😬 But not in a good way” (that was about Barton Street being named “Canada’s worst road” by the entirely unbiased Canadian Automobile Association). Another headline informs readers “🔫 Gun still missing…⚠️ Downtown concerns continue”. A March banner announces “🚒 Massive fire in Stoney Creek,” and “🔥 Six homes destroyed”.

But the one that (obviously) caught my eye was posted on May 26. It features a photo of Mayor Horwath with the headline “🗳️ Hamilton’s election race grows” and the subhead “🔥 Six candidates now running”.

This was interesting to me for a few reasons, not the least of which was, on May 26, there were still only five registered candidates for mayor. The caption itself contained more interesting information. “Former MP Chad Collins has entered the race,” it announced, also noting that “Mayor Andrea Horwath has officially filed her nomination, and six candidates are now running.”

The May 26 post from Hamilton Digest about the 2026 Municipal Election - screenshot from author.

Big, if true.

After seeing this, I quickly searched for a link to Collins’ announcement. I was surprised by the idea that Collins would have a major announcement about his political future and that it wouldn’t be covered by any mainstream outlet or reporter. Sure, at this point, his candidacy would be a long shot. His pathway to the mayor’s chair was already extremely narrow even before the Liaison Strategies poll from October of last year showing him 35 points behind frontrunner Keanin Loomis AND before Rob Cooper’s surprise mayoral candidacy cut off his chance to stake out the centre-right-to-right-wing spot on the spectrum of mayoral contenders. But he was in local politics for over a quarter century and was elected to Parliament. People with that kind of cred - and who have been subject to the kind of breathless and consistent mayoral speculation as he has - get at least some kind of coverage for their political announcements.

But there was absolutely nothing about it anywhere online. The post also bounced around in a few group chats I’m in, but no one seemed to know what the source of the information was or why this online news source was reporting it as though it were a fact.

The actual reference to the election was buried in a post on the Hamilton Digest’s newsletter that wrapped up news stories from May 19 to 25. After two hockey stories, a piece on the YWCA’s Oakwood development (which, itself, seems to combine the CBC, Spec, and CHCH articles on the project), and a story about the May 18 hit-and-run in Stoney Creek, we come to “🗓️ Election Update: Six Candidates Now in the Mayoral Race”. The listed sources are the City of Hamilton’s website and the Wikipedia page on the election.

I thought that it was possible that I had just missed the news and that I would get confirmation by day’s end. But the day came to a close and the City of Hamilton’s candidate listing page failed to note Horwath’s entry into the race. In the weeks since, only one new person - perennial candidate Nathalie Xian Yi Yan - joined the mayoral race. No word from Horwath, no word from Collins.

And then, on June 9, another municipal election post from the Hamilton Digest announced again that “Chad Collins officially entered the race”. Another post, another claim that Collins is in it to win it. But, still, no official announcement. By now, a cursory Google search shows one story about Collins running for mayor - from the Hamilton Digest itself.

So what’s going on here? Why is a relatively new Instagram page billing itself as a source for “news, food, events & stories from The Hammer” that advertises widely on the platform pushing a misleading news story? And where does the Hamilton Digest fit in with the growing constellation of small digital news sites marketing themselves toward Hamiltonians in this moment when news from real, legitimate sources is growing harder and harder to find?

By all indications, the Hamilton Digest is a project of local digital marketing specialist Michael Horvath. Online, Horvath is listed as the CEO of Digital Envy, a local digital marketing agency. Earlier this year, he branched out into the world of artificial intelligence and launched AI Envy, which, according to Horvath’s LinkedIn, adds AI automation to “proven lead generation foundations”. I’m not up on business lingo, so all I have in my head is dialogue from Glengarry Glen Ross. The leads are weak! Always be closing! Alec Baldwin saying slurs! David Mamet being horrible!

In November of 2025, Horvath announced the launch of Hamilton Digest, pitching it on his Instagram as “Hamilton’s best newsletter.”

shots fired, I guess.

Hamilton Digest began posting on Instagram on November 13, 2025 and, four days later, published the first edition of their newsletter on Beehiiv. In the time since, the newsletter and posting schedule has been remarkably consistent, with over 360 posts in the approximately 30 weeks they’ve been at this. Alternating between news roundups, event listings, sports stories, and restaurant promos, the newsletter seems to have no political slant whatsoever and does a good job of aggregating already popular news stories for maximum appeal.

All this is to say: I don’t believe their Collins/Horwath posts were made maliciously. But given that the founder of the newsletter has a business centred on using AI and that the preponderance of information available online about both Collins and Horwath being interested in a mayoral run may have influenced an AI-based application, it is absolutely possible that the information in those Hamilton Digest posts may be an AI hallucination (meaning an AI response that includes false information as fact).

I ran the section of the Hamilton Digest that discusses Horwath submitting her nomination and Collins joining the race through AI detection programs just for a little confirmation. Unfortunately, these are not perfect programs and can easily be tricked or simply fail. So it makes sense that the section in question got scores of between 0% and 100% AI-generated between 5 programs.

There are other explanations. Collins has been a rumoured mayoral candidate for years and, last Halloween, he told the Spec’s Scott Radley that he would make his decision early in the new year. Now, with nearly half of 2026 done and the midway point in the nomination period fast approaching on July 6, we haven’t heard a peep from the former MP. The last time he was mentioned in the city’s paper of record was on February 25 when Radley wrote about Loomis’ announcement and that was only to reference how far back in the polls he was last year.

But the point is that he has been mentioned as a possible candidate, meaning it would be theoretically easy for someone to misinterpret all the rumour as confirmation. Same thing with the point about Horwath already registering; she made her announcement, said she was in, and the only thing left to do is fill out the paperwork.

The Hamilton Digest references to Collins as a mayoral candidate and Horwath as having already registered could be an AI hallucination or just a simple misunderstanding. But I don’t see it as being some kind of malicious attempt to mislead people or disrupt the campaign.

Still, it isn’t great that this is where we’re at. It shouldn’t be a challenge to determine the accuracy of the information being presented to you. In that same “Insights on Canadian Society” survey released by StatsCan that found 54% of Canadians get their news from social media, a solid 47% reported “they were finding it harder to distinguish between true and false news or information compared to three years prior.”¹ When people are confused, they tune out, and when they tune out, it becomes easier and easier to manipulate the democratic process. Fewer people vote, there’s less scrutiny of powerful actors, and it is easier to mobilize a small group of committed extremists.

People are eager to learn more. These small digital creators and online current affairs blogs wouldn’t exist if people weren’t interested. And, as of late, it sure seems like a lot of them are floating around in our local media ecosystem.

***

Hamilton’s media ecosystem is modest - certainly more modest than befits a large urban centre of around 570,000 people.

At the top of the order are Hamilton’s two largest news-forward organizations: the Hamilton Spectator and the CBC.

The Spec got its start on July 15, 1846 as the Hamilton Spectator and Journal of Commerce. The modest four-page publication’s first column piece was an “Ode to Queen Victoria”, a plodding and strange poem that equates the then-monarch with Catharine the Great, Elizabeth I, and Cleopatra. The remainder of the front page was dedicated to stories about life in India, legislative debates about the efficiency of the colonial post office, tidbits from Europe, a piece about a large ship docking in Boston, and a wrap up of the proceedings of the British House of Commons. Riveting stuff. In fact, in the first edition, there was very little local news at all. More space was dedicated to a piece on maize than to what Hamilton’s elected officials were doing in the colonial legislature. That said, there were a few third page ads about new local dry goods stores, veterinary services, and an appeal to the local cultured set to come to the “second and last appearance of the celebrated unrivalled ventriloquist Signor G. Valentini,” at the Theatre Royal.²

The front page of the first edition of the Hamilton Spectator - from the Spec archives.

Originally right-leaning in its sympathies (allied with the Tory Family Compact…it was the Hamilton Spectator and Journal of Commerce after all), the Spec was purchased in 1877 by the arch Tory himself, William Southam, who would use the paper to start a publishing empire, gobbling up small local papers and large metro dailies until his death in 1932.

The Spec was joined by a number of competitors throughout the years. When it was founded, it was in direct competition with the Hamilton Reform Banner, a paper advocating for the “Reform” faction in Upper Canada (roughly the equivalent of today’s Liberals and the political centre-left more broadly). In the late 1850’s, the Hamilton Times burst onto the scene, by all indications a replacement/continuation of the Banner.

In 1889, our city got the Hamilton Herald, a paper determined to be an affordable alternative to the city’s big evening dailies, charging only 1 cent in contrast to the Spec and Times charging two. First published on August 1, 1889, the Spec ran a small blurb about their new competitor, employing their snarkiest and most dismissive language to highlight the occasion: “The Hamilton Herald is the name of a journal which made its appearance in this city yesterday, under the management of Mr. John M. Harris…For a cheap paper, it is a very good one…Here’s hoping you may never regret it, Johnny.”³

The light-hearted ribbing quickly turned into outright distain. By the mayoral election of 1910 - in which the Herald was backing the candidacy of the Liberal George Harmon Lees and the Spec was supporting the Conservative John Allan - the Spec had declared war on their opponent, deriding the Herald as “the disturber newspaper organ”, “wrathy”, a “dictator”, and a paper without conscience: “There is no level to which it will not descend, no trick to which it will not resort to accomplish its purpose,” the Spec’s editors seethed.⁴

In 1920, the Times was suddenly bought out and a surprise announcement appeared in the Spec. Instead of publishing the usual multiple editions of the paper (which was the style at the time), the Times would focus on one morning edition of the paper each weekday. “Well, Well! The Times Change and The Times Changes” read an add in their competitor’s paper, which included the strange request that interested parties fill in an included “charter subscription” and mail it to the Times’ new owners - the Ontario Newspapers Corporation Ltd. - at the corner of Hughson and King William. Promising an “independent”, “broad-visioned” and “up-to-the minute” paper, the new Times would be a morning paper for discerning readers.⁵ They managed to run a handful of ads soliciting charter subscribers before quickly announcing that The Times was folding for good. The money, they said, just wasn’t there. Within a year, the paper’s editor would join Southam and some of the paper’s modest archive would be transferred to the Spec.⁶

The Great Depression would do in the Herald 16 years later. On March 31, 1936, the Herald ran its last edition and turned out the lights. After it became the only game in town, the Spec was more gracious in its assessment of their one-time rival: “With the discontinuance of publication of the Hamilton Herald, the community loses an old, familiar friend, and an honoured institution which has given great service to the city and the Dominion,” the editors wrote, before acknowledging their acrimonious past and saying that, despite their differences, “there has never been a time when feelings between the two local papers have been other than those of mutual regard and respect.”⁷

After World War II, an upstart operation called the Hamilton News tried to enter the market. But a decade of unopposed domination of the local media landscape allowed the Spec to grow into an unassailable behemoth. When local union officials urged their members to turn to the News for alternative commentary, the Spec brushed off their challenge and the rumours of a growing “newspaper war”. In April of ‘48, the Spec issued a one-line retort, saying that “one kind of ‘paper war’ we would welcome is on Hamilton’s public grounds and streets,” meaning they cared more about Hamilton’s war on litter than some imagined scrap between two newspapers.⁸

In 1954, the News was bought by a local brewing magnate, Andrew Peller. A Hungarian immigrant, Peller had commercial interests across the city and branched out into publishing with his new venture “Pelmar Enterprises”, which he founded after he sold his Peller Brewing Co. the previous year. Pelmar aimed to take on the Southam group but, in two short years, the News would close up shop. Today, the site of Peller Brewing Co. is the Collective Arts brewery on Burlington Street and the family name is more recognizable for the business he launched in 1961: Peller Estates wines.

After 1956, the Spec stood alone as Hamilton’s primary news source. Its ownership bounced around throughout the years, finally settling with Toronto Star publisher Torstar in 1999 where it remains today.

***

In 2012, the CBC launched its digital service in Hamilton. Though the 2012 iteration isn’t the first time the CBC had a footprint in the city; the same year Peller bought out the News, local media pioneer Ken Sobel (who got his start in local radio with the now-defunct CHML) launched CHCH TV as a CBC affiliate, which it remained until 1961.

And so, for the past 14 years, Hamiltonians have had the Spec and the CBC providing news-forward coverage for the region. CHCH still has a local newscast and some of the area’s remaining radio stations provide local news, but their focus is on general entertainment, rather than conveying current affairs.

But there are other media players in the city. McMaster’s campus newspaper, The Silhouette, for example, has been an institution since 1930 and has covered major news stories in the area in the past. The Sil trained some of Canada’s best and brightest, though was always a thorn in the side of student politicians, campus administration, and the community at large. In recent years, the paper has suffered due to repeated cuts, shrinking its literal size, circulation, and publication schedule.

Local independent journalist Joey Coleman’s The Public Record serves as a timely account of civic affairs that are often overlooked or ignored by larger publications. With an emphasis on small committees, council attendance, and local planning issues, Coleman’s reporting is invaluable to those seeking a more specialized look at local goings on.

Coleman and I actually have a long history together; my first encounter with the city’s preeminent independent journalist occurred when I was, myself, an editor at The Silhouette in 2010. Coleman burst into the dingy basement office the paper had on campus to chastise me for my hyperbolic comparison of an award issued by the student union to the Victoria Cross, the British and Commonwealth decoration issued to those who demonstrated “valour in the presence of the enemy”. I had just learned about instances where the VC had been issued in a history course I was taking on the World Wars and made the clunky comparison in a moment of haste on the evening of our publication. Coleman took me to task for this, simultaneously teaching me about the importance of the VC and indicating to me that he was a person never afraid to speak his mind. Each of our encounters in the time since has included a health amount of good-natured ribbing, as of late focused on the rivalry between my attending the prestigious McGill University and his affiliation with that plucky little school called the University of Toronto.

***

There are other, more partisan publications in the area. The right-wing online blog the Bay Observer is a notable player, and one about which I wrote extensively a year ago.

The similarly right-wing Hamilton Independent is a blog run by a loose network of people in the Hamilton and Niagara area (they have a “sister publication” called the Niagara Independent). All of the regularly-involved parties have direct connections to the provincial Progressive Conservatives and the federal Conservatives (many contributors are former staffers and, in one case, a former cabinet minister), the right-wing Fraser Institute think tank, and conservative Christian organizations across North America. The only one of their contributors who is local is Kevin Geenen, a one-time Ontario Progressive Conservative nomination contestant in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek and the fifth-place finisher in the Ward 5 council race in 2022. Despite the paper-thin covering of local news it republishes, it is primarily an outlet for right-wing talking points. Their opinion pieces have called the Toronto Star a “leftist” newspaper, praised the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling that declared anti-gay conversion therapy “free speech”, claimed the actions of the Carney government are akin to “what happens in Communist countries”, and openly lauded the current American president for “outsmart[ing]…[and] bamboozl[ing]” those “elitist” mainstream reporters from the media and its “liberal bias”.

***

Less rigid in its ideological orientation is “The Hamiltonian Inc.”, a blog hosted on the classic platform Blogger that bills itself as “Hamilton’s Tastemaker in Local Politics and Community”. The Hamiltonian is run by Cal and Teresa DiFalco, a deeply engaged local couple whose commentary on civic affairs has been a staple of the Spec letters and commentary section for around two decades. The DiFalco’s are former provincial civil servants who became involved in local politics around 2006.

The Hamiltonian began publishing in 2009, reading more like a traditional blog complete with first-person observations and perspectives. It quickly became a site-to-watch in the early days of local online commentary. In 2010, The Hamiltonian, along with the now-defunct urbanist site Raise The Hammer, landed in hot water when they republished a lengthy letter from fringe mayoral candidate (and blogger) Mahesh Butani accusing then-Spec current affairs columnist Andrew Dreschel of racism.⁹

That blip didn’t derail the DiFalco’s. In 2013, Teresa was named Stoney Creek Citizen of the Year, which she followed with a bid for Ward 10 councillor in 2014. Running on a standard platform of fiscal responsibility, more assistance for seniors, promoting small business, supporting term limits, and opposing LRT, DiFalco placed a respectable second against incumbent councillor Maria Pearson, chipping away at a significant lead that would, by 2022, result in Pearson’s loss to current councillor Jeff Beattie.¹⁰

After the 2014 election, The Hamiltonian transformed into something more closely resembling a local news outlet. While some of its archive is now gone, their articles from 2015 to 2018 are a mix of commentary from local food journalists, some interviews with local politicians, posts about city press releases, and a healthy amount of focus on LRT. Then, rather abruptly, The Hamiltonian stopped publishing right before the 2018 municipal election. Cal DiFalco began writing about civic affairs again in 2024, submitting a piece to the Spec calling on the City of Hamilton to adopt zero-based budgeting. The Hamiltonian relaunched in February of 2025 and has, in the time since, secured interviews with civic politicians across Hamilton, as well as launching a series profiling registered candidates in the upcoming municipal election.

***

Other players mill about the local media ecosystem, though focusing on some combination of lifestyle, news, sports, clickbait, and paid promotions. These are outlets like “inthehammer”, a branch of “INsauga”, a digital media enterprise out of Mississauga. Founded in 2012, the company promotes itself as “one of the largest digital-only media companies” in the country that helps readers “connect to their city, engage with their community, and…find out everything from local food to shopping, and lifestyle content to real estate.” It operates a cluster of regional branches in Peel, Halton, Durham, and Niagara regions, as well as in Toronto and Hamilton. Like many of these organizations, their regular “stories” are sandwiched between sponsored posts.

While the INsauga family focuses on their website, other similar operations have remained firmly on Meta platforms, utilizing Instagram and Facebook to target their audiences.

“Northly Hamilton” is a Facebook-focused venture of the Northly Group, which specializes in what it calls “viral, youth-driven marketing for Gen Y & Z brands.” This buzzy, tech-bro-coded operation is primarily focused on using its pages to promote brands that seek out their services. The Northly Hamilton Facebook page will feature eye-catching video of house fires, clips from the Ti-Cats home opener, and a promo for a new wing restaurant all squished together.

While Northly is a little more tabloid-esque and sharp, Urbanicity is a more established and polished promotional network that operates in a similar way. Urbanicity is part lifestyle blog, part real estate agency, featuring many of the same “stories” as Northly (clips of local actress Caissie Levy winning at the Tony Awards were prominent on both Northly and Urbanicity’s Facebook pages) but trading the wing restaurant promos for links to houses currently for sale.

Rounding out the “lifestyle” pages is the “The Hammer” or “OnlyInHamilton.ca”, which, when it was launched as a Facebook page in 2015, was originally called “What’s Up on Concession Street?” or, alternatively, the “Concession Street News”. “The Hammer” (I’ll just call it that for simplicity’s sake) is run by local businessman Phil Bradshaw, who started it as a newsletter intended to be a “positive spin” and “good news” outlet during the lengthy road reconstruction in the historic mountain commercial district eleven years ago.¹¹ Bradshaw is a two-time municipal candidate, running in both the 2016 Ward 7 by-election and the 2025 Ward 8 by-election. Interestingly, in both instances, he placed 13th.

The web portion of The Hammer now features a business directory, event calendar, and blog. The social media side of things is an collection of photos from Bradshaw’s camera roll of his tours through the city and screenshots of news stories or weather updates. There is some political commentary sprinkled throughout and the occasional photo of a political leaflet or poster, but The Hammer appears to mainly be a homegrown version of the aforementioned lifestyle aggregators.

***

So let’s circle back to where we started. Hamilton’s media ecosystem is complicated right now. We have the major players - The Spec and the CBC - at the top, providing verifiable news from trusted, legitimate sources (even if you sometimes disagree with their perspectives and their editorial content). But they can’t promote their content on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram due to Meta’s news blackout in protest of Bill C-18. And while CHCH and local radio stations do have newscasts, we know that the majority of Canadians get their news from social media, including a supermajority of the youngest Canadians.

Independent news aggregators/lifestyle blogs/marketing operations can operate on social media more easily than the big players because their strategic diversification has meant they don’t get slapped with a news label and added to the ban list by Meta. That means that the majority of people in the community are getting their news from these sources.

But INsauga’s focus is on buzzy content and lifestyle news for suburbanites around Toronto, Northly Hamilton is all about viral content to promote brands, and Urbanicity is primarily a real estate operation. Small, local players like The Hammer exist to showcase local businesses and occasionally comment on current affairs, but don’t provide detailed news reporting. The Bay Observer and Hamilton Independent are right-wing operations that blend some focus on the news with conservative commentary. And the Hamilton Digest, while dipping its toes into many of the above categories, repeatedly published information about our upcoming municipal election that is, by all accounts, inaccurate.

That, unfortunately, is where we’re at with the state of local media. Social media is where people get their news, but general reporting from trusted sources is absent while the majority of local operations that still have a presence on Facebook and Instagram are either predominantly trying to sell you a product, sell you conservative views, or might just mislead you in the process of trying to sell you any of the above.

There was never a perfect time in Hamilton for the media. Even in that brief golden period around World War I when Hamilton had three papers or in the late 1920’s when we had two papers and two local radio stations, or in the 1950’s when we had The Spec, the News, and a CBC-backed CHCH, things weren’t perfect. Some papers were bigger than others. They ran partisan editorials and advertised heavily and featured blistering attacks on politicians and candidates and their supporters.

Today’s landscape is just a little more complicated. The rise of AI means that more news stories are getting harder to trust. The pivot away from formal newsrooms and toward viral marketing content creators means current affairs aren’t analyzed with substantive depth and controversial topics are ignored, lest they throw off an upcoming brand promotion deal. Pages and organizations that claim to be a source for news spend time informing you and advertising to you in the same indistinguishable breath. It is becoming harder to determine what’s true and what’s not, what’s an ad and what’s news, what’s right-wing propaganda and what’s objective reporting.

***

So, no, as of June 11, 2026, Mayor Andrea Horwath has not filed her nomination papers to run for reelection and former MP Chad Collins has not announced he is joining the mayoral race. I’m not telling you that as a journalist because, for the millionth time, I’m not a journalist. I’m saying that as someone who used the skills they picked up while studying for their PhD to research the claims using trusted sources to fact-check and confirm what I had read.

But it shouldn’t take a PhD to understand the local news. It shouldn’t take years of schooling to decipher the truth from sources purporting to inform you. It shouldn’t be hard to get the facts about what’s happening in our city and in our democracy.

These small virtual content creators have a responsibility - just as the more established journalists and mainstream media sources do - to provide the facts, disclose their paid partnerships and revenue streams, and be up front with the people who rely on them for information. Facts matter, even when your main goal is advertising or paid promotion.

The media is called “the fourth estate” because they were once considered to be a crucial pillar of society, an essential element of our society alongside the common people and the nobility and the clergy. But it is getting harder to tell who is part of the media and who is simply trying to sell something using the news as a cover. That’s deeply harmful to democracy.

We deserve honesty, real media choice, and, above all else, the truth.

-30-

…but first, a word from The Incline.

Emperor Kuzco voice “I’m back, baby!”

On April 16, I published “The Rat King”, a brief look at the mess that is my life. For the ∞ time in my life, I’ve gone off and chosen the most complicated path. This time, I find myself working at city hall, writing about city hall, researching city hall, and critiquing city hall at the same time. The gist of that piece can be boiled down to: it hard.

In that edition, I wrote that I would be altering how I approached The Incline so as to not run into trouble with the growing number of registered candidates putting themselves forward for consideration in this fall’s municipal election. Specifically, I said I was going to avoid commenting directly on civic affairs and focus mostly on local history.

In the weeks since, I have…not written a lot. D’oh.

***

After I published “The Rat King” a few weeks ago, a couple of folks have reached out to encourage me to keep writing. And I’ve come to realize that they are right. I should keep writing.

What I wrote in “The Rat King” still stands, though; local history will play an important role. There are lessons we can learn from our shared history. And, with what’s been going on in our municipal election up-to-now, it’s more clear than ever that everything that’s old is new again. There are parallels from our city’s often overlooked past that warrant our attention if for no other reason than they are absolutely fascinating.

Well-connected candidates are launching coordinated campaigns. A plethora of odd media “creators” have popped up to share sometimes inaccurate or sensationalized information. Blustery populists in the present conjure images of blustery populists of years past.

All this is to say: there’s some stuff going on in town that deserves a closer look. Now, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a journalist (though what even is a journalist? The Wikipedia article for “journalist” features a photo of Nardwuar The Human Serviette as an example, so…yeah). But I have done enough professional research to know how to put pieces of a puzzle together. And there are a couple of puzzles that have been spread out over the table of our civic democracy (really regretting that analogy right about now) that we should better understand before heading to the ballot box this fall. Indeed, much of what’s happened thus far in our municipal election is just too interesting to not examine a little more closely.

So look out for a bunch of new editions over the summer. And, in the spirit of the season, I’ll once again be asking anyone who would otherwise send me a few bucks through my KoFi digital tip jar to, instead, donate to support my participation in the 2026 Pride and Remembrance Run in Toronto at the end of June. Last year, folks donated over $650 to my run, helping to support crucial queer community organizations in the GTHA. Thank you again to all my readers and friends who showed so much love and support.

My goal is to raise the same amount this year. The Pride and Remembrance Run is a registered charity, so anyone who donates over $20 will get a tax receipt. All the money raised goes to essential community programs like the canvas arts action program which provides community education on queer issues to marginalized populations and Casey House, a specialty hospital caring for those living with HIV.

And, of course, as an incentive to donate, I’ll post all the embarrassing photos of me running after the race. If you are so inclined, you can donate at the secure link below:

***

While I’ve been on “hiatus”, our municipal election has kicked off to modest fanfare. There are now six registered candidates for mayor:

• 2022 contender and, if polls are to be believed, front-runner Keanin Loomis;

• Ward 8 councillor for the past 241 days, Rob Cooper;

• activist and community advocate Scarlett Gillespie;

• Sasha Austin, who blanketed social media with “community engagement” posts prior to her nomination;

• persistently litigious perennial candidate Nathalie Xian Yi Yan; and

• community favourite Ejaz Butt, who is doing what he can to take up the Baldasarian mantle of reliable, inoffensive protest candidate

Despite being one of the first to sign up (and being the candidate who has earned a disproportionately large amount of the media’s attention), Cooper’s campaign has been noticeably low-key in contrast to the professional and organized campaigns of Loomis and Gillsepie. And, while both Xian Yi Yan and Butt are easily-recognizable fixtures in Hamilton, less is known about Austin. Granted, there has been a slow roll out of campaign platform points from Austin, including an ominous commitment to “eliminate open drug use & high risk severe addicts”. Yikes.

I’m not just saying this because writing and political communications are my thing, but it is so incredibly important to be very, very careful with your phrasing when you’re a political candidate. One ambiguous sentence can derail an entire campaign, so candidates need to be exceptionally careful, especially when writing about sensitive issues like addictions. Because, to me, that reads as “eliminating” people living with addictions, which is…just…yikes.

***

One person who is the furthest thing from careful with their commentary is chronically online local landlord Peter Dyakowski.

Dyakowski continues to joke about seeking the office of mayor, going so far as to post a photo to Twitter/X of himself on a Hamilton Tiger-Cats-branded jetski à la Stockwell Day claiming a mayoral announcement is imminent.

But Dyakowski’s online behaviours are best described as “irony-soaked shitposting” - the term used to describe spamming social media sites with low-quality, cringy content designed to generate a reaction for reaction’s sake.

That could help explain his recent online flirtation with the far-right, which treats shitposting like a religious act. In the past few weeks, Dyakowski has posted sympathetically in support of a “remigration” activist who challenged the Hamilton Spectator for covering the removal of their racist posters. It’s worth noting here that “remigration” is, according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, “a white supremacist policy concept that calls for the forced removal of immigrants, refugees, and their descendants”.¹ It’s a new term for ethnic cleansing that’s growing in popularity among segments of the racist right. Dyakowski’s post implores the Spectator to be “a forum for matters of public debate”, though, I’d personally argue that there isn’t any room in a decent society for a “debate” on the virtues of…you know…ethnic cleansing.

And then, of course, there was his recent full throated endorsement of the aims of the white nationalist march that began in Victoria Park and ended in Gore Park on Victoria Day (May 18). The march had the “goal” of advocating for the restoration of the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald in Gore Park, which has long been a dogwhistle for the white supremacist far-right, many of whom tie an adoration of MacDonald with open anti-Indigenous sentiment. Dyakowski tweeted in support of the aims of the marchers, saying “All of Hamilton's problems are downstream of the fact that our civic government was complicit in its [the statue’s] criminal removal.”

Yeah. “Canada’s Smartest Man” wrote that.

The march was an unapologetic display of sad, ugly, divisive politics, serving as a paper-thin mask for out-and-out white supremacy and racist hate. Instead of challenging it, he gave them a virtual “thumbs-up” and amplified their hatred to whomever among his 6,400 Twitter/X followers is not a bot. So like, a dozen or so followers.

While dedicated community groups like the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI) have been standing up against the white supremacists organizing in the community, Dyakowski shines a positive spotlight on them. And, what’s more, he has already indirectly dismissed the work of anti-hate groups like the HCCI, recycling the right-wing talking point that social advocacy organizations are “one of our fastest-growing industries here in Hamilton”. That’s a line repeated on a loop by the clique of washed-up former politicos who crowd our social media feeds with unsolicited opinions from their “official” and sockpuppet accounts, desperate for the dizzying hit they once got when people in town flocked to them as though they were the prophetic Oracles of the Red Hill Valley.

Does he mean anything he posts? Hard to say. Every one of his posts is, as previously noted, drenched in the same kind of irony that has poisoned the online conversation and facilitated the rise of the contemporary far-right around the world. But it’s the kind of posting that should give Hamilton’s legacy media pause the next time they want to call him up just to chat about local issues.

***

Anyway, back to the election of Hamilton’s chief magistrate and friends.

By all indications, incumbent Mayor Andrea Horwath is still expected to seek re-election, though there’s been no movement on her part to submit the paperwork required to be on the ballot. And there’s still the outstanding question of former MP Chad Collins’ mayoral ambitions, though with a race crowded with frontrunners and his dismal showing in the only mayoral poll that’s been released, it’s hard to see that happening.

On the council side of things, 33 candidates have registered since May 1. Only 6 incumbent councillors have registered of the 12 who have openly declared their intention to seek re-election.

But a few interesting names have popped up. And that’s part of the reason I decided to put together a new edition.

So let’s take a look at a historical example of an organized municipal political effort in Hamilton and what parallels there might be for a present organized municipal political effort that’s been, thus far, flying under the radar.

Strange Bedfellows

Photo by Lukas Kaufmann on Unsplash - Edited by author

It was 1933.

Four grueling years of the Great Depression had devastated Hamilton and there was little relief in sight.

The unemployment numbers told a dire story. Prior to the stock market crash of 1929, the city was on the upswing; Hamilton’s population had tripled since 1901 and industry boomed. In the uncertain few weeks after Black Tuesday on October 29, 1929, the federal government was cautiously optimistic, reporting that Hamilton’s largest industries still employed over 39,000 people. By the same time in 1933, the feds reported that those firms employed just over 23,000 people.² Unofficial unemployment numbers estimated between 10 and 50 percent of Hamiltonians were out-of-work or underemployed.

Hamilton’s municipal government did what it could to weather the storm. Municipal employees were forced to take wage cuts and the Board of Control - the powerful group of council members elected city-wide to deal with, among other things, financial issues - pursued a brutal program of what they called “economy” (what we would today call “austerity”). The Board’s plan involved halting municipal spending in an attempt to stimulate the economy through massive tax cuts. While Keynesian economics was growing in popularity in the United Kingdom and FDR had swept to power in 1932 with his promise of a “New Deal” for workers, Hamilton’s municipal government was firmly committed to the principles of classical liberalism. To them, the market giveth and the market taketh away.

That didn’t sit well with the minority caucus on Hamilton city council. In 1932, a record six members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) had won seats on council, campaigning openly as party members. Their leader was the highest-ranking labour leader in the city, Board of Control member Sam Lawrence, who coordinated the activities of the modest caucus dedicated to the advancement of working people’s issues. With only six out of 21 seats, though, there was little they could do aside from be a persistent reminder of the impact of austerity on Hamilton’s working class.

But a political meeting held in Calgary a few months prior provided Hamilton’s ILP members of council an opportunity to make a splash. That meeting, which created the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), sparked a Canada-wide move to unite the disparate local ILP groups under one, united, working class banner. In the summer of 1933, with the December municipal election fast approaching, the Hamilton ILP decided to join forced with the CCF to run a united slate of working people’s candidates for the Board of Control, city council, and for the public school board.

(Note: For readers looking for a more in-depth piece on the ILP, CCF, and political labour at the municipal level in Hamilton from 1906 to 1934, check out my edition from February of 2025 entitled “What force on earth is weaker”.)

Those affiliated with organized labour had, for years, run under unifying banners. By the mid-30’s, residents were well aware of the political activities of the ILP, who were upfront about their partisan affiliations.

The city’s right-wing actors, on the other hand, went to great lengths to conceal their party connections. During the 1932 municipal election (local votes were held yearly until 1953), the city’s business-oriented candidates avoided direct partisan appeals, instead favouring the standard catchphrase that had come to characterize the philosophy of the political right, not only in Hamilton, but in civic contests across Canada: “economic, business-like administration”.

Aspiring Ward 3 aldermanic candidate William Fick promised “civic affairs on a strict business basis”. Ward 7 candidate Thomas Lewington campaigned on “efficient, economic business administration.” Ward 5’s Pierce “Pop” Somerville declared that, “as a heavy taxpayer in the Ward, I will contend for strict economy and a business-like administration.”³ The fact that Somerville was sympathetic to the conservative cause and both Fick and Lewington were ranking Conservative Party members was something not mentioned, either in their ads or the coverage of their candidacies.

But, breaking with decades of tradition, right-leaning candidates did make an effort to work collaboratively in the 1932 election. In what would have been a shock to Spectator readers who opened their Saturday edition a week before the election, an advertisement appeared at the bottom of the 21st page under the bold headline “MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS”. Eleven candidates for the Board of Control and council seats pledged to work together toward a program of “strict economy”, cross-departmental austerity, municipal downsizing, civic salary reductions, strict controls on relief, and strict objection to nationalizing the HSR (which was then a semi-private entity run, in part, by Ontario Hydro). “This is a joint advertisement, paid for by the candidates whose names appear above,” they wrote, before clarifying “running independently, who have grouped themselves together for the purposes of this advertisement,” (emphasis mine). The coalition became known for the unofficial name of their political program: The Policy for 1933 Group.⁴

When the 1933 vote rolled around, the old crew reunited for an even larger ad buy. Under the headline “A Guide for Electors”, a ¼ page ad on the front page of the second section of the Spec detailed what the political right had accomplished, including slashing the municipal budget, cutting the wages of civic employees, and a stand against public services that would have seen the HSR “foisted on the City.”

Pledging “to continue policies of economy and business administration”, the collection of three Board of Control candidates and candidates for council in every ward said they were “prepared to carry on for the year 1934,” but warned that they were “faced with organized opposition holding contrary and radical views.” That was something the coalition, since rebranded as the “Economy Slate”, would oppose with passionate intensity.⁵

Being an informal coalition of right-leaning candidates, they never presented themselves as the Economy Slate. Instead, that moniker was bestowed upon them by the sole woman on city council, political chameleon and former reporter Nora-Frances Henderson. In a cheeky ad of her own, Henderson told voters “I endorse the Economy Slate but was not invited to join,” giving the group a name while simultaneously calling out their snubbing.⁶ Whether that was due to latent misogyny, an unwillingness on the part of Slate members to ally with someone they viewed as a political opportunist, or both is a fact lost to history.

The “opposition” to which the Economy Slate referred to in their ad was, of course, the CCF. The representatives of labour refused to go down without a fight, issuing their own advertisement two days before the election under the provocative headline “Ambitions Make Strange Bedfellows”. Decrying the ad from the Economy Slate as little more than a “scandalous attack on outstanding sitting members of the City Council,” the CCF said that the Slate was “a certain group of self-appointed dictators operating from a local club.”⁷

While the “club” to which they referred was the exclusive Hamilton Club (still active in the city to this day), their reference to “strange bedfellows” was intentional. The Economy Slate was, in all but name, a coalition of Conservatives and right-wing Liberals determined to hold back the CCF and ensure the supremacy of the private market. All but one Economy Slate candidate in 1933 was an explicit partisan. All-in-all, nine Slate members were card-carrying Conservatives while two were partisan Liberals. None of the candidates mentioned that fact and, instead, presented themselves as a coalition of concerned, business-minded citizens just happy to guide Hamilton through the Great Depression.

***

It was a widely-known fact that the Conservative Party dominated civic politics in Hamilton at the time. Indeed, the following year, the Spec dropped the mask entirely. “The Tory machine in Hamilton…turned to the civic election with a will,” they proclaimed after the results were announced in 1934, letting voters know that, “Last year, Hamilton…retuned a Tory majority…this majority was increased yesterday from 12 to 14.”⁸ On the front page of the local section, the city’s paper of record openly admitted that the Economy Slate was, without a doubt, a Conservative Party operation onto which a few opportunistic Liberals gleamed to advance their careers. The year after that, they reaffirmed this position and again celebrated the Conservatives for winning the 1935 municipal election, proudly proclaiming “Hamilton is still Tory Hamilton,” and celebrating the complete collapse of the labour vote thanks to infighting and partisan meddling.⁹

Ellen Fairclough, the first woman to serve as a cabinet minister in Canada, got her start in Hamilton’s civic politics. Long after her retirement, she wrote a revealing memoir that laid out the facts with clarity. According to Fairclough, one of the leaders of the Policy for 1933 Group and the Economy Slate was Robert “Tony” Evans. In 1932, Evans was elected Ward 3 alderman, back when Ward 3 included the Durand and Kirkendall neighbourhoods, as well as the southern portions of Strathcona and some of the new builds that would become Westdale and Ainslie Wood. Fairclough’s memoir notes that Evans was the “Tory ‘boss’ in Hamilton West” who personally coordinated candidacies and campaigns that were, on paper, “independent”, but were really backed by the Conservative establishment. Fairclough wrote that, when Evans decided she would run for the Ward 3 seat (“Tony did not request; he demanded,” she wrote), he promised the full support of the Conservative Party: “he and several other men would give me whatever support they could,” she noted, even saying that he personally intervened to prevent another Conservative from seeking the seat at the same time.¹⁰

Rather than being a thing of the past, it would seem the Conservative Party establishment is, over 90 years later, still up to the same tricks.

As I noted in the intro, there are, as of writing, 33 registered candidates for city council seats in the upcoming October 2026 municipal election.

At present, at least four of those candidates can be tied to a Conservative Party network connected to MPs Dan Muys and Ned Kuruc.

Let’s start on the mountain. Ward 8 council candidate Jacob ten Brinke is, at present, the listed president of the Hamilton Mountain Conservative Party riding association. Deeply active in local Tory politics, ten Brinke’s council campaign Facebook page was, until recently, dedicated to his previous attempt to win the Conservative Party’s nomination for Hamilton Mountain and still features party attack ads focused on Justin Trudeau and outgoing MP Steven Guilbeault. The Elections Canada donor database shows an extensive history of donations from ten Brinke to the Conservatives, including to Muys’ riding association in 2021.

Over in Ward 9, candidate Jonathan Stathakos is running against incumbent councillor Brad Clark. Stathakos is a young Tory who already has extensive campaign experience, spending 2025 as one of Donna Skelly’s “boys” (her term) - a group of four Young Tories including Stathakos, who was Skelly’s deputy campaign manager - and as the manager of Ned Kuruc’s federal campaign. Stathakos’ campaign appears highly organized, professional, and competitive, coming out with a slick campaign website and the time-honoured conservative promises of more police, wider highways, lower taxes, and better roads.

The only registered candidate in Ward 11 is Damon Mombourquette. While there’s little information about Mombourquette online, what can be gleaned is that, last Remembrance Day, he represented Muys at a wreath-laying event in Waterdown, with the MP indicating he was part of his “team” (ostensibly meaning either parliamentary staff or riding association team…it’s unclear). Mombourquette’s public Facebook page also includes reposts of content from Muys and Kuruc, as well as listing Stathakos as a Facebook friend.

Three candidates have registered to run in Ward 15 while the community awaits incumbent councillor Ted McMeekin’s announcement about his intentions. One of those candidates is Colleen Stewart. By all indications, Stewart has been engaged in socially conservative politics in the area for a few years. Already pre-endorsed by the anti-choice and anti-gay Campaign Life Coalition, Stewart made waves in 2024 for a speech opposing the flying of Pride flags at Catholic schools in Hamilton. A member of a socially conservative lobby group published a blog after Stewart’s speech where she took issue with “lewd behaviour” at Pride events and what she deemed the goal of Pride was: “Pride’s message is whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, you are entitled to do…will [our students] remember that we upheld our Catholic identity and mission, even when secular seas rose, and ideological storms raged against us?” There’s not too much else available online about Stewart, aside from some results from past road races and, notably, being one of the most reliable users “liking” content from Muys on Facebook.

Hang on, all this talk of road race results and the evils of homosexuality reminds me:

Anyway, that’s four candidates with easily traceable links to the Muys/Kuruc conservative network. “The Muys/Kuruc Network”, if you will.

Both MPs have municipal connections. Kuruc got his political start as a candidate for Ward 3 councillor in 2018, placing a distant third behind winner Nrinder Nann. And, in 2022, Muys was a campaign surrogate for Bob Bratina, publicly backing the former mayor and appearing at his campaign booths around the city, even long after Bratina had stepped back from the limelight. Famously, in 2025, Bratina turned his back on his shallow Liberal roots and endorsed Kuruc, who would go on to snatch Hamilton East-Stoney Creek for the Conservatives.¹¹

The Muys/Kuruc Network does not include all identifiable Tory partisans in the race. Notably, former Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas MPP candidate for Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives, Fred Bennink, is running for councillor in Ward 12, as is former Hamilton Mountain PC candidate and incumbent Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls.

And, of course, we can’t forget veteran Conservative organizer Rob Cooper, whose quick stint on council has served as a springboard for a mayoral campaign. My understanding is that the relationship between provincial Tory partisans and their federal counterparts is frosty, at best, and that there’s no love lost between Cooper and some of the more established Conservatives around town.

On top of that, the Muys/Kuruc Network may not be done expanding. There’s still the outstanding question of former Hamilton Centre Conservative candidate and current Kuruc staffer Hayden Lawrence’s speculated candidacy in Ward 4. And, with incumbent Ward 13 councillor Alex Wilson declining to seek a second term, might the Network try their hand in the Valley Town?

What is certainly interesting is where these Network-affiliates are running. Stathakos running against Brad Clark - a former Conservative Party candidate for MP and PC cabinet minister, as well as one of the most recognizable conservatives in Hamilton - is fascinating. Same goes for Mombourquette’s candidacy in Ward 11, where incumbent councillor Mark Tadeson will presumably be seeking re-election. Clark and Tadeson are not seen as progressive icons and can be, in many cases, reliable votes with council’s right-leaning block. While Stewart running against McMeekin - a deep red Liberal who has already been declared “unsupportable” by the extreme right-wing Campaign Life Coalition- in Ward 15 certainly makes sense, the Network challenging Clark and Tadeson raises more than a few questions.

***

Thirteen years after the election of ‘33, Sam Lawrence was the mayor of Hamilton. He had few labour allies on council and each year’s civic elections were an out-and-out battle waged by the Conservative Party against the city’s social democratic mayor. The election of 1946 was heated, to say the least. Partisan Conservative Donald Clarke challenged Lawrence for the mayor’s chair and spent the campaign attacking him for his membership in the CCF. At a debate in Westdale just days before the vote, Clarke and Lawrence faced off, and Clarke again raised Lawrence’s affiliation.

“I feel that the basic issue at stake is whether we are to have a party-free administration or one dominated by a political party,” Clarke told the crowd.

Lawrence - never known for his sweeping oratory or rousing speeches - fired back with uncharacteristic verve. “We don’t disguise ourselves,” he said, referring to his CCF slate. “You have people calling themselves independents - disguising themselves - but when elected to office they react to their own political ideologies,” he concluded.¹² Lawrence was right to be mad, particularly when a well-known local Conservative could masquerade as an independent while, simultaneously, attacking Lawrence for being a member of the CCF. He knew that, if one was involved in Conservative Party politics, they would undoubtedly take conservative positions once elected to city council. This, he felt, was important for voters to know.

Highlighting the connections that exist is a way to help voters better understand the networks that influence civic politics here. Throwing things out into the open is important, as it provides people crucial context before they cast their ballots.

Of course, none of the candidates I highlighted, nor the figures behind the Muys/Kuruc Network, are doing anything wrong. While you may not agree with their aims, running like-minded and connected candidates for offices across Hamilton isn’t bad. It happens all the time and takes many different forms.

Indeed, the Muys/Kuruc Network will not be the only partisan-affiliated group to try and coordinate campaigns behind the scenes during this year’s municipal election. Partisans and ideological allies and community groups will all do what they can do get sympathetic candidates elected in October. That’s part of living in a democracy.

Despite Ontarians clinging firmly to the convenient lie that “there is no Liberal or Conservative way to pave a road” and that civic affairs must be non-partisan - a contention that is baffling to citizens in nearly every other democratic country and jurisdiction in the world, including many in Canada - people will come to the council horseshoe and trustee boardrooms with political ideologies. They’ll view the world in a particular way and set out to advance the policies they believe will make the world a better place.

While the Muys/Kuruc Network won’t be the only group running, they are one of the most organized and have, up to this point, been the most on-the-ball with getting their allies registered and ready to run. And, if their affiliations are any indication, we have some idea as to the ideological approach they’d have to running the city if elected.

***

Knowing about the networks and the connections present is crucial for voters who want to make an informed choice at the ballot box this October. Candidates may not band together to fund joint newspaper ads anymore, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still coordination behind-the-scenes. As Lawrence contended in 1946, having endured years of attacks from the political right that was happy to remind voters of his affiliations, but eager to conceal their own, it is deeply important that voters know where the candidates for civic office stand.

“We prepare a program and present it to the electorate; we don’t disguise ourselves,”¹² he told the west end crowd that balmy December night in 1946.

Knowing where candidates stand - and with whom they stand - is all part of being an informed voter. And voters in Hamilton certainly deserve to be as well informed as possible before October 26, 2026.

The Rat King

Image by author

I’ve had a few different jobs over the past twenty years. Cashier, bookseller, university lecturer. I even had a stint as a census taker and escaped with my liver intact! Was it because it was only a census of local businesses or because I probably wouldn’t go well with a chianti? Who knows!?

Of all the things I’ve done, working as an editor at the McMaster campus paper, The Silhouette, was probably one of my favourites. And, up until recently, it was also one of the most complicated.

***

Undergrad was a chaotic four years in my life. Like it was for so many others, it was a time of self-discovery, growth, and maturation for me. I took to heart the recommendation from welcome week orientation leaders, professors, and general community members to sample widely from everything campus had to offer. In my first year on campus, I attended concerts, free lectures, socials, game nights, and rallies. I tried different food, took a wide array of courses, and spent time studying in every corner of campus.

Ultimately, I narrowed my academic interests to political science and history and decided the one club I would become very involved with would be the McMaster Campus NDP. By second year, my degree trajectory had been set and I was the president (and, eventually, sole member) of the Campus New Democrats. After taking a political theory class, I decided to try and get involved more in student government on campus in a misguided attempt to live out the Enlightenment ideals of reason, debate, and direct democracy that I had picked up in class. Part of my strategy to make a name for myself as a political figure on campus involved writing op-eds for The Sil, drawing off the tips I had received from political activists off-campus.

This was, of course, a silly idea. Campus politics doesn’t operate the same way off-campus politics does, so few voters are likely to support you based on the op-eds you submit to the campus paper. While I floundered around in campus politics, the one group of people who did sit up and take notice of my op-eds were the paper’s editors themselves. At the end of second year, I was encouraged to apply for a position, so I naturally put myself into contention for the post of Opinions Editor.

Imagine my surprise when I was instead offered the role of News Editor. I took the role and accepted the one condition from the editorial team: I had to step down as president of the Campus NDP.

***

And so my third year of undergrad started as a paid editor at the McMaster campus newspaper, joining a storied institution for which figures like Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, and MP John Bryden wrote for during their time on campus. The Sil was an award-winning paper, renowned across Canada as one of the last campus broadsheets, keeping a finger on the pulse of campus life and civic affairs.

Granted, The Sil wasn’t without controversy. The paper was always a refuge for scoundrels and troublemakers, eager to push the boundaries of acceptability and make a name for themselves. A notable example comes from the 1991 edition of The Sil’s April Fools Day gag paper, The Hamilton Speculator, which made references to then-Alderman Dominic Agostino’s rather voluptuous lips. Agostino’s complaints, as well as broader accusations of sexism and poor taste, led the McMaster Student’s Union to cut funding to the paper.¹

For my part, I was determined to make the paper a serious outlet that bridged the divide between campus and the wider community. One of my first big pitches was to have the paper cover the 2010 Municipal Election, profiling each mayoral candidate and looking at the race for Ward 1 councillor. Working with the graphics department, we had caricatures drawn of Bob Bratina, Larry Di Ianni, Fred Eisenberger, and the oh-so-campus-coded Michael Baldasaro and ran them with the articles each of our editors had written after interviewing the frontrunners. We pushed the city on why polling locations on and around campus had been cut back, attended campaign launches, and, on election night, had a team at city hall to report on the results. Together with an amazing editorial team, we produced some incredible election content. I felt like I was making a difference, even if I had to keep my opinions a little closer to my chest.

But I was also determined to provide better coverage of the McMaster Students Union. The undergraduate body was a multi-million dollar organization that had incredible sway on campus, yet few in the student population really knew what it did. So, as third year dragged on, I would connect with elected leaders, read through reports, and sit in on meetings of the union’s governing body, the Student Representative Assembly (SRA).

After a while, the old itch returned. I was watching government, but had no say. I could see the problems, but couldn’t directly fix them. I had ideas, but my only outlet was writing about them.

I became close with some of the elected student leaders who less-than-subtly encouraged me to join their ranks. By mid-March of 2011, the urge to run was simply too strong. I sat down with my editor and poured my heart out. I rather naïvely believed I could run for office and remain a news editor until the end of the academic year (mid-April at that point). But, after expressing a desire to run for office, I was informed I could no longer remain in my position and was rather quickly replaced as editor (albeit by an eminently qualified volunteer journalist who ended up doing an incredible job).

So, for my fourth year on campus, I was an elected representative on the SRA. While once I sat at the back of the room, reporting on student union issues, now I was one of the members around the table. I thought it was finally my chance to make a change. Oh boy was I wrong.

Within weeks, the SRA became polarized between a faction that wanted to take a more activist approach and a faction that wanted to remain close with campus administration. Thanks to my habitually sharing my opinions, I was branded a communist radical and was quickly ostracized by other members. My old colleagues at The Sil began writing scathing op-eds about how dysfunctional the student union had become, simultaneously breaking my heart and making me question my choices. When I ran for the presidency of the student union, things deteriorated even more. The fractious activist coalition with which I had been associated splintered, The Sil took a deeply critical look at my platform, and the stress of it all resulted in my developing the second worst case of strep throat I’ve ever had in my life.

After I lost the election for student union president, I felt entirely defeated. I had cut my journalism career short, so I couldn’t apply to journalism schools. I had shared too many opinions, so I couldn’t get a job in campus administration like so many of my colleagues. I had not toed the line well enough to pivot into active politics. I had no job offers, no fallbacks, no clear pathways. I was too opinionated, too inexperienced, too public, too complicated, too chaotic. So, naturally, I went to grad school.

By the time I turned 22, my life resembled the legendary rat king: a rodentian mass bound together by blood and goo and excrement, knotted at the tail, each part trying desperately to go its own way, doing nothing but making the situation worse with every frantic step.

That is the same feeling I have right now, all these years later.

After a few years bouncing back and forth between Hamilton and Montreal during my PhD, I made the decision to return full-time in 2020 to weather the pandemic in my hometown. I immediately threw myself into local politics, becoming the campaign CFO for the incredibly talented Roberto Henriquez during his 2021 campaign for MP in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas. I served on candidate search committees, joined electoral district associations, and organized fundraisers for the amazing MPP Sandy Shaw. And, during the 2022 Municipal Election, I published my “School Board Trustee Candidate Tracker” sheet to raise awareness about the oft-forgotten down-ballot office.

At the same time, I was conducting research and publishing papers. I had already been identified as a “local politics expert” by folks in the media, but things really took off after my work during the last municipal election. Reporters would regularly ring me up when they wanted the perspective of a researcher and politics watcher. I had the gossip, I had the research, and I had the soundbites to blend it all together.

I started this newsletter in 2023 after the symbolic death of Twitter. My modest readership grew with each edition and it became a space for me to share my research, my views, and my rather eclectic style of humour. My focus quickly turned to council and the antics of our elected leaders, much as it did when I was an editor at The Sil so many moons ago.

But then I got a job offer I couldn’t refuse. I went from a critic of City Hall to someone working on the political side of the operation who still, with growing intensity, critiqued City Hall. The more I saw, the more frustrated I became, and the more that came out in my writing.

And then the saga of last summer occurred.

***

After my personal information was shared with community activists and without my consent by (as best I can tell) a colleague at City Hall, the disparate strands of my life became increasingly knotted together. I wasn’t just a researcher; I was a hack academic with an agenda. I wasn’t just a local nerd who wanted to share his perspectives; I was a wannabe journalist with an axe to grind. I wasn’t just a communications advisor; I was a nefarious political actor seeking to advance my radical agenda.

Even after the investigation into my activities - an investigation that cost taxpayers untold sums and wasted hundreds of human hours that could have otherwise been employed in the service of this city - concluded with a full exoneration, the knotted tail did not loosen. Indeed, it has only seemed to tighten.

In many ways, the investigation had one of its intended effects; while I wasn’t fired, I became fearful of posting almost anything online lest I find myself subject to further retribution. While the complaint against me wasn’t a public Code of Conduct investigation (I’m a political staffer and, therefore, subject to confidential HR procedures, not the same ones applied to elected officials), it follows the same pattern that we’ve seen in the city since 2022. That’s because, in an attempt to make the system more accessible, the city ended up making it painfully easy to abuse.

After council decided to remove the $100 fee associated with submitting a Code of Conduct complaint, the number of such complaints jumped by 500 percent from 2021 to 2025. As of late February, the city’s Integrity Commissioner told the Spec that he received seven complaints in just the first two weeks of 2026 alone. The overwhelming majority of these complaints are dismissed outright, but the onslaught is having a chilling effect on local governance.²

Let’s be extremely clear here: the Code of Conduct complaint process is being weaponized. It is being used as a cudgel by political opponents of all stripes against sitting members of council. What was intended to be a way to improve transparency has become a drain on resources and a political distraction. It costs taxpayers, it wastes time, and it, at best, results in an embarrassing apology tour for members of council that their political opponents use to throw them off their game.

That was the intent when the complaint was lodged against me. And, frankly, it has thrown me off my game.

And the complexity of my situation became incredibly clear after yesterday’s General Issues Committee (GIC) meeting at City Hall.

***

Following yesterday’s GIC meeting, North End resident Kelly Oucharek announced her bid for the office of Ward 2 councillor in this October’s civic election. Oucharek has been an outspoken activist, particularly around the issue of homelessness, encampments, drug use, and the various tiny shelter projects that have been proposed or set up in the city. She has rapidly built a profile in the community complete with very passionate supporters and equally passionate detractors, which explains the extremely positive reaction to her announcement in the North End Facebook group and the extremely negative reaction to her announcement in the r/Hamilton subreddit.

On a personal level, Oucharek was critical of me during the Code of Conduct investigation last year. Along with her political ally, announced Ward 3 council candidate Andrew Selman, Oucharek posted repeatedly about my situation. She wondered aloud (on both Bluesky and Twitter) about whether I wrote a piece critiquing Selman’s posts about my softball league “on [my] own time or as a city staffer” and quickly followed it up with the claim that I was “leading a group” of staffers seeking to unionize. She followed this with a post alerting local journalist Joey Coleman to the matter.

In my posts detailing the issue in August and October of 2025, I stated clearly that I work for a wage not a salary, that I have never and will never write my own newsletter content “on City of Hamilton time”, that my employer has never directed or commissioned any newsletter content, and that I was not moonlighting as a union organizer (I’m afraid I simply don’t have the time but, again, I am deeply supportive of every employee exercising their Charter rights to join a union). I believe my comments clearly highlight how the reality of the situation differs from some of the ways Oucharek presented my activities on social media.

Oucharek’s posts about the issue remain up to this day. In the time since the investigation concluded and I was found to have not violated any city policies, neither Oucharek nor Selman have retracted any statements or acknowledged the outcome in any way.

As a citizen - a living, informed, opinionated, educated, voting citizen - I have many personal opinions about Oucharek’s candidacy. This is for the simple fact that, based on the facts I have available, we do not share the same worldview.

On the issues about which she has been most vocal, we just plain don’t align. I personally disagree with her stance on and characterization of the safe supply of drugs based on my research and the conversations I have had with healthcare practitioners and activists in the field. I am uncomfortable with her posts which include videos and photos of vulnerable people experiencing homelessness or using drugs as I personally don’t believe it is appropriate to document such things and post them widely given the vulnerable situation of many of the people involved (specifically the high proportion of people in similar situations in Hamilton who are living with mental illnesses, are minors, are fleeing unsafe situations, etc.) And I’m uneasy with her comment telling someone who chose to stay masked after the WHO declared the COVID-19 Pandemic over to “ditch the mask”, as I personally believe it is an individual’s right to protect their health using evidence-based medicine.

More abstractly, I personally have issues with her public notes of encouragement to Adam Zivo, the reporter seen as controversial by groups like PressProgress for his brand of activist journalism and who has become an increasingly (self-professed) dedicated opponent of issues relating to the transgender community. Notably, I have a personal issue with this note of support Oucharek left on one of Zivo’s posts about “gender radicalism” (it is important to note that Oucharek did not positively or negatively address Zivo’s main point on the post, instead bringing it back to his reporting on drug policy - it is unclear if her comment “keep it up! needs to be said” was in reference to Zivo’s original point or his reporting on drug policy). And I am personally unsettled by the main point of controversy that has come up following her announcement, namely her reposting of a tweet during Pride Month in 2024 that ends with the lines: “There probably is some errant genetics at play for why some people are gay. That’s okay. But LGBTQ+…is total Perversion of Normality”.

To her credit, in a response to a community member on Facebook, Oucharek wrote that she “does not support or endorse content that is harmful or discriminatory towards anyone.” I appreciate the clarification, though I should note that both posts remain up as of writing.

A side note, but I think it needs to be stated very clearly right here and right now: trans rights are human rights and that isn’t up for debate. I will not personally engage in any debates about the humanity of my friends in the trans community or in any debates about my humanity as a gay man. Full stop, end of story. This is simply an informational side note about my perspective that I think needs to be stated, not a comment on any real or perceived perspectives from any candidate mentioned anywhere in this piece.

It should come as no surprise that I personally have different political beliefs than Oucharek. I have different political beliefs than Selman and Vito Sgro and Jason Farr and Matt Francis and Rob Cooper and Hayden Lawrence and Fred Bennink and Chad Collins and a great many other political figures in Hamilton. They are free to share their perspectives, run for office, and advance the causes in which they believe just as it is my personal right to hold different views and, in my own personal time, work to advance the causes in which I believe.

In a healthy and functioning democracy, people - no matter where they work or what their background is - this is not a bad thing. People should be given the space to express their political opinions and advance the things in which they believe. People deserve to ask questions about one’s beliefs, interrogate their reasoning, and have rational, evidence-based debates.

But I simply can’t do that right now because I’m all tangled up.

***

The rat king that is my life is becoming an issue.

I have a deep and gnawing desire to do “investigative” style work like when I dug into the conspiracy theory that people experiencing homelessness were being “bussed” into Hamilton or my dogged pursuit of the clandestine figures behind “Concerned Hamiltonians” (side note, but an “anonymous” survey from an as-yet-unnamed shadowy source has popped up in town “polling” Ward 2 residents on “the current direction of Ward 2” and the qualities that “matter most to you in a Ward 2 councillor” - all I could think of when I saw that was “try President’s Choice’s new sauce ‘Memories of Concerned Hamiltonians’, now with 50% less flavour!”).

But doing that kind of work in the current political climate and given my current position has become almost impossible. I have to word things with such delicacy, I end up scrapping most editions before I can publish them. Even just the couple paragraphs above that directly relate to Oucharek’s had to be rewritten a handful of times to ensure they clearly pointed out that:

1. All opinions expressed are my own personal opinions, none of which are in violation of the City of Hamilton’s employee Code of Conduct which I have studied with great intensity;

2. Each point that could be challenged has accompanying references and is presented as close to as it was originally;

3. No point incorporates any level of humour or commentary that might, in some way, skew the meaning of the comments; and

4. In the most neutral way possible, my own perspectives differ on some issues she has raised in the community but do not, in any capacity, represent anyone or any other organization’s views other than my own individual, personal, autonome opinions as a free citizen in a democracy.

Writing like that results in a bland, repetitive word salad that no one would spend any significant time reading. But I have to translate my work into pseudo-legalese just to stay above board.

And that’s because I like my job. I like working at City Hall. I like helping to make sense of the extremely complicated decisions and policies that come from our local government. I like being able to put my education to use in service of my community.

But I also like having somewhere to live. I like buying groceries. I like feeding my cats (they made me say that…I know they’ll turn on me the second the kibble runs out).

I don’t want to be a distraction to anyone in the community. And I don’t want to throw the life that I have and the lives of the people I love and care about and admire into jeopardy. The more I comment on these matters given the position I’m in, the more likely that becomes.

So it’s time to start untangling the rat king.

***

First thing’s first: I wish Oucharek and Selman and all the other candidates running the best of luck in the upcoming municipal election campaign. If the voters of Hamilton see fit to send both of these community activists and any of the other folks with similar views to council, then that is the outcome I will acknowledge and accept as a citizen in a democracy.

But, given the fact that the work I do on this newsletter and the work I do in the community have already been tied together thanks to last year’s investigation, I can no longer comment on their actions or the actions of any candidate in the way I had previously done.

I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not believe Oucharek or Selman or any other announced or prospective candidate with whom I have an ideological or policy or personal difference has or will use the complaint system to stifle debate or attack their opponents. As is always the case, political figures and campaigns have their supporters, some of whom take action independently in ways they deem appropriate to support the cause or people they back. Similarly, there are people who simply love procedure and may take issue with any perceived conflicts I may have. With that said, given the weaponization of the complaints system, my precarious work situation, and the nature of the commentary I provide, it is simply impossible to distinguish between all the pieces of my life.

This means there will be some changes to the newsletter for the next while.

I will still publish The Incline, albeit on a less-than-firm schedule. I will post when I am able, which may be a challenge given the requirements of my work (I should note that I work three distinct part-time positions, each at different places, to make ends meet, as well as do unpaid academic and independent research when I can).

My main focus, at least during the municipal election campaign, will be on one of my favourite topics: local history. Writing about the history of Halloween in Hamilton, the relocation of The Alpha Neighbourhood, and the lives of Brothers Michael Baldasaro and Walter Tucker brought me such incredible joy and reminded me of a paper review I once got that (and I’m paraphrasing here) may have been trained as a geographer, but have the soul of a historian. Our city has such a rich, vibrant, incredible past that is all-too-often forgotten. I love diving deep and presenting our shared past in my own unique way.

I may also take some space to discuss provincial matters. My perspectives on the government of Doug Ford are very well known and I will not stop raising my voice about the damage I believe he and the Progressive Conservative Party are doing to this province.

But, ultimately, I will avoid discussing the municipal election campaign and civic affairs for the foreseeable future.

I know this may come as a disappointment to some. And, for that, I apologize. I know the city’s media landscape is not as deep or inquisitive as many would like. I have personally heard from so many people that they appreciate my analysis, my focus on issues that mainstream outlets ignore, and my takes on the issues that impact our city. I am truly sorry I will not be able to do that going forward. I hope you understand and seek out answers to the questions you have wherever you can.

And, most importantly, I hope you get involved in the upcoming municipal election in the way that makes the most sense to you, whether that’s as a candidate, a campaign volunteer, an organizer, a letter writer, or just a voter. This is your city. You have a say. And your perspective matters.

***

I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a position to “pick a lane” when it comes to how I participate in our democracy. I love writing, but I also love electoral politics. I love campaigns, but I also love working “on the inside”. I love research, but I also love promoting policy.

I might figure out how to make all that work together one day. But today is not that day.

Today, I’m learning how to live with the rat king that is my life. I’m trying to distinguish between the parts, untangle it where I can, and, most of all, do everything I can to not get bitten.

The Worst of Times

Photo by Thomas McPherson on Unsplash - edited by author.

Writing this newsletter is getting harder.

As the seconds tick closer to the October 26, 2026 municipal election, it is becoming more and more clear that, unlike in times past, this campaign will not be the good-spirited (albeit serious) contest to select the next cohort of civic leaders. Instead, it is shaping up to be an ugly, brutal, sad little brawl with no certain outcomes. Rather than a campaign marked by sunny ways or the winds of change, we are in the position of hunkering down as a whirlwind of misery crashes into us.

Our democracy is very, very, very sick right now. Not quite at “Weimar Germany circa 1932” levels of sick, but sick enough that there isn’t much time left to make changes before it’s too late.

***

Part of the reason for that is because of global forces. We are now firmly immersed in a period of global chaos that will not end with the US Midterms on November 3 of this year. It won’t even end in 2028, assuming the United States holds its scheduled presidential and congressional elections at that time. This is the new reality: one defined by complete and utter chaos, and where the only sure thing is instability.

Nothing makes sense anymore. Some days, it seems like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. The French far-right failed to meet expectations in their municipal elections this week, with leftist and moderate candidates taking control of important city halls. And Italy’s bafflingly popular fascist Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, lost a key referendum which would have allowed her more power to overhaul the country’s judicial system. The rejection of Meloni’s far-right agenda was driven by youth, who overwhelmingly opposed the changes. On the flip side, some of her strongest support came from those Italians eligible to vote while living right here in Canada. Seems like sound of Bella ciao echoing throughout Europe can’t be heard across the Atlantic.

Other days, it’s like there’s no light at all. An MP in Finland was, just yesterday, convicted of inciting hatred after saying that gay people had a “developmental disorder”. Given financial support by American evangelicals, she’s now launched a campaign to soften human rights legislation and make it easier to discriminate against queer people in her country, which is currently ruled by a coalition government of traditional conservatives and far-right populists. A snap election in Denmark (called by their Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, after she got a polling bump following her standing up to US aggression over Greenland and incorporated anti-immigrant sentiment into her Social Democratic Party’s platform) saw the far-right surge in support unexpectedly. While ecosocialists and progressives performed well, a collection of extreme right parties did even better. And, as the not-quite-a-war in Iran escalates, we find ourselves on the road to a global energy crisis the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a generation.

While Mark Carney’s deeply cold and calculating government is following a tried-and-true playbook of doing what it can to stave off complete economic collapse by slashing the federal budget, the mixed messaging about Canada’s role in global conflict isn’t reassuring anyone. Carney’s government has been cagey about direct military involvement in the Middle East, but has been boosting defence spending with glee, meeting the 2%-of-GDP “benchmark” necessitated by our NATO membership for the first time since the Cold War. The feds are on track to fire 28,000 civil servants by 2029, but at least the military has a load of cash to maybe do some war!

Closer to home, Ontario’s provincial government has fully embraced the Chaos Doctrine as a way to cover for its near-endless string of misdeeds and failures. In my academic life (which is slipping deeper into memory with each passing day), I had long resisted equating Doug Ford with the current American president. After four trillion eight years of him, I now see that, while they differ in the policy arena, they are nearly identical in temperament and political style. Ford’s decisions have the same MAGA-infused air of flippant smugness to them. And, just as the state apparatus of the lumbering republic to our south is now oriented toward enriching the president and his friends, Ontario’s provincial political machinery is now employed in full service of the policy agenda Ford would have set had the people of Toronto done what he told them to and made him mayor in 2014. Convention centres and waterfront spas and jet-riddled downtown airports and total control over schools and small city councils and cronies galore! Nouveau Tammany Hall, just without the cool facial hair and clever nicknames. Who will be the “Slippery Dick” Connolly of Queen’s Park!?

***

Here in Hamilton, we find ourselves in our “find out” moment. The steady poisoning of our civic discourse, aided in part by a local media and commentator class that oscillates unpredictably between callous indifference and cryptopartisan belligerence and in part by a civic machinery that has not done a very good job of educating the people about what the municipality can do and is doing, has created a tailing pond of toxicity in which a gaggle of new and returning political actors, buoyed partially by the chaos of the current moment and partially by the personal floatation devices that are their own egos, are now floating.

Of the “declared” candidates for mayor and city council (say nothing of school boards, as they’ll likely be dissolved in the coming weeks - another Doug Fordian blow to our democracy), the preponderance of non-incumbents stepping up to run in Hamilton are conspiracy theorists and/or right-wing activists of varying intensity. These are political actors who are either convinced that Hamilton’s decline began 1,228 days ago when the current term of council was sworn in or are playing the part of the “concerned citizen” in the hopes that the slurry of bitumen, silt, and rage in the tailing pond of Hamilton’s civic discourse will swell and rise to such a level where they will be swept into office. A rising tide eats through the fiberglass hulls of most boats, and all that.

Few unapologetic non-incumbent progressives have signaled an open intention to run for any position, though we did just get an announcement from Scarlett Gillespie, the incredibly passionate activist and organizer, who recently confirmed her candidacy for mayor. And while more will inevitably step up as we get closer and closer to the close of nominations on August 21, 2026, it isn’t hard to see why forward-thinking people in the community aren’t champing at the bit to run this race (another incredibly passionate forward-thinking Hamiltonian, Lohifa Pogoson Acker, just announced she won’t be running for council in Ward 8, even though the seat may be open with incumbent councillor Rob Cooper preparing a mayoral run - unfortunately clearing a path for Terry Whitehead’s return to office if current trustee Dawn Danko doesn’t make a bid for it). Anyone even a millimetre left of centre (or, frankly, left of the spot on the extreme right that right-wing activists have tried to position as “centre”) will be sharing the track with candidates operating in a political reality that is very different than anything we’ve experienced before.

These are people who are living in an imaginary world where Hamilton city council, which is split awkwardly between ideological right, centre, and left factions, is somehow controlled by the minority bloc in the form of those to the left of centre. This is a bloc that numbers 3-to-5 members (out of 16, remember) at varying intervals and depending on where the angriest people on the internet draw their lines. This belief - that Hamilton is controlled by radical “woke” activists - has spawned a cottage industry built around performative outrage at every action taken by this current council. Those whose outrage is most consistent and most vitriolic have become local “thought leaders”, transmuting banal events into parts of a nefarious plot by malicious forces determined to “take your city away”. That’s the only way to describe how the same talking points, complete with the same throw-away jabs, the same clunky phrasing, and the same misspelling (purposeful or not) of certain councillor’s names, appears with regularity on Facebook, X/Twitter, in the comments section of the Spec and Bay Observer, and occasionally on the r/Hamilton subreddit. Well…the only way to describe that phenomenon without speculating that it’s maybe a very, very small group of well-funded activists in control of multiple accounts making it seem like there’s more opposition to the current council than there really is.

Even some of the “traditional” civic conservatives who we could previously count on to talk about little more than taxes have dipped a cautious toe or two into the brisk and corrosive waters of conspiracy. Whether they like it or not, many of them count among their supporters people whose critiques of the current council are little more than an inebriated stumble on the line between talk-radio-style right-wing populism and a bald-faced, exuberant, open ideology of misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and whatever other kind of ugly hate you could imagine. And, as more progressives retreat from active politics, the larger the influence of these malcontents will grow, meaning it will become more and more acceptable to not only bring them into the fold, but change your message to better suit their beliefs. What MAGA (and, before it, the Tea Party) did to the Republican Party, so too shall the angriest and most aggrieved will do to our civic conversation.

***

I do not share these observations lightly, nor am I sharing them out of a desire to tip the scales in favour of one candidate or side.

Despite some of the more salacious rumours swirling out there in the community, I am not affiliated with any campaign (the only thing worse than being talked about is being talked about inaccurately). I’m in an awkward situation where I work at city hall, but also work on the outside. I comment on matters pertaining to civic affairs, but also have to communicate about civic affairs. I have a pile of degrees and damn near two decades of experience in politics, but, since the events of last summer and lingering assumptions about my political allegiances, have been treated as a persona non grata by local media and some in the upper echelons of local power. While some of my detractors may sneer that I wield undue influence, let me assure them that I have been ostensibly blackballed. My penchant for speaking my mind doesn’t just annoy those with whom I disagree, but also concerns those who see my work as more a liability than an asset.

No, I share these observations because I tried to write a piece on a conspiracy theory being spread by a proclaimed candidate for city council in Ward 3 and, instead, got sucked into local Facebook drama. And that, in turn, reminded me of why we’re in such a bad place.

***

In 2017, while speaking to my students in my capacity as a Teaching Assistant, the class got onto the topic of social media. I had been immersed in research on the impacts of Facebook and Twitter on the rise of the far-right around the world. Facebook in particular had already been caught trying to “control” the emotions of users and it was already becoming evident (though had not yet been proven) that it was boosting far-right misinformation as a way to keep users engaged. That was the same year that Facebook helped to facilitate the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, doing absolutely nothing to stop the calls to violence proliferating on the platform in the authoritarian country.

In the midst of the conversation, I said, partially out of frustration, that “Facebook is killing democracy”. The line got a laugh and some agreement from my students, most of whom had stopped using the platform; it had begun then, but the migration of youth from the platform continues at a steady pace. Facebook’s demographics currently skew older and more savvy users have abandoned for fresher and more collaborative platforms like TikTok.

It wasn’t until I got my course evaluations that I saw just how much of an impact that comment had. A student took the time to write that what I said was a profound observation that led them down the path to being more critical of the impact of social media on our democracy. That meant a lot to me as a TA.

At the same time, the problem hasn’t gone away.

The Russian state continues to use Facebook to eat away at the foundations of liberal democracy and, just this week, Meta was found to have enabled harm against children, leading to a fine of $375,000,000 for the company.

Of course, in Hamilton, the impact of Facebook hasn’t been to as dramatic. In fact, I’d say the biggest impact Facebook has had on our local democracy is that it has made it far cruder, more easily warped by the political right, and undoubtedly sillier.

***

That’s how the piece was supposed to start.

It was originally going to be about how a fringe “candidate” for council in Ward 3 (who has said in comments he isn’t running to win but, instead, to be a disruptive force - an internet troll committed to the bit IRL) spread the increasingly tired far-right conspiracy that Indigenous people are coming to take your homes.

It’s been a belief on the extreme right for some time that any attempt to engage in meaningful reconciliation is somehow dangerous, especially when Indigenous land title is acknowledged. A ruling in BC from last August sparked right-wing fears when a judge found that an Indigenous group there never surrendered their territory and maintain title to it, despite it currently being owned by private landholders. But, as Indigenous experts and lawyers have noted, the ruling simply reinforces the idea that the Canadian government has a constitutional obligation to First Nations groups and to recognize Indigenous title. As two lawyers put in Policy Options, the ruling “does not mean that private-property owners who were not named in the court case are likely to lose title to their land and homes…It’s simply a reminder to governments to fulfil their constitutional obligations.”¹

But when your entire political movement is based on feelin’ angry, why let facts get in the way!?

The Canadian far-right jumped at the chance to rile up the base and terrify the ill-informed by claiming that land acknowledgements are somehow laying the groundwork for the complete abolition of private property rights and the mass deportation of settler Canadians. It’s so preposterous, it’s laughable, but that hasn’t ever stopped them before.

This belief circulated in fringe, hyper-online circles for a bit. A notable local example comes from Catherine Kronas, the right-wing populist New Blue Party-affiliated activist who ran for school board trustee in Waterdown during the last municipal election. Kronas has been leading a charge against land acknowledgements (albeit under the cover of land acknowledgements constituting “compelled speech” in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) for a while, focusing her efforts on the Hamilton-Wentworth Public School Board’s use of them at meetings.

The conspiracy theory broke containment and entered the mainstream when far-right Conservative Party MP Aaron Gunn was mocked by Indigenous leaders for peddling the theory. Gunn brought it up in a social media post, calling on the federal government to stop making land acknowledgements if it “truly believes in the private property rights of Canadians” and that land acknowledgements reinforce “the radical and dangerous legal concept that most Canadians live on ‘stolen land’.”²

A right wing extremist spreading a conspiracy theory isn’t necessarily newsworthy, but it got plenty of attention when the chiefs of four BC First Nations communities issued a press release telling Gunn to “chillax”.

As amusing as that response was, the belief still lingers in fringe circles. And the silliness of the conspiracy theory meant, of course, that it would spill over into Hamilton’s civic politics.

***

When searching Google for something completely different³ , I came across posts from an individual who has declared their candidacy for Ward 3 councillor.

Ward 3 may be (with the exception of any open races) the most hotly contested race in the city. In incumbent councillor, Nrinder Nann, has declared her intention to seek a third term and a host of other candidates, some more mainstream than others, have also preemptively thrown their hats in the ring. Thanks to Ward 3’s status in the city - a ward with a wide range of incomes, land uses, cultural and social groups, problems and promises - it has taken on the status of “battleground”. In large part, this is because the spillover effects from the COVID-19 Pandemic and the systematic defunding of social services has resulted in a situation where Ward 3 deals with a disproportionate amount of the “social disorder” many mischaracterize as “crime” and the effects of decades of property devaluation that has allowed predatory and absent landlords to profit off the community without contributing to the community. Ward 3 is packed with heritage homes and once-promising storefronts carved into shoebox units rented to people on the margins by numbered companies based out of Markham and Oakville run by people who let their assets crumble while extracting as much from them as the market will allow.

I won’t be naming any of the candidates for a few reasons. But, in the case of this particular candidate, I’m avoiding naming them for the simple reason that they unsettle me. They, like some other people who have said they would like to run for office in the city, maintain extreme views and have not shied away from using offensive and, oftentimes, homophobic language to get their points across. And, until they’re officially registered, I’d like to keep some distance between myself and the nonsense that they might try.

The candidate is a Facebook superuser, posting habitually in Hamilton-area groups. While they are active in some local neighbourhood-specific groups, they are most active in the local-area groups that are firmly on the political margins. These are groups where transphobia, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and open support for the MAGA fantasy of Canadian annexation aren’t just commonplace, but foundational. They often have “free speech”, “unrestricted”, or “neighbourhood watch” in their name or description, though their commitment to freedom of speech seems to extend only to using the “r-word” to mock their fellow Hamiltonians and their dedication to being a “neighbourhood watch” service involves little more than posting Ring Camera footage of people experiencing homelessness or in crisis. Mostly, though, the groups are where habitual users can post rants about “that Mayor Horvath” (whomever that is), AI-generated memes about “woke libs”, and pixelated graphics about how the Liberal Party is actually fascist.

It’s in these groups where the prospective candidate has been expounding upon their “campaign platform”, which includes opposition to the LRT (obviously), support for Real Estate Investment Trusts (the large-scale financialized landlords that pay no tax due to their corporate structure), and a plan to force drug users and people experiencing homelessness into indentured servitude (that sounds constitutional), all cut through with massive amounts of Islamophobia.

And it was in one of those groups where they shared this post:

The “candidate” just cuts right to the chase and shares an out-and-out conspiracy theory, claiming the NDP (a party without status in the House of Commons) is working to take away “YOUR PROPERTY” through land acknowledgements.

Exhausting.

So, yeah, my original plan was to write about conspiracies and how they might influence the municipal election. But, needing to scour Facebook for examples and learn more about this “candidate”, I got stuck in an angry little eddy of hyperlocal social media drama that just reminded me how ill our democracy really is in this moment.

***

The prospective candidate, along with 9,400 other people, is a member of the “Welcome to the North End” Facebook group. The candidate uses it frequently and, not long ago, one of their lengthy missives was screenshotted and posted in the group by a user who had questions about the claims. The candidate responded, but didn’t address any of the questions, instead just copy-and-pasting the headlines of articles from local journalist Joey Coleman.

The North End group is…complicated. There are easily-identified powerusers in the group who post multiple times a day about a cacophony of issues and others who reliably comment on certain stories. A group user, for example, repeatedly re-posts content from Vito Sgro’s not-quite-a-mayoral-candidate page to the point where they are annoying other group members (one recently commented “Why do you keep sharing his posts?” and I swear you could hear their eyes rolling from through the screen). Another anonymous user with a damn-near inscrutable name regularly shares stream-of-consciousness complaints about anything and everything that happens in the city, though their posts are rife with misinformation and conspiracy theories (including jumping onto the dumb little non-scandal that was the receipt of a Ward 2 Community Grant by the Steel City Inclusive Softball Association last year - nothing makes queer Hamiltonians feel welcome than 👏 every 👏 single 👏 little 👏 thing 👏 we do being scrutinized with more intensity than the actions of any other group in town).

Some of the group’s other power users have been up in arms about the state of Eastwood Arena, the crumbling 67 year-old rink at Burlington and Mary. Thanks to decades of underinvestment in our civic infrastructure, the building is, at this point, barely usable. Side note, but last summer, I ran by the building and noticed gaps in the wall so large, I could see through to the rink inside.

Based on the state of the building, the city has made the decision to close Eastwood Arena between April and September to monitor the how the building holds up, make repairs where necessary, and ensure it isn’t overused in the summer so that it can be re-opened when the hockey season starts.

The timing of this pause on programming is not ideal. This closure will last through to the most active part of the 2026 municipal election campaign, which is not great news for Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch.

Opposition to Kroetsch appears to be extremely loud and extremely dedicated in pockets of the North End, which is a community struggling in the midst of a protracted identity crisis. The community by the bay is steeped in history, but is changing rapidly. It is home to many long-time working class residents and an increasing number of arts-focused and professional, younger households. It is a community with traditional Italian and Portuguese roots and a rapidly growing queer and newcomer population. It is home to industry and community services, a navy base and a fast-evolving waterfront, a place where the horn blasts from incoming ships in the Harbour echo through the neighbourhood as loud as the music from summer festivals held at Bayfront Park does. It is home to a vital link to the region in the form of West Harbour, while simultaneously feeling isolated and penned in by the rail lines and fast-moving streets along its borders. That’s part of the reason why Kroetsch, if I may be so bold, represents a Hamilton that many North Enders don’t recognize and represents what Hamilton should be to a great many more.

In a letter released to the community, Kroetsch said that the temporary closure of the arena - which is not a recreation centre and does not have drop-in skates or activities like many other municipal spaces in the city do - will impact some of the summer leagues that use the space, but that there’s no plan to permanently close the arena at Eastwood without a replacement plan in place. Indeed, the City of Hamilton’s Recreation Master Plan accounts for this and says Eastwood will be replaced by a new facility either on-site or nearby, instead of simply being closed without an alternative being provided.

Had someone not seen the councillor’s letter and only come across a Change.org petition entitled “EASTWOOD IS A UNIQUE AND VALUED ASSET. IT NEEDS TO STAY OPEN!”, they may have a different impression of the situation.

The petition calls for an immediate “halt to the permanent closure of Eastwood Arena”, a commitment for a funding plan to ensure the facility remains open, and “Ensure equitable access to recreation by protecting the only arena serving the lower city’s North End”. It makes its case by dipping into the tried-and-tested age-old strategy in Hamilton’s politics that I like to call “She Already Done Had Herses”; people in one neighbourhood will see anything happening in another neighbourhood and assume that a) their neighbourhood is always overlooked and that b) other neighbourhoods always get a disproportionate level of money, resources, and attention from the city. In this case, it’s a case of “The North End vs. Stoney Creek”.

“The Mayor set a precedent as she intervened to save the Stoney Creek Arena. We demand the same commitment to equity, transparency, and preservation of vital community assets in our neighbourhood,” reads the “letter” attached to the petition.

The petition, which had around 2,150 signatures at last glance, is an interesting collection of grievances. It claims that the North End “relies on Eastwood Arena for affordable recreation”, but there are no municipal programs on-site; the only groups that use the space in the summer are the Hammer City Roller Derby, the Hamilton Ball Hockey Association, and the Hamilton Lacrosse Association, and each of those will be re-accommodated at another municipal arena. It makes a series of claims about the benefits of community centres before issuing the demand that “Mayor Horwath and City Council…Immediately halt the permanent closure of Eastwood Arena.” But that isn’t happening; Eastwood is being closed in the summer to ensure it can be ready for the fall and winter season, not being closed permanently right now. AGAIN, the City of Hamilton’s Recreation Master Plan does suggest closing the current Eastwood Arena and replacing it either with a modernized facility or as part of a larger community centre, but what’s happening now is a temporary closure for safety reasons.

The petition has been circulated widely in the “Welcome to the North End” Facebook group. There’s a steady undercurrent of anti-Kroetsch commentary in the group, so the petition was like catnip for the powerusers who associate the current councillor (and sometimes the mayor) with all the city’s woes. The group’s users regularly associate any problem in the community with the councillor (helping to explain the proliferation of quasi-mayoral-campaign-style videos from Vito Sgro in the group that blame Mayor Horwath and council for problems that predate their time in office by decades).

For some of the loudest voices in Hamilton, November 15, 2022 - the day this current council was sworn in - represents a turning point. The world before was like a Norman Rockwell painting. The world after transformed Hamilton into a more run-down and undesirable place than some of the less-appealing neighbourhoods of Pripyat. History is shallow and it is only those before our eyes who must be held responsible for our misery!

I digress, but only slightly. Another poster (who almost exclusively uses the group to attack Councillor Kroetsch from one of what is, by their own admission, many different accounts) dropped a link to Kroetsch’s letter to the community about the Eastwood closure that sparked a more…spirited discussion.

***

The original poster went wide, blaming Kroetsch for the deterioration of local heritage buildings like the Tivoli and the buildings along Gore Park, speculating that the councillor has blocked “over half his constituents”, and making veiled accusations of corruption regarding Kroetsch and the receipt of heritage designation for the former Bank of Montreal building at Gore Park. While the space is, today, home to the nightclub “Mansion”, it was previously the “gay” bar Embassy (“gay” is in quotes because it wasn’t owned by anyone in the queer community, employed problematic security staff, and never made any effort to build connections between queer Hamiltonians).

Now, it would be beyond a stretch to suggest 18,540 residents of Ward 2 have been blocked by the councillor and, as I tried to communicate in the “Welcome to the North End” group, the process of giving the 112 year-old Bank of Montreal building heritage designation began in 2014 when Jason Farr was the councillor. But the original poster seems more driven by a visceral hatred of the councillor (they’ve made another five anti-Kroetsch posts since Monday of this week) than by a desire to advance truth and logic.

You will note that I said I tried to post in the group.

I have a barebones account I use for work. I deleted my original account in 2022 after the toxicity in the Strathcona neighbourhood Facebook group (where I lived at the time) became so vile, I began to feel physically ill even scrolling through it. So, had I been authorized to post, it would have been my first foray onto the hellsite in four years. But my comment was, for better or for worse, not approved. Huge violation of decorum and decency to offer facts about the heritage designation process, it would seem.

On the other hand, comments from many people, both in the North End community and outside it, were allowed. Comments from the original poster and their multiple different accounts got through.

Comments from a former Parks, Cemeteries, and Special Projects Manager for the City of Hamilton and “Special Advisor to the Board” during Mayor Fred Eisenberger’s tenure (who moonlights as a minor social media celebrity in town) were approved. It’s important to note that, like the original poster, this individual seems almost singularly focused on Kroetsch, so never passes up an opportunity to attack the councillor (and, bafflingly, add tags in each of their comments for groups and individuals seemingly at random; they will tag comments with links to the Hamilton Police Service, the Hess Village BIA, the mayor, different media outlets and, once, to TD Place, the sports field in Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park).

And, of course, a comment from former councillor (and likely 2026 council candidate) Jason Farr was approved, allowing the area’s representative from 2010 to 2022 a chance to take on, in his words, “Councillor CK the Deflector King” and rally the community to lace up and keep the rink open instead of “more finger pointing and meetings with staff.”

I dunno, maybe attending one of those “meetings with staff” back in 2010 would have been a good idea so that they could have told you that “community gumption” isn’t a substitute for the plaster and concrete and materials the building needed to survive but that the city deferred buying because multiple terms of council preferred to keep taxes artificially low for totally normal and not-at-all political reasons, but what do I know?

The group’s admin eventually closed commenting on the post and, for a brief period, all of Kroetsch’s comments disappeared. While some of his comments have since returned, the post remains locked. The original poster took issue with that and posted in the group again asking for an explanation. The admin of “Welcome to the North End” informed the poster that “several people reported your comments” and that “the people who reported are probably [Kroetsch’s] supporters”.

What likely occurred was that some of the people reading the thread reported the original poster’s comments about wanting to “head down to City Hall” to “talk” to Kroetsch about his claims. A reasonable person could assume that, given the level of pure, unadulterated vitriol aimed at Kroetsch by the original poster who entered the conversation advancing out-and-out conspiracy theories about the councillor’s involvement with the heritage designation of a former “gay” bar (also interesting that the conspiracy theory would go there), that the suggestion that he “just wanted to talk in person” was concerning.

A group’s admin can, ultimately, choose what they want to appear in the group. Sometimes, people balk at even the modest amount of regulation that occurs to keep all users safe. That’s why, in 2023, a group of rebels broke off to create a “Welcome to the North End (Hamilton, Ontario) -free speech edition-” where nobody can tell them that purposely misspelling Kroetsch’s name is both childish and, because of what is spelled, borderline homophobic! WOOO FREE SPEECH TAKE THAT WOKE LIBS WITH YOUR PRONOUNS ~~~air horn sounds~~~

Regulation in even mainstream Facebook groups is very modest. That’s why, while my egregious comment explaining how heritage designation works was not approved, comments from another of the group’s more active users and more prominent figures in the community pop up regularly.

That’s why a poster in the group can do endless promotion for Vito Sgro. That’s why anonymous and semi-anonymous accounts can spread conspiracy theories or spend all their time on social media attacking the current councillor for a host of real or imagined issues in the community. That’s why the former councillor - who, again, may be on the ballot this October - can comment and blame his successor for a problem that was decades in the making.

A group admin can cut off conversation whenever they want. They can delete posts that go against their world view, approve posts that validate their preexisting biases, and can shape the feed of a group in such a way that the perception of an issue is distorted. The preponderance of like-minded people in the group facilitates this in tandem with the actions of the admin. A group that’s intended to be the “virtual town square” for a community can come under the control of someone who allows, consciously or unconsciously, their worldview to dominate the conversation.

And so we find ourselves with a community Facebook group with near-daily posts that attack the current councillor from users who share misleading or misinformed opinions or from users with an explicit anti-Kroetsch agenda. As the bonds that tie community together fray, as people are forced to work longer hours for less pay and spend less time connecting with their neighbours, as we spend more and more time stuck in traffic in our dumb little cars on ever-widening highways and less time walking through our communities, we are left with little more than the refuge of online spaces for connection. But when you log on and see nothing but comment after comment of bile-soaked vitriol, you begin to realize that, in many ways, there isn’t much community left online. There’s just bitterness and partisan chicanery and massive corporations looking to make a buck.

***

So, yes, spending just a couple of hours on Facebook trying to do research for a piece put me in a very foul mood.

But it wasn’t just the silly drama that got to me. It’s some of what was said and where some of the posts led me that got me really bothered.

The poster who originally went after Councillor Kroetsch raised the idea that he “let” some of Hamilton’s built heritage collapse. But, the reality is, provincial law severely limits what municipalities can do and, since private property rights are paramount in this province, it is up to private landholders to be responsible citizens. When they aren’t the whole community suffers, but the councillor gets the blame, not the corporation or landlord that let the heritage building disintegrate in the first place.

Other prospective candidates across the city have similar areas of focus, finding derelict and/or abandoned buildings and using them as examples of council’s negligence. They rail against councillors who “let” these things happen but stop short of offering any solution. They certainly don’t want the socialist solution of expropriating the properties in question, but all they are able to offer are shaky campaign-style videos shouting about how council failed without saying one word about the predatory landlords and speculative real estate investors who caused the problem originally.

Sitting members of council have campaigned hard against things like the landlord licencing program intended to make conditions safer in student homes or against the vacant unit tax intended to fill as many units of housing as possible while simultaneously calling for more housing. They’ve been laser-focused on the Barton-Tiffany Outdoor Shelter, shouting to the rafters about the costs without acknowledging that 80 people who would otherwise be living on the streets have been housed because of it. Every misstep is exploited for campaign talking points, every evidence-based solution is dismissed as a tax-grab, the solution to every problem goes no farther than shouting about it.

Or there’s the absolutely incredible example of Sgro, who posted a few weeks ago about the upcoming Main Street two-way conversion. The restoration of two-way traffic on Main Street - something communities have been begging for - has become a new cause célèbre for Hamilton’s political right who are working overtime to turn public opinion against the multi-million dollar project (which includes money for repairs). Sgro posted a video to his totally-not-a-campaign Facebook page where the totally-not-a-candidate stands in front of Main Street rattling off figures for nine seconds before the video cuts to footage of a pothole-riddled Main. Sgro, in a voice-over, says the only reason council wants to convert Main is for safety, but they’ve already introduced safety measures and, besides, he’s lived in the area so he knows that the conversion will create gridlock. Sure, Sgro provides zero evidence for his claim besides “I live here” but, even more incredibly, he is barely audible in the first portion of the video because of the noise coming from the cars speeding down the four-lane highway that is Main Street today.

That’s what’s been bothering me.

Community members who share conspiracies and half-truths as justification for hating elected officials with whom they have real or imagined disagreements. Prospective candidates who whip up anger and provide no real solutions. Sitting members of council who scream about taxes while demanding the best services for their community, who fight like hell against programs intended to help the community and then blame their colleagues when the community suffers, and who pander to the extremes instead of actually leading. Political powerplayers and backroom boys who cynically exploit the legitimate fears and concerns of residents instead of studying the facts and working to educate their neighbours, recognizing there is more to be gained by doing the ol’ “those clowns at city hall” shtick than there is in doing the hard work of city building.

How, then, are we expected to have a rational, reasoned, decent debate over the future of our community during our municipal election when we live in a community that is so divided? Where some members - often the loudest and, right now, the most willing to step up and run - operate in a different reality?

The 2026 municipal election might be best assigned the subscript: A Tale of Two Cities. In one, there is a vision of Hamilton as a city still full of promise. Where we can work together to achieve incredible things. Where our best days are still ahead of us.

In the other, there is a vision of Hamilton as a city in decline and where anger is the only acceptable response. Anger at the current council for things outside their control. Angry at imaginary activists who they blame for the social disorder we see around us. Angry at time and the economy and everything new and confusing.

And, in some moments, it seems like the second vision is the one that might win out. The cresting wave of anger will be too much and will crash over us, washing the current host of leaders out to sea and bringing in a new (or returning) collection of council members.

In those moments - when it seems like the darkest, angriest, most pessimistic vision of Hamilton might win - I get to thinking that these really are the worst of times.

But there’s still that glimmer of hope. The vision of Hamilton as a city unstoppable is still there. That the best of times might still be possible.

But it’s only a glimmer. And, some days, I feel like I can’t see it at all.

On The Radar, Part 1

Graphic by author

In the lead-up to Hamilton’s 2026 municipal election, there will be a few things that will pop up that warrant analysis. Some policies, discussions, and comments deserve a closer look, particularly when they’re aimed at or advanced by candidates for office.

In today’s edition - the first in a series - we’ll look at the accusations that some candidates are on the “extreme left” and why such labels might be politically useful for certain groups around Hamilton.

The left-wing spectre

So a plumber from Manchester, Ontario’s premier, and a pair of former Hamilton city councillors walk into a bar…

***

On February 26, there was a by-election for an open seat in the UK House of Commons in the Manchester-area constituency called “Gorton and Denton” (most constituency names in the UK are whimsical and almost aggressively British…may as well have been “Crumbledown-Badgershire-Royal Doulton With The Hand Painted Periwinkles-Upon-Thames”).

The by-election was called after the previous MP from the Labour Party resigned due to “poor health”. That mystery illness just so happened to come on following a leak of upsetting messages he had posted in a WhatsApp group chat with other Manchester-area Labour politicians. The group was apparently a space where they could all “blow off steam”, but was used by the now-former MP to gripe about constituents and make racist and anti-Semitic jokes about public figures and leaders in his own party.

The MP's resignation came at a terrible time for the UK’s establishment parties. The governing Labour Party under Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer is wildly unpopular, having squandered every opportunity to make meaningful change in that country after years of post-Brexit chaos. The opposition Conservative Party has been rocked by internal turmoil thanks to the ideological rigidity of their new leader, which has led to a handful of defections to other parties.

The response from the establishment parties to the changing political landscape has been to rush to the right, particularly as the right-wing populist Reform UK party has taken the lead in the polls. Reform has claimed this is a sign of their popularity (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that) while the left-wing vote has coalesced around the Green Party. The leader of the Greens, the openly gay, Jewish, vegan London Assembly member (basically a London councillor) Zack Polanski, has taken the party in an eco-socialist direction, blending concerns about the cost-of-living with a deeply hopeful and inspiring policy on prosperity through environmentalism.

The Gorton and Denton became a reflection of the UK’s shifting political landscape. The Labour and Conservative vote utterly collapsed and the race became a battle between the Green Party on the left and Reform UK on the populist right. In the end, the Greens captured the seat with over 40 percent of the vote, drawing nearly all their new support from disaffected former Labour voters.

Part of the reasons the Greens won is because they ran an unapologetically optimistic campaign. Their candidate, 34 year old plumber Hannah Spencer, presented a bright and hopeful vision of the future, providing people with something to believe in after years of divisive, dirty, dark politics peddled by entrenched political staffers. In her victory speech, Spencer once again leaned on optimism:

The by-election result seems to have really hurt Starmer, who has been facing some increasingly loud calls to resign. Considering the magnitude of the loss, the threat to his job has only increased; while Gorton and Denton was a relatively “new" constituency (having been created from pieces of other seats in 2024), parts of the area had been represented by Labour MPs since the 1930’s, meaning the symbolic loss of this previously safe seat can't be ignored. After the loss, Starmer had two options: either reflect on his decision to move the Labour Party to the right, consider the calls from his base and some of his own MPs to recalibrate, and pursue a more hopeful and principled set of policies or throw a temper tantrum and blame the Greens.

Naturally, Starmer lashed out. He quickly labelled the Green Party an “extreme left” group that relies on “divisive, sectarian politics” and would legalize “all drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine to give to adults”.² Who is advising Starmer? The Mayor of Vancouver?

Nigel Farage, the Brexit champion who leads Reform UK, echoed Starmer’s critiques. Reform had hopes that their openly anti-immigrant campaign (their candidate in Gorton and Denton pledged to stop all immigration to the UK) would appeal to a disenfranchised white working class, which makes up a significant portion of the constituency’s electorate. Farage raged against the victors, saying the Greens were part of a “resurgent hard left” that was violent, anti-Semitic, and a threat to the UK.²

The same day the by-election was held in Gorton and Denton, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was speaking to the media.

Ford continues to face the fallout from his populist decision to ban automated speed enforcement cameras across the province. Research shows they slow traffic and save lives, though the province’s official line is that they were nothing more than a “cash grab” for municipalities. But, Canada’s constitution is lopsided and provinces have the power to do whatever they want with municipalities, so Ford’s decree has become the law of the land.

The City of Toronto has been trying to figure out how to pivot. They relied, in part, on speed cameras to help change the behaviour of motorists in areas where other road improvements have not yet been implemented. As John Lorinc pointed out in Spacing, the speed camera that set this whole thing in motion (after it was vandalized over half a dozen times in a few short years) was located on Parkside Drive - a “dog’s breakfast” of a strip that has inconsistent sidewalks, barriers to fast-moving traffic, and an uneven terrain that makes the area unsafe for everyone. The speed camera wasn’t just put up for funsies; it was installed after a speeding driver killed two seniors in 2021. While the hope is that the offending section of road can be redesigned, a speed enforcement camera was a stop-gap way to change the behaviour of motorists and generate the revenue necessary to actually make the changes people wanted.³

After Ford’s decree, the City of Toronto got to work figuring out other ways to change the behaviour of road users to make their city’s streets safe. The final report on their plan came out a short while ago. Toronto’s traffic folks were blunt in their assessment: it would take around 13 years and $52 million to implement effective traffic calming in just the 775 kilometres of school zones around the city. Instead of proven programs that slowed traffic and generated revenue, the city would need to spend money and install lots of new infrastructure. A speedbump costs around $4,000 to install and, given the number they would need, it would cost ten of millions to get the job done.

Upon hearing this, the Premier flew into a rage. The next time he had a bank of cameras in front of him, Ford railed against the plan, threatening (once again) to use his provincial powers to take over Toronto: “Hand that over to me,” he shouted, “I’ll show you how to do a roundabout in months! I’ll show you how to do a speedbump!”⁴

The Premier is, of course, not a traffic engineer. He’s not a civil engineer or a construction expert or an urban planner or a safety specialist or a person with any level of identifiable knowledge on the intricacies of how civic infrastructure actually works. His only qualifications are four years as a member of Toronto City Council, during which time his contributions to road safety were limited to calling for the firing of the city’s Chief Medical Officer of Health when he suggested reducing speed limits on residential streets.⁵ But, again, the constitution gives him supreme power over municipalities, so what he says goes. Thanks, Sir John A.

Ford saved some of his ire for a different foe. True to form, our illustrious Premier doesn’t see the complexities of city building as an issue of time, money, and expertise. He sees it, and everything, through the populist lens; there’s an entrenched elite out there doing everything they can to stall “common sense” projects. We can absolutely just slap a speedbump down on a street in an afternoon for $50 a a case of beer for your buds who show up to help, but the elites want us to conduct all these whimpy “studies” and have fruity “consultation” and wokely make sure we aren’t cutting through any DEI “power lines” that might “electrocute” us with their pronouns.

The problem, according to Ontario’s Premier, is the “radical left” on Toronto city council.⁴

***

One day before the Gorton and Denton by-election and Ford’s speedbump meltdown, we got news that the 2026 municipal election here in Hamilton is heating up.

On Wednesday, February 25, Keanin Loomis announced he would again be seeking the office of Mayor of Hamilton. I attended his announcement at The Westdale Theatre having been invited as a ✧˖°. commentator of note .°˖✧ in Hamilton and took some photos to post on social media (though my post about it on the r/Hamilton subreddit was unceremoniously taken down - BOOOOO to the mods for karma blocking me).

Loomis's announcement was covered widely in local media, with The Spec’s Scott Radley writing that his candidacy comes at the right time considering Mayor Horwath’s rough go during the budget process and that Loomis “may even open the campaign as the favourite."⁶

Former Ward 4 Councillor Sam “The Wally Infiltrator” Merulla had another perspective.

In a break from his usual Facebook posts about his workout routine and updates on his blood pressure, Merulla posted “Keenan [sic] Loomis, a native USA citizen, is demonstrating dubious decision-making skills by pursuing the mayoral position in Hamilton. #hamont”.

He followed this with an image (hard to tell if it’s Photoshopped or AI-generated) of Loomis standing in front of an American flag, wearing a Team USA jersey, with a gold medal around his neck.

I know Merulla was trying to paint Loomis as “not a real Hamiltonian” but like…he knows that gold medals go to the winners, right?

• Side note: I was genuinely curious about the origin of the mayors of Hamilton since the city’s founding in 1846. We have readily-available biographical information on 45 of the 57 people who have served as Hamilton’s mayor in that time. Only six were born in Hamilton while 39 were both anywhere from Grimsby to Tuscany. Some of the city’s most recognizable mayors were all “outsiders” - George Tuckett (who built the Scottish Rite) and Sam Lawrence were both born in England, Lloyd Jackson was born outside Sarnia, and Vic Copps was born in Northern Ontario. All of the six who were born in Hamilton were elected after the year 1900: four between 1900 and 2000 and two since amalgamation in 2001. Two Americans served as mayor of Hamilton - John Fisher in 1850 and William Kerr in 1853. Fisher would even go on to serve in the US House of Representatives as a Republican in the post-Civil War era after he was mayor of Hamilton.

While Merulla went with the jingoist anti-American approach, former Ward 2 Councillor Jason Farr chimed in with a slightly different line.

Commenting on Merulla’s post, Farr expressed concern "as a born and raised Steel City kid”, saying that Loomis had “been spending months running around with [former Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Chair] Terry Cooke and his other Hard Left supporters” instead of advocating for steel manufacturers. The lengthy comment is extremely difficult to follow, but it seems Farr is upset that Loomis, who serves as the CEO of the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (the industry advocacy group for steel manufacturers), has decided to run for mayor instead of stay in this position. That line is a fairly standard critique. It doesn’t matter what someone’s political affiliation or aspirations are - anyone other than a retired politician or broadcaster in Hamilton can and will be accused of “abandoning” their job to seek public office by their cynical political opponents. That tired line isn’t what’s important here.

What’s important is the language Farr used at the beginning of his comment.

It’s the same language establishment figures in the UK have used to describe an environmentalist plumber who won a by-election. It’s the same language the Premier uses to attack Toronto city councillors and staff who have a better understanding of the complexities of city building than he does. It’s the same language bandied about by the thought leaders in the comments section of local blogs like the Bay Observer and the few who bother to post comments on thespec.com.

“Hard Left”.

That’s objectively weird, right?

Characterizing Cooke and Loomis as “hard left” indicates either a) a complete lack of understanding of the basics of politics, or b) a deliberate attempt to portray a political opponent in a strategically unflattering way.

But politics in Hamilton isn’t exactly known for its subtly, nor are Hamilton’s civic leaders (past, present, and future) all renowned for their cogent grasp of political theory. So I guess it’s time for little Poli Sci 101 here.

Farr’s confusing comment implies either or both Loomis and Cooke have “hard left” political sympathies.

When it comes to the latter, the label “hard left” would be baffling for anyone who has any local political historical knowledge. During his nearly two decades in municipal politics here in Hamilton, Cooke (who I should note is a friend of the newsletter) was described in local media as a “red Tory” (sometimes just a plain ol’ “Tory”), “radical bourgeois”, a “small-l liberal”, a “bright, moderate centrist”, and a “conservative, but not uncaring”.⁷ Just for context, the definition of “red Tory” is one who believes in centre-right, pro-business policies while acknowledging the state has a place in the provision of some services but should be a little less involved in people’s private lives.

And, as for the once-and-current mayoral contender, “hard left” is likely the last thing anyone thinks of when they think of the former CEO of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. It is possible that the former councillor was associating Loomis’s past support for the city’s SoBi bikeshare system, the Basic Income Pilot Project, and the LRT as evidence of “hard left” sympathies, but each of those have been supported by such eclectic allies as populist Liberal MP JP Danko (SoBi), the Canadian Chamber of Commerce (Basic Income), and Conservative donor Joe Mancinelli (LRT).⁸

So all of this begs the question: what does “hard left” even mean?

***

Okay, let’s do a rapid fire primer on political ideologies.

France, 1789. The country is slowly collapsing due to a widespread financial and social crisis gripping the reign of the ineffectual King Louis XVI. A National Assembly is called. Monarchists - “the party of order”, meaning supporters of the king, the established order, and the system as it was - sat to the right of the chair. Revolutionaries - “the party of movement”, meaning those who wanted change, equality, democracy, and freedom - sat to the left.

That’s where we get the root of “right-wing” and “left-wing”. This, and frankly most conceptualizations of political ideology, can be simplistic at times, but they help us with classification and self-identification.

Generally, we today use a “political spectrum” to place people and movements based on their ideology. Along the X-axis (horizontal), we have perspectives on economic matters. In the Western context, this usually means more supportive of individualism, capitalism, and non-interventionism by the state on the right and more supportive of communalism, variations of socialism, and state participation on the left. Along the Y-axis (vertical), we have perspectives on social matters. The top half is more “authoritarian”, meaning more state involvement in the basic affairs of people and the collective enforcement of morality, beliefs, etc. The bottom half is more “libertarian”, meaning a belief that people should be free to do as they please within the bounds of society and that the state should avoid over-managing personal freedoms.

We represent this with a fairly basic graph. Here’s a version I’ve mocked up with the “ranges” of some Canadian political parties for reference. The “ranges” indicate the general areas on the spectrum where supporters of each party will fall. There are often contests within parties to set policy and direct the ideology of the movement, meaning a party doesn’t occupy a simple “point”, but is spread across a general range.

There’s a lot of overlap between parties and many political parties have supporters that may fall on different sides of certain issues. In the Conservative Party, for example, you may have traditionalists who want the state to enforce their preferred morality working along side libertarians who want the state out of their business. Their caucus tends to reflect this; Niagara West MP Dean Allison was a strong opponent of marijuana legalization and voted against Bill C-45, which legalized weed across Canada, but his riding neighbour, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP Ned Kuruc, owned a chain of weed stores before being elected.

Not everything is as clean and neat as we’d expect. There are more left-leaning Liberals (few-and-far between among the elites in Hamilton-area Liberal circles) and there are some pro-business, centre-right Greens (Elizabeth May did work for Brian Mulroney, remember). Only groups like the Communists and the Christian Heritage Party are really firm in their respective corners, with one advocating for worker’s revolution and the other promoting the principles of ultraconservative Christian Nationalism.

Among parties on the left, you might see a level of social conservatism with some members. The NDP has long struggled with a loud, well-funded, but small group of labour traditionalists who support the party’s economic policy, but maintain socially conservative views when it comes to queer people, racialized minorities, and/or drug policy, for example. And the Bloc Québécois is a nominally social democratic party, favouring larger state involvement in the economy, but contains some nationalist elements that may be opposed to immigration or the presence of certain cultural and religious groups in the larger “Québécois” nation.

Parties drift based on their leaders, their members, and the context of the times, but that visual representation is roughly where Canada’s major parties are right now.

So if that’s a very basic political spectrum, then where do we find Ford’s “radical left” and Farr’s “hard left”?

Interestingly, in political science, these are two different terms with very different meanings.

“Radical left” has its roots in the radical tradition of the Enlightenment. At that time, “radical” in politics simply meant you believed in a variation of “liberalism” which, at the time, was considered radical and revolutionary. The contemporary “radical left” draws on that, but is quite different, with Gomez, et. al. (2016) defining current radical left movements as rejecting “the socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism and its values and practices…[advocating] a transformative and systemic change, rejecting neo-liberal market-oriented policies.”⁹ Contemporary radical left parties in Europe especially have their origins in Communist parties of varying intensities.

“Hard left”, on the other hand, is a very British pejorative term referring to the most ideologically rigid and exclusionary members of left wing parties. Thompson (2016) defines the British hard left (albeit from a biased position; Thompson identifies with the British “soft left”) as “stubborn”, guided by “activists”, narrow in its views, inflexible, and hell-bent-and-determined to exclude more people than it brings in.¹⁰

So then, based on our earlier spectrum, we get this visual representation:

The radical left is a broader placement on the political spectrum, encompassing those who want a complete change in the economic system. That takes in some in the major parties on the left, as well as all of those affiliated with Canada’s various communist parties. The hard left is a subsection of people within the parties on the left, constituting a group that is more ideologically intense and militant than their colleagues.

Except…you can see the issue with the characterization of anyone as “hard left”, right?

People with principles can quickly be dismissed as being “rigid”. Those who want a party to maintain a coherent ideological grounding can be called “inflexible”. Anyone unwilling to acquiesce to a dominant group’s demands can be labelled “stubborn”.

That’s why “hard left” is considered a “pejorative” term. It’s used as an insult by political opponents to characterize a movement or candidate or politician as extreme, out-of-touch, and divisive.

So when Farr says that Loomis has been “running around with” local political figures and their “other Hard Left supporters”, he’s trying to position the mayoral candidate as an ideological extremist and in inflexible radical. This characterization makes a lot more sense when you pair it with how the city’s right-wing establishment has been promoting their prime mayoral candidate, Ward 8 councillor Rob Cooper. Local blog The Bay Observer defined Cooper - a Conservative Party-affiliated activist who has spent his short few months in office railing against taxes and talking about a non-existent crime wave - as a “centrist”.

In this light, we can see what the strategy for the city’s political right will be in this election. And, to best explain it, we have to use another fun political graph.

***

In the 1990’s, Joe Overton, a researcher with the fiscally conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy in the US, developed a theory about the acceptability of public policy. One of George W. Bush’s speech writers, Joshua Treviño, refined the theory by adding “steps” to it and popularized the theory that became known as the “Overton Window”.

The Overton Window posits that ideas have six degrees of acceptance: the unthinkable, the radical, the acceptable, the sensible, the popular, and what eventually becomes policy. Through campaigns and other coordinated efforts to shift opinion, the “window” of what is considered viable can be shifted, turning something that was once radical into something that is popular enough to become policy, and vice versa.

So if we assume that the belief is that Loomis’s views are in the range of what many voters in Hamilton would accept (investment in local business, support for infrastructure projects, a desire to balance affordability with a growing infrastructure deficit, etc.) and Cooper’s views might be more outside the mainstream for some voters (pro-police budget and tough-on-crime, voting against budget increases for the Hamilton Public Library, calling for the cancelling of the vacant unit tax in the midst of a housing crisis, etc.), then the goal will be to shift the window of acceptability by framing Loomis as a “hard left” radical and Cooper as a reasonable “centrist”.

That would certainly help to explain why a former city councillor and candidate with the nominally centrist Ontario Liberal Party would characterize the “red Tory” former regional chair and the current mayoral candidate who worked as an advocate for local businesses and the steel industry as “hard left”. It would also explain why the local right-wing establishment has gone to such great lengths to describe a right-wing councillor who has been public about his affiliations with right-wing political parties as a “centrist”.

***

A larger question, then, is how do we actually categorize local candidates on a political spectrum? The conventional spectrum doesn’t really take into account specific local issues, focusing instead on larger economic and social matters that municipalities have very little control over.

That’s why a Vancouver-based podcaster and a political scientist developed a municipal variation of the political spectrum. It changes things slightly, creating an X-axis that averages a candidate’s (or, in the Vancouver case, a party’s) values on economic and social issues and a Y-axis that positions their ideas on a spectrum from most “urbanist” (meaning pro-density, multi-modal transportation, investment in large-scale urban projects) to most “conservationist” (meaning opposed to density, more focused on cars, more opposed to investments).

It’s extremely difficult to place mayoral candidates on this spectrum. The main focus of mayoral campaigns is usually to be as inoffensive to as many people as possible, resulting in a fascinating cluster around the middle. Most campaigns talk broadly about “communication”, “transparency”, and “accountability”, which are nice words, but really don’t mean anything beyond “I won’t be some ward-heeling, cigar-puffing, envelope-accepting despot”.

In the last election, there were only subtle differences between Horwath and Loomis’s platforms. Horwath tended to talk more about keeping taxes low while Loomis focused on attracting investment. Horwath campaigned on improving the Red Hill Valley Expressway and implementing traffic calming while Loomis proposed free transit for students and seniors and implementing Vision Zero recommendations. Horwath wanted development charges to support communities, Loomis wanted a firm urban boundary and no more sprawl. While Horwath avoided some of the more explicit calls from urbanists and progressives, Loomis embraced them while blending them with his focus on economic development, creating an interesting scenario where Horwath seemed like the more conservationist candidate while Loomis appeared to be more urbanist, even though Horwath won most urban polls and Loomis did well in the suburbs and rural parts of Hamilton.

As for Cooper…I don’t know what to say. As I’ve noted before, his by-election platform clocked in at 99 words. There was a call for more transit, though it was a desire to have more GO Transit options in the city, which would fall to the province. Other than that, he said he wanted to tackle violent crime, cap tax increases to the municipally-irrelevant ceiling of the “inflation rate”, eliminate other taxes, and vaguely “expand housing options”. Given his votes on council and his comments in local media, he’s absolutely and definitively on the fiscal and social right, and his focus is more conservationist than urbanist.

Based on all that, this is the very rough spectrum we’re working with going into this October’s municipal election. And this is based on past information, so take it with a whole heaping helping of salt.

The reality of what we face will not stop candidates, political actors, and others in the community from raising the spectre of an “extreme left” takeover. It’s politically convenient for some to label their opponents as “hard left” or “radical left” and then define what that means in their own words.

For some, it means anyone who would vote in favour of a tax increase beyond what they deem acceptable. For others, it means anyone who shows a modicum of compassion toward people experiencing homelessness. For many, it means considering the perspectives of people who have been, at one time or another, marginalized and kept from participating fully in the civic conversation.

But, more often than not, it is a phrase without meaning, used without context, assigned to those who think differently.

Now, to be fairrr, I’ve used the term “hard right” when referring to things in the past. I’ve called Toronto City Councillor Bradford Bradford “hard right”, and have used the term to refer to bots on X/Twitter and variations of populism. “Hard right” doesn’t have the same definitional background as “hard left”, but can be seen the same way - right-wingers who are ideologically rigid and fervent in their beliefs. But, being the nerd that I am, do my due diligence before assigning that label to anyone. Bradford himself has, on the conservative current affairs blog The Hub talked about his focus on violent crime, opposition to bike lanes, fight against tax increases while simultaneously supporting the police budget, and his desire to open more of Toronto City Hall up to the private market. By all accounts, Bradford is a right-winger; in that same article, he called himself a “right-leaning councillor”.

Farr’s comment, on the other hand, comes without evidence. He labels two people in the community as “hard left” because it’s politically convenient. Despite their records, their positions, and their own stated beliefs, he assigns them the moniker that best suits him and his political allies.

***

We will see more and more of this as the campaign heats up. Everyone even a hair left of where the city’s right-wing establishments wants to move the local Overton Window to will be labelled a “radical”, an “extremist”, a “leftist activist”, or worse.

Candidates who maintain compassionate positions on people experiencing homelessness, who call for more investment in public transit, who want other levels of government to come to the table with meaningful housing investments, who want to city to act on climate change, who won’t commit to the unrealistic and illogical pledge to cap property tax increases to the federal inflation rate, who call for the city to play a more active role in creating opportunities for people - these are the candidates who will be labelled as “hard left” and worse in the coming months. In contrast, candidates with shallow platforms promising low taxes and more services, committing to cutting staff at city hall while supporting the steady privatization of services, demanding an end to fees designed to support infrastructure while handing a blank cheque to the Hamilton Police Service will be framed as “fiscally responsible” and “centrists”.

So is there a “hard left” wave about to crash over Hamilton? Hardly. A handful of semi-retired politicians will try to convince their Facebook followers that everyone who doesn’t think like them is a woke Communist determined to destroy the city. Candidates who want to make this city better, work to improve the lives of their neighbours, and bring evidence and facts back to municipal government will be labelled “extremists”, “radicals”, and “dangerous”. The same machines that run on dirty tricks will do what they can to steamroll through the city, clearing a path for the candidates of their choosing. They’ll call people names, doctor images of them to post on social media, get down and dirty and nasty. We’ve seen it all before.

That kind of politics got us where we are now. But there’s a better way forward. It’s a way clearly and passionately articulated by a humble working class plumber from Manchester who took on well-funded opponents and won. As the new Green MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, said:

“I don’t think its extreme or radical to think working hard should get you a nice life…We have shown we don’t have to accept being turned against each other. We can demand better. Together. We have shown we don’t have to fight dirty to fight for change.”¹

Better really is possible. We just have to work for it.

…but first, a word from The Incline.

Note to self: insert semi-regular apology about my posting schedule here but don’t leave this in because this is a very serious newsletter and you’re a very serious newsletter writer so definitely remember to delete this. And if you leave this in as a bit, chances are, it’ll fall flat.

I haven’t been very consistent with my publishing schedule as of late. Since 2026 began four thousand years ago, I’ve posted once on a Monday, twice on Thursdays, and one time each on a Friday and Saturday. And now it’s Tuesday! Absolute chaos.

Some of that is thanks to when things happen in the community. Some of it has to do with how much research I need to do for a piece to get it ready. And some of it has to do with the trillion little projects I have on the go at any one minute.

All that is to say, I apologize if the somewhat erratic posting schedule of this newsletter isn’t to your liking. I am doing what I can to keep this newsletter going. Despite some ups and many, many downs, I’ve managed to make it through 119 of these editions, albeit on a somewhat less-than-consistent schedule.

The note here today is to say that expect more inconsistency over the next while. This is a municipal election year and I’m doing what I can do help inform the community in the lead-up to October 26. But it’s also…you know…a municipal election year and I’m not one for sitting on the sidelines. I help out where I can, provide advice when it’s asked for, and, in some instances, participate in academic research on the candidates and campaigns. While I’m not working directly for any one candidate at any level in any capacity at the moment, I’m keeping myself open to helping when and where I can. That could mean that this newsletter might not come out as frequently as we get into campaign season come summer.

But this note is also to say that this edition is coming out today for a reason.

From what I understand, there will be at least one big municipal election announcement coming shortly. Political watchers across Hamilton would be wise to keep their eyes on things over the next while. I don’t want any edition of my newsletter competing with any announcements, so you’re getting a Tuesday edition instead of the usual…umm…whenever edition.

So thanks, as always, for reading. And for sticking with me as long as you have. I appreciate all the insights, the comments, and the support. My work on this newsletter helps to remind me just how wonderful this city of ours can be, especially when people come together with a common purpose.

And, with that, enjoy today’s edition.

In Decline

Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash - Edited by Author

Anyone who flippantly says they don’t pay attention to Canadian politics because it’s “too boring” is simply not paying enough attention. What’s transpired over the past week itself would be enough to round out a full 12-episode season of a show about Canadian politics, though some of the events are more suited to comedy while others are distinctly in the category of tragedy.

Federally, things have been going exceptionally well for Progressive Conservative Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney. This is, in large part, because of how terribly things are going for Reform Party Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.

Poilievre faced a leadership review at his party’s convention back at the end of January. The delegates decided to stick with him, with 87 percent of those assembled voting to retain him as party leader until their next convention. While he may be super appealing to the party base, a recent Angus Reid poll shows 62 percent of Canadians think he’s doing a poor/very poor job of being the Conservative leader. That makes sense, considering that, for the past year, Canadians have been watching as Poilievre stumbles at every possible hurdle. Just this month, he’s fallen flat on his face more times than not.

Over the past few weeks, Poilievre has been struggling to even mount an effective defence against one of his own MPs. The increasingly MAGA-aligned Bowmanville-Oshawa North MP Jamil Jivani (a close personal friend of American Vice President JD Vance) scooted off to the States for some weird unsanctioned diplomatic mission and said the whole “elbows up” response to the existential threats to our sovereignty coming from the American administration were a “hissy fit”.

The comments made during Jivani’s trip to Mordor required Poilievre to issue a stinging rebuke against his own MP. Poilievre knows he needs to project strength to fend off the weak, albeit consistently circling wolves, but he also needed to show an ambitious underling he still has some fight in him. Jivani undoubtedly has his eyes on the Conservative Party’s leadership (a Jivani-led party would be both terrifying thanks to his extreme right-wing views and laughable because of how easy it would be for a savvy opponent to brand him a Quisling), so Poilievre couldn’t just sit back and let him carry on with his shadow campaign.

Adding to his woes, Edmonton Riverbend’s Conservative MP, Matt Jeneroux, announced on February 18 that he was crossing the floor to the Liberals. Jeneroux was one of the early Conservative MPs rumoured to be considering a switch after the last election. But, after his name was leaked, he announced he would be resigning instead. This most recent announcement seems to have cancelled out his previous one, meaning he’s going to stick around to back Carney’s agenda for the foreseeable future. His “jk lol nevermind (^_^;)” moment happened after, as he said during his press conference with the Prime Minister, he had serious chats with his family over the holidays and after Carney’s world-order-defining Davos speech. "For me it felt disingenuous and quite simply wrong to be sitting on the sidelines anymore.” he said.¹ Probably has nothing to do with the fact that the Liberals are actually competitive federally in Alberta for the first time since the 1911 federal election.

With Jeneroux on the government benches, the Liberals are just three seats shy of a majority. Helpfully, there are three by-elections on the horizon. Two of those are likely Liberal wins, while the third (the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne where the 2025 election results were annulled by the Supreme Court because of a 1 vote difference between the winner and runner-up) could go either to the Liberals or the Bloc. And there’s the possibility that Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP MP for the Montreal riding of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie will resign to run in the Quebec provincial election this fall, which opens up another chance for the Liberals to increase their seat count (Boulerice is the only NDPer elected east of the Red River and politicos have speculated that he held onto his seat because of his personal popularity, not because he was affiliated with the party).

So, all-in-all, it has been a good few weeks for Carney.

In Ontario, on the other hand, Premier Doug Ford has had a…scattered few weeks. Ford, famous for his insistence that youth don’t need no fancy book learning, earned a little bit of scorn after his government announced sweeping changes to the way post-secondary institutions are funded. Then, after hearing from concerned students across the province, Ford doubled down and made comments about students needing to not take “basket-weaving courses” (a line reliably thrown out by your most out-of-touch drunk uncle during Thanksgiving dinner after he doesn’t get any response to his comments about how many genders there are now - he just wants validation and another bottle of Ex, galdernit!). The Premier’s sad standup routine angered everyone from already pissed off students to Indigenous craftspeople.

But Ford is nothing if not a master of “flooding the zone”. A little fight with Ontario’s future can’t get ol’ Uncle Doug down! Especially when there are a trillion little distractions he can toss out to keep us asking “what will he do next?!” A totally good a normal way to run a government.

One of those distractions was a genuine surprise. Or, at least, it would have been to a sadist who slipped into a coma in 2023 and only just now emerged, ready to get back to what really gets them going: consuming as much news as possible.

During a press conference with Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, Ford publicly said he wouldn’t meddle in municipal democracy (*the collective groan from school board trustees can be heard as far away as Saskatchewan*) this time around. "I'm not getting involved in the municipal election. All I can tell you: I've had a phenomenal relationship with [Chow]," he told reporters.² Chow has gone to great lengths to not provoke the Mayor Premier of Ontario and has, in some instances, even gone out of her way to placate him. This has given her more latitude to advance her own agenda and puts her in a good position to win re-election in October.

• Side note: a Mainstreet poll came out today about the Toronto mayoral race. Chow leads John Tory 43% to 34% with hard-right councillor Bradford Bradford in at 17% and far-right populist candidate Anthony Furey at 6%. Even though Mainstreet’s poll has Chow leading, they note that “a majority of Toronto voters indicate they preferred the direction of the City under Tory”. Mainstreet frames this as a problem for Chow, not realizing that, for all the money at his disposal, Tory can’t make it 2015 again. Cool that people said they liked it better when Tory was mayor, but that world is dead and gone. Unless something dramatic changes, Chow’s in a great spot.

Chow’s strategy to keep Ford occupied while actually getting things done gives her a chance to run as both a progressive and a pragmatic leader - someone who is doing everything she can to keep Toronto on track despite a cratering housing market and looming economic uncertainty. While her opponents, like Bradford and Furey, will do everything they can to make the October election about Toronto’s decline and the rise of “dangerous” social disorder, Chow’s record gives her a chance to run as a positive, responsible, city-building candidate.

In other places, municipal candidates won’t have to do much work to frame the election as a choice between stability and decline.

smash cut to…

A couple of stories came out recently that have the potential to impact Hamilton’s upcoming civic election. More specifically, they lend credence to the cries from the city’s right-wing contingent that Hamilton is in decline and that decline began the second our current mayor and council took office.

This isn’t hyperbolic; a striking example comes from the first response on Bluesky to local journalist Joey Coleman’s story about the floated closure of the Central Branch of the Hamilton Public Library, in which an anonymous user blamed Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch “and friends” for the concept of public drug use.

I suppose I have to update my idea of history. I didn’t realize all laws were suspended, government policy changed, and public drug use kicked off on November 15, 2022. But if an anonymous reply guy account with 7 followers says that this is the first council in Hamilton’s history to serve only drug users and ruin the city with “ideology”, then I guess it’s true!

***

The first story that’s worth considering comes from The Spec. On February 9, the city’s paper of record put a call out to their readers asking for tips on “Hamilton’s worst pothole”. Anyone who has used or been in a motor vehicle on the city’s roads knows that would be a fierce competition, particularly after the brutal winter we have just endured.

The results of that survey were published 10 days later. That’s the story we’ll focus on here. The article goes over a sampling of the results from the paper’s survey, noting that “roughly 20 people” responded to their call for tips.

Oof.

We don’t have updated circulation reports for The Spec, but that does not seem great. Sure, the paper’s online content is heavily paywalled and the original call for tips did not appear in the print edition, but 20 is a low number of respondents for complaints about potholes in Hamilton, considering people in this city tend to talk about potholes more than the weather, the housing market, and insert sports team here.

***

A bit of a longer side note here, but I’d argue the response to the Spec speaks to the health of our civic democracy in the city. Only 20 people are willing to help identify a problem so it can be brought to light, but there are over 40 comments combined on the article calling for tips and the article featuring the results. The majority of those comments complain, once again, about the current council and mayor, sometimes for even pursuing the solutions they want them to pursue.

Roads need to be fixed, they shout, but the plan to fix Barton Street is a “political stunt”. We need to hire more people to fill potholes, but it won’t help because potholes are purposely filled incorrectly so “city workers will always have a job.” We have to improve the quality of our roads but “spending millions…converting Main St to two way” isn’t good because we should be spending “the money on repaving our existing roads” even though part of the money dedicated to the conversion will be for repaving. The city is spending hundreds of millions of dollars maintaining a sprawling, out-of-date, overengineered, unproductive, dangerous, and illogical network of over 6,500 kilometres of roadway, but our civic leaders “do not like people who drive cars,” they smugly clack into the ether as the mild-melting blue light of their computer screens tricks them into believing it’s a substitute for real, meaningful, in-person connection.

In the second episode of season six of Parks and Recreation, Amy Poehler’s character, Councillor Leslie Knope, is trying to improve her standing in the community amidst a recall campaign by some of her well-funded opponents. She decides to, in a nod to Rob Ford’s style of hands-on politics, do everything she can to help her constituents with a program called “No Problem Too Small”. One of her more outspoken neighbours, Gretel, comes into her office with a complaint: “There are slugs everywhere on the sidewalk in front of my house. I want them gone, but not killed. I love animals. But get rid of them. They're gross. But make sure they're happy…but not too happy.” So Knope goes out, finds a humane and safe slug repellant, and does what Gretel asks. Upon seeing this, Gretel is outraged, and yells “I didn’t want all the slugs gone! I wanted most of them gone!”

I try to remember that episode every time I make the mistake of scrolling too far down on a story and glancing at the Spec’s comments section because it’s cheaper than flying to Türkiye, getting a hair transplant, coming home, and then tearing it all out with my bare hands in frustration. For some, complaining endlessly and finding fault with every single thing a municipality does is their way of participating in democracy. Having civic watchdogs is great, but there’s a big difference between being Lassie and Cujo.

Anyway, back to potholes.

***

The state of Hamilton’s roads is a source of constant frustration and aspiring civic politicians seem to be taking note. Ward 12 candidate resident Fred Bennink’s campaign concerned citizen page has, as his first platform point concern, “1. Build Roads That Work”. It isn’t a stretch to imagine a host of right-wing candidates for council across Hamilton promising to be better roadbuilders.

And Vito Sgro’s pre-campaign period mayoral candidate “news personality” Facebook page includes a recent video of a “tour” he went on of some of Hamilton’s potholes of note. “Our taxes have increased by a whopping 30% this term, but are our roads getting better? From massive potholes to sudden sinkholes, our city's infrastructure is crumbling,” he writes. What’s the plan, Vito? How are you going to deal with aging infrastructure and all the problems caused by decades of deferring essential roadwork by councils packed to the gills with members who voted for artificially low tax rates to help their re-election efforts? Are there any real ideas or are we just resting on the clunky hashtag “#DemandABetterHamilton”?

The city’s infrastructure is in dire need of improvement and the political gamesmanship around deferring much-needed maintenance will only make the situation worse as time goes on. Clearly and effectively communicating the cost of maintaining the road network we have is absolutely essential to keeping Hamiltonians informed about the needs associated with their infrastructure. But addressing this issue will take a leader with long-term vision and short-term savvy.

Shortly after coming into office, Mayor Chow in Toronto launched a “pothole blitz”. The blitz was both a very public reminder of what a municipal government can do and an acknowledgement that it takes hard work to fix the problems we face. These blitzes are now yearly events in which the mayor herself participates, putting on a hi-vis vest, a hard hat, and helping to maintain the city’s infrastructure. Just this week, she announced another blitz to address the huge potholes caused by this year’s painfully harsh winter.

That’s the short-term savvy.

But we need long-term vision too. We aren’t getting that from some of the candidates in the field and councillors around the horseshoe right now. We’re getting complaints about tax increases paired with complaints about poor services. The same people who are painting a picture of a city in decline are the same advocating the loudest for deferred maintenance and lower taxes - the same kind of unbalanced thinking oozing from the Spec’s comments section.

The second story comes from the CBC. In a piece with some excellent on-the-ground reporting from Samantha Beattie, CBC Hamilton outlined the concerns and issues held by tenants of First Place, a CityHousing Hamilton senior’s building constituting the entire block between Main, King, Wellington, and West Ave in the far southwest corner of the Landsdale neighbourhood.

Some of the residents have self-organized a program - Senior Watch - that checks in on their fellow tenants who might be isolated or have specific needs. But, in early January, the program was put on hold due to increasing concerns from residents about the state of their building. The volunteers who check in on their neighbours have complained about “needles, pipes, blood, vomit, spilled food and drinks, garbage…the remnants of fires” and excrement, an encounter with the latter of which being the reason the program coordinator put Senior Watch on hold.³

City staff jumped into action and worked with the volunteers to restart the program. But they noted that they only have two full-time and one part-time cleaners on staff and they’re fighting an uphill battle when it comes to limiting access to the building to just tenants. Beattie and a resident even found “a side entrance that appeared to have recently been broken into” while touring the building, leading to an on-the-spot call to First Place’s security.³

Providing safe, accessible, and affordable housing is getting harder and harder for municipalities. Far too much of the burden falls on municipalities, which do not have the funding streams available to adequately maintain the housing stock they have and build new, modern units for people. The province is starving the public housing sector in a blatant, ideological attempt to shift responsibility to non-profits and the private sector. And while it’s all well and good to bring that up, it doesn’t change the day-to-day experiences of people living in existing social housing units. We can have these debates until the end of time, but, when residents of one of the city’s landmark towers are calling it “Last Place” and are desperately seeking alternative housing, it’s clear we need real action, and soon.

***

That ties into the third story. This one was first published by local independent journalist Joey Coleman. Last week, the Hamilton Public Library’s (HPL) Chief Librarian Paul Takala openly speculated that the Central branch - the HPL’s flagship and one of the cornerstones of the core - might need to be “temporarily closed” to, as Coleman reported, “disrupt the pattern of drug use…before someone is accidentally poisoned by unintentional exposure.”⁴

Takala provided stats, including the fact that there’s been a 60 percent drop in the number of children’s materials checked out of the Central branch. Coleman’s reporting also included a laundry list of other incidents that have been connected to drug use in the core, including Hamilton Police Service (HPS) notices of “drug dealers” being arrested in and around Central and Jackson Square, the closure of the downtown Federal Court due to fears of “random violence”, and the library’s decision to close on Sundays due to understaffing and safety concerns.

The CBC picked up the reporting and, just yesterday, published an update. Central will not be closed in any capacity, but the HPL is exploring other options to better manage the space, such as requiring people to show their library card to access the space. The HPL’s librarians - truly some of this community’s most dedicated and passionate civic employees who deserve as much support, praise, and compensation as we can provide - are doing what they can with the resources they have, but they can’t do it alone.

***

Complaints about open drug use, particularly in the core, are commonplace now. In the thread on the r/Hamilton subreddit about the aforementioned CBC article, users overwhelmingly express relief that the Central branch won’t be closed, but have still shared some of their stories about uncomfortable experiences in public places. Public drug use is jarring for many and, in the case of those who have struggled with substances in the past, may be deeply triggering. When combined with untreated or poorly treated mental health issues and the host of other factors some users contend with, it can create situations that are, at the very least, unpredictable and unsettling for everyone.

The flippant responses from the more online of our community’s somewhat…militant commenters that people simply “get over it” doesn’t take into account the fact that people know very little about drug use aside from what has been fed to us by moralizing agencies and law enforcement. Couple that with the fact that drugs are changing rapidly and that, since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the whole system of social service provision and treatment have been thrown into chaos, and you get the situation we are in now. Mocking those residents who express concern about drug use also doesn’t do anything to help those who are impacted by the less-public-facing side of open drug use: the toxic drug crisis.

Just yesterday, the Spec reported on the ongoing work of McMaster and Hamilton Health Sciences researchers who have been monitoring the number of deaths in the community of people experiencing homelessness. Hamilton lost 32 people between June 2024 and May 2025 - 148 since they began collecting data in 2022. 11 of the deaths in the recent study period were from overdoses, leading the researchers to note that such losses make it “difficult not to reflect on the provincially mandated closure” of Hamilton’s consumption treatment services (CTS) site.⁵

Opioid toxicity deaths in Ontario began spiking during the COVID-19 Pandemic. While they began to decline as we left the worst of the Pandemic behind, they have begun to trend upward again as the clumsy provincial shift away from CTS sites to their abstinence-only services has been slow, uncoordinated, and challenged by medical professionals who actually know what they’re doing. Without safe, supervised places to use and scattered addictions supports, people using drugs where they can and where it’s warm. That means the Central library or the stairwells of First Place or the food court at Jackson Square.

That clearly gives people the impression that downtown isn’t safe. I’ve written about this before, but, despite falling crime numbers, people say they feel unsafe because of, in the words of the HPS, “concerns about social disorder, open drug use, and property crime”. If people feel unsafe, then they don’t venture downtown, don’t patronize shops, don’t go to shows, don’t check books out of the library, don’t consider moving into the lower city. They retreat to their fortresses with their Ring cameras and their fast cars and avoid their neighbours. We lose a sense of community and the revenue that comes with people engaging in commerce. Things hollow out, there’s less of a desire to invest in social services, and the situation gets worse. It becomes a never-ending cycle.

And that’s where the perception of “a city in decline” comes from.

***

We know that candidates in the upcoming election will weaponize the perception of decline. They’ll point to every article from the Spec or the CBC or every post from Joey Coleman that highlights something negative happening in the city as evidence that the clock on Hamilton’s decline started on November 15, 2022.

That may be a cynical political move by predominantly right-wing candidates, but it may be effective in the absence of a concerted effort to share meaningful ideas on how to fix the problems we face. So candidates and community members have to get on countering the narratives with real policies, real perspectives, and real plans of action.

With regard to our roads, it’s about combining something like Chow’s short-term savvy with that long-term vision I mentioned earlier. That means reimagining what a city’s infrastructure network needs to look like and how roads can be built to minimize damage over the long term. While the commenters on the Spec and some members of council may bemoan the presence of bike lanes in Hamilton, the fact is that they help keep long-term infrastructure costs down. Safe, connected, accessible cycling infrastructure helps take cars off the road and a cyclist would need to make 17,000 trips to have the same impact as just one car trip does on the road. Removing some of the overengineered roadways in the industrial district that were designed for far more traffic than they see now can help, as can devoting more space to transit-only lanes, which carry more people more efficiently than general purpose lanes do.

On housing, candidates for council need to position themselves as relentless advocates who will push other levels of government, unlock all available non-profit funding, and work tirelessly to ensure money goes where it’s needed. New, innovative developments like some of the projects from Indwell like their “community bonds” initiative can bring the community together to provide housing for all. And everyday residents can remind their friends, coworkers, and neighbours that the city can’t provide housing all by itself. Pressure needs to be put on government MPs and MPPs to step up and do what’s right. Just because it’s a municipal election year doesn’t mean they’re off the hook for doing their jobs.

And, on drug use, candidates again have to act as advocates and educators, reminding the community that the problems we face are fixed by provincial action. The province needs to pursue evidence-based policies, listen to healthcare providers, and work to break the cycle of addiction in a way that supports everyone. The two points tie into one another; providing people with safe, affordable housing can be one of the best things for ensuring an individual takes sobriety seriously - another point noted in yesterday’s Spec article on the mortality rate for those experiencing homelessness.⁵

***

It isn’t impossible to counter the messaging that Hamilton is in decline. In fact, it’s pretty easy. Smart, honest, policy-based campaigns that lean into optimism and hope can quickly quash the chatter about our city’s imagined fall from grace.

Hamilton isn’t in decline. We’re facing issues like every other municipality. The Pandemic, the global economy, and the ideological priorities of other levels of government have made things harder. But those problems didn’t start when this term of council was sworn in on November 15, 2022. And they certainly won’t be fixed if we replace every member of council this October.

If we work together, we can address these issues we face - not by endlessly complaining about imagined decline, but by rolling up our sleeves, buckling down, and keeping our eyes on a better tomorrow.

The Game Changes

Photo by Mike Meyers on Unsplash - Edited by author

It’s almost hard to conceptualize how much Canadian politics changed in the just 72 hours. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that what started with an announcement mid-afternoon on February 2, 2026 has the potential to fundamentally shift the political order all around us.

While I write almost exclusively about politics and history here in Hamilton, what happened this week will inevitably be felt here. It may take a while for the reverberations to make it down to this end of Lake Ontario, but they’re coming nonetheless.

***

On Monday afternoon, Canadian media lit up with reports that Bill Blair, the Liberal MP for Scarborough Southwest, would be resigning, effective immediately. His resignation came after Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed Blair to the position of “High Commissioner” to the United Kingdom (since we’re part of the British Commonwealth and we share a monarch, the High Commissioner is our version of an ambassador).

Blair had served as MP for the lakefront riding since 2015. He was approached by Justin Trudeau’s rejuvenated Liberals to run in that year’s federal election as a “star” candidate. A “son of Scarborough”, Blair had been a household name in the city for a decade as the Chief of the Toronto Police Service (TPS). People across Canada knew him as the man who oversaw the single largest mass arrest of Canadians ever during the 2010 G20 protests and one of the men who went toe-to-toe with the Ford Family during Rob’s crack cocaine saga. A decidedly varied record, but one that was positive enough to not preclude a future in politics (his successor as Chief, Mark Saunders, had a decidedly less positive tenure heading up the TPS, but still tried his hand at politics with far less success).

He became a “lame duck” chief just before the 2014 municipal elections when the Toronto Police Services Board, balking at his host of proposed policing reforms, informed the public very early on that they would not renew his contract and give him a third term as chief during negotiations the following year. This set the stage for his entry into politics and, on the day of his retirement, he announced he would be seeking the Liberal Party of Canada’s nomination to run in Scarborough Southwest against one-term NDP MP Dan Harris. With the NDP in decline after the death of Jack Layton, combined with Blair and Trudeau’s star power, he beat Harris, 52.5% to 24%. Blair bounced between ministries, won re-election with higher and higher percentages of the popular vote in each subsequent election, and stayed out of the brief, messy Liberal Party civil war that resulted in Carney’s capturing power last year. Even though the new PM opted to not appoint Blair to cabinet after last year’s election, rumours abounded that he was destined for a plum diplomatic position as a reward for his service.¹

The dust had barely settled on the announcement of Blair’s appointment when the Liberals revealed that they already had a candidate to replace him in the upcoming by-election. It was later reported by the Star that the whole thing had been coordinated well ahead of time.

The Liberal candidate would be another high-profile name in the community and someone who was already serving in the provincial legislature. The issue is that they weren’t a Liberal.

The candidate announced was Doly Begum, the deputy leader of the Ontario NDP and the MPP for Scarborough Southwest. The Star later reported that NDP leader Marit Stiles got a call from Begum at 9:00 AM on February 3, saying that, two and a half hours later, she would be named as the federal Liberal candidate in the riding. By mid-afternoon on Wednesday, New Democrats across Canada were seething. "When Canadians see politicians betray the values and policies that they claim to believe in, I think it damages our democracy and it breeds cynicism in our politics,” interim NDP leader Don Davies said, before noting “I'll leave it to Ms. Begum to explain to the people of Scarborough Southwest why she's abandoning the progressive policies she claimed to believe in to run for a party that is clearly governing like a conservative party." The outrage was felt across the modest NDP caucus as Begum’s blindside sank in.²

***

Before most even had a chance to recalibrate, there was another announcement. Perpetually rebellious Beaches-East York Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith announced he would be seeking the Ontario Liberal nomination for the provincial by-election in Scarborough Southwest created by Begum’s departure for parliament. Beaches-East York borders Scarborough Southwest, making the jump natural for Erskine-Smith. But that announcement also confirmed what many in Ontario had been speculating on for months: that Erskine-Smith would almost certainly be running for the leadership of the ever-rudderless Ontario Liberal Party.³

All of that was more bad news for Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles. The most recent poll of Ontarians has the ONDP at just 18% support with Doug Ford’s Tories at 43% and the leaderless Liberals at 30%. Of all the people who could break the polling logjam provincially, Erskine-Smith best fits the bill. He’s young, outspoken, and has enough progressive cred to lure soft New Democrats to the Ontario Liberal tent. But he’s also a free thinker with plenty of media exposure, meaning he’s one of the few people in Ontario who could seriously threaten Doug Ford’s stranglehold on this province’s politics. If Erskine-Smith wins the leadership and has a seat in the legislature, it isn’t impossible to imagine a world where, over the next two years, the Ontario Liberals ease into first place and the final countdown clock on Doug Ford’s reign begins.

So in the space of one day, Marit Stiles lost her deputy leader to the Liberals, faces the strong likelihood that her caucus will shrink by one member, and has to contend with the fact that her pathways to the Premier’s office have nearly dissolved.

***

Then, as the Ontario NDP was dealing with all that, came a slew of articles on Wednesday taking direct aim at federal NDP leadership contestant Avi Lewis. Based on fundraising data and general enthusiasm, it would appear that Lewis is the far-and-away frontrunner for the NDP’s leadership. In the morning edition of the Star, longtime party insider Anne McGrath (who is backing another candidate in the race - MP Heather McPherson), did her best to take some of the wind out of Lewis’s sails. Talking about how McPherson is courting the supporters of another contender, union leader Rob Ashton, McGrath implied that the “anti-Avi” forces are coalescing to ensure he doesn’t win the race. The party uses a ranked ballot for voting, so there are multiple rounds of counting as the lowest-ranked candidates drop off and their support is redistributed to the remaining candidates. McGrath told the Star: “A lot will depend on what happens after the first ballot…If Avi can’t win on the first ballot, it might be hard for him to win.”⁴

Making maters worse, Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi came out swinging on Wednesday, saying that he wasn’t going to be voting in the federal NDP leadership race and that he wants all federal leadership candidates to not screw up his chances of winning the next provincial election out there. The unspoken part of Nenshi’s comments were that an Avi Lewis leadership would likely mean a formal divorce between the federal and provincial wings of the NDP in Alberta. Lewis has been a dedicated champion of a shift away from fossil fuels which the bigwigs in the Alberta NDP believe will ruin their electoral chances. The Alberta NDP has already begun cutting ties with the federal party (allowing members to just be affiliated with the provincial wing) and, given that province’s tendency to push back against anything even remotely federal in nature, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the provincial wing going off on their own entirely if their desired candidate doesn’t win.

"We don't have the luxury in Alberta to get caught up in ideological battles…within our own party,” Nenshi told the CBC.⁵

Nenshi’s always been very good at setting the agenda and making his ideological positions look like the absence of an ideological position. His remarks to the CBC imply he wants the party to stay above the fray and focus on doing what’s right for the voters. But, ultimately, he’s an active combatant in that ideological war, unsubtly saying he would prefer a McPherson or Ashton-led NDP over one where Avi Lewis is the leader. Combine Nenshi’s comments with those from McGrath and other party insiders, and it becomes clear that there’s a move afoot to undermine the Lewis campaign with whatever they’ve got.

***

So where does that leave us?

Oh boy that’s a tough question to answer. But, based on my assessment, there are a couple of major issues.

Issue “1A” is that it’s do-or-die time for the Ontario NDP. A story in the Star cites a “senior New Democrat” who said Begum’s defection “was not a surprise” and cited Stiles’s extremely low approval rating at last Septembers ONDP convention - earning just 68% approval from party members - as one of the reasons. “Right now the momentum is flowing to the Liberals now, federally and provincially, so this is a problem, you know, for Marit and her leadership team,” the insider source told the Star.²

Stiles either needs to change course immediately or take the L and step aside. If the federal Liberals - who are governing like old-school Robert Stanfield-esque Progressive Conservatives (though their recent cuts to Environment and Climate Change Canada make it seem like they’re not averse to governing like modern-day Conservatives) - can entice the deputy leader of the Ontario NDP to their camp, there’s something seriously wrong.

Issue “1B” is that, making matters worse, Begum’s departure has cleared a path for Erskine-Smith to ride into Queen’s Park and take what little spotlight Stiles has left. With Ontarians growing weary of Doug Ford as we slog toward the 10 year anniversary of his accidental ascension, having a fresh and compelling new leader at the helm of the Ontario Liberals is the absolute last thing Stiles needs. Erskine-Smith has the potential to repeat the Trudeau leap, catapulting his party into government and relegating the NDP to third-party status once again.

Issue “2” is that the campaign against Lewis works in the favour of the Liberals at all levels. By undercutting his support through stoking fears of separatism, political calamity, and economic chaos, NDP insiders and skittish provincial politicians are putting their thumb on the scale in the hopes that McPherson can eek out a victory. If that happens, the insiders keep their positions, western leaders stand a chance of keeping official opposition status, and, ultimately, the enthusiasm that’s been bubbling under the surface of the NDP leadership campaign for Lewis can be neutralized. That helps the Liberals keep the NDP at bay federally and ensures there isn’t a host of energetic and optimistic provincial-level New Democrat candidates, volunteers, and voters in Ontario (where Lewis has been absolutely cleaning up donation-wise) when the next provincial election comes.

Issue “3” is that, on the ground here in Hamilton, this all has the potential to, in essence, keep things the same or make things even worse for New Democrats.

Provincially, the NDP is down to two ridings. A revitalized Ontario Liberal Party might be able to win some ridings with compelling candidates. An Erskine-Smith-led OLP may very well push the NDP back to the beachhead that is Hamilton Centre, in essence sending the party back to where it was back in 1999.

Federally, if the NDP fails to generate any momentum after the leadership race because of infighting or a solidification of the power of party insiders, the chances they take back Hamilton Centre drop dramatically, keeping the party off the map in the city and enabling the Conservatives more opportunities to eat into the working class with their relentless strategy of convincing working people to support anti-working class policies.

***

I’ve already made it clear that I’m backing Avi Lewis in the federal NDP leadership race. But, after the past 72 hours in Canadian politics, I’m also coming around to the idea that we need an Ontario NDP leadership race as well. That could be a chance for the reset the party needs. There are three years worth of runway until the next election (four, if Doug decides to drag this term out to an excruciating, albeit legally allowed, five years), which means there are plenty of opportunities to turn the plane around.

With Avi at the helm federally and a compelling new Ontario NDP leader taking the fight to the Ford government for the next few years, we might be able to beat back the tide of right-wing extremism and start to rebuild a progressive political base in this city, in this province, and in this country.

This week in Canadian politics has made it evident that the game is changing. A savvy player, one with a real shot at winning, knows that, when the game changes, so too must the strategy. To keep playing the same old game - by sticking with leaders who aren’t making a dent or by reverting to the same old infighting we are so known for or by pulling out all the stops to ensure the party’s consultant class remains comfortable - is to admit you’re not in it to win it. That, by itself, should be disqualifying.

The Great Budget Rebellion of ‘26

Photo by BAILEY MAHON on Unsplash - Edited by author

The 2026 municipal budgeting process has not been going well.

Part of the reason could be that the new budgeting requirements that the province imposed on the municipalities it granted “strong mayor powers” (of which Hamilton is one) are deeply confusing at the best of times.

A bit of humourously self-deprecating commentary from Ward 6 Councillor Tom Jackson on January 23 was a great encapsulation of how muddled the process is thanks to the Ford government’s changes. Seeking clarification from the city clerk, Jackson said: “You know, I do my darnedest to listen carefully to instructions from staff…could you please, for this simpleton from Ward 6, can you clarify please…I thought today was the last day to submit potential amendments [to the budget] for staff to work on…I say this very respectfully, I’m very confused.” Jackson, as those with even a passing knowledge of our local politics will know, has served on council for 38 years. If a man with more legislative experience under his belt than I’ve had years on this planet is confused about the process, something’s not right.

Jackson was seeking clarity about timelines. For this year’s budget process, the timeline has looked something like this:

• Tuesday, October 7, 2025: Mayor Andrea Horwath issued her “Budget Directive”. These “directives” are part of the new budget process imposed by the province which puts the mayor in charge of “setting the agenda” for the budget. In her directive, she asked staff to “hold the line” and cap residential property tax increases at 4.25%.

• Friday, December 12, 2025: City staff released the preliminary draft of the proposed tax-supported budget.

  • _{Municipal 101 side note - municipal budgets are divided into rate-supported (meaning big things you pay for separately - really just municipal water services) and tax-supported (meaning everything else funded by property taxes paid directly by homeowners and indirectly through landlords by tenants).}

• Tuesday, January 20, 2026: The Mayor released the final draft of the proposed tax-supported budget. Councillors did not receive notice that the draft was being released. In response to questions from local journalist Joey Coleman, Mayor Horwath said she did not meet with councillors when putting together the budget and could not indicate what feedback from the public was included in her final draft.

• Friday, January 23, 2026: Council first met to discuss the proposed tax-supported budget.

Let’s pause there, as things really kicked off that Friday. And, right off the bat, there was tension.

At around 11:00 AM on January 23rd, the budget discussions began in council chambers. There were a couple of agenda items on the budget, but the most important were 7.2 and 7.3. The former was a memo from the mayor summarizing what is, in essence, her budget and the latter was an overview of the budget itself.

Now, I say her budget because, thanks to strong mayor powers, all the real budget power rests with the mayor. The mayor directs the budget, the mayor sets the agenda for the budget, and the mayor, in the end, owns the budget.

The second speaker to those budget motions on the agenda that day was Ward 5 Councillor Matt Francis, who opened with a question about when amendments could be proposed. This was because, in his words “last night I get a call…or yesterday [Thursday, January 22], I get a call from the chair of [the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) - meaning Ward 9 Councillor Brad Clark] informing me that Wild Waterworks is going to be presented today to be removed from this budget…this isn’t a collaborative approach.”

Francis told council that the HCA chair told him about a line in the budget that suggested, as a way to ensure cost savings, the popular beachfront waterpark in Francis’s ward would be closed. This claim was also circulated on social media by a right-wing Ward 3 council candidate around the same time Francis noted getting the call from Clark. The post from the candidate, made around 7:00 PM on January 22, received around 1000 views on X/Twitter. The possible closure of Wild Waterworks had not been discussed in the media prior to this, despite the candidate claiming they “heard reports” about the waterpark’s closure. At this point, it remains unclear where the candidate “heard reports” from prior to Francis publicly noting it at council. Some council candidates are doing their homework early by combing through the budget, but I’ve looked through all those documents and haven’t found reference to that mistakenly-added cut.

Francis raising this point kicked off a momentary panic amongst those in the community who valued the aging waterpark. But staff quickly clarified that reports of Wild Waterworks’ death had been greatly exaggerated. An administrative error resulted in the park’s inclusion on a list of proposed cuts and staff informed council that “the proposed Wild Waterworks cut was not shared with the mayor because it was not meant to be adopted.”¹

That was only the beginning of the problems.

***

Immediately after his self-deprecating comment mentioned earlier, Ward 6’s Jackson sought clarity on another matter. “Given the mayor’s directive the past two years,” he said, “my issues is, I really can’t get into fulsome debate and, ultimately, a recorded vote, so, is ‘receiving’ today in essence acquiescing to the mayor’s proposed 2026 budget and the tax budget overview presentation? Because if, in some way, I’m acquiescing, I just need to have a recorded vote to be recorded as opposed to even ‘receiving’.”

That’s a complicated couple of sentences, but it boils down to this: Jackson was asking if voting to “receive” the mayor’s memo and the budget overview - basically councillors formally and symbolically saying “yup, we got the report, thanks for that” - would be, in some way, a signal of his tacit approval of the budget. If that was the case, then he was prepared to vote against even acknowledging receipt of the mayor’s correspondence.

Basically, a very public and very formal “buzz off” to the mayor.

Ward 14’s Mike Spadafora chimed in next with another intriguing question.

“Simple question for a simple mind,” he began, picking up where Jackson left off with the self-deprecating quips. “I just want clarity and to be 100% sure, when we talk about a two-thirds majority, what is that number, [City] Clerk Trennum? Is it based on the 16? I want to know exactly what the number is for the two-thirds to veto the budget.”

Let’s pause for another “Municipal 101” side note. Another fun quirk of Ontario’s new and totally well-thought-out “strong mayor powers” is that mayors now have the authority to “veto” council decisions. That means that the mayor can reverse a council decision if the mayor believes that decision would “interfere with a provincial priority”. Provincial priorities are, as follows:

1. Building 1.5 million new homes by December 31, 2031, and

2. Constructing and maintaining infrastructure to support housing, including transit, roads, utilities, and servicing.

That’s it. Those are the province’s outlined priorities. And, because those priorities are purposefully broad and vague, it means mayors have lots of latitude when it comes to vetoing things they aren’t keen on.

But mayoral veto powers are also extended to the whole of the budget process. That means that, if council votes in favour of amendments to the mayor’s budget, the mayor can cancel those amendments for any reason. Yes, the mayor will need to provide, according to the province, “written documentation of the veto and rationale to each member of council and the municipal clerk on the day of the veto”, but they still get to do it.

Council can propose changes to a budget, vote in favour of those changes, and the mayor can undo those changes with the stroke of a pen. Simple as that.

The one saving grace for council is that they have the power to “override” the mayor’s veto. Basically uncancelling what the mayor cancelled. But a council override requires a two-thirds majority of council. It can be hard to get two-thirds of council members to agree on anything, so the idea is that a veto is a very, very, very, challenging thing for a council to do.

What Spadafora was asking the city clerk was: how many of us need to vote the same way to override a veto?

The answer for Hamilton City Council is 11.

Asking that question at the beginning of the budget discussion is a bold move. It’s kind of like stepping up to the altar and, before saying the vows, turning to the officiant and asking “so how long do divorce proceedings usually take?”

One could infer from Spadafora’s question that he’s testing the waters to see how far council can push the mayor, laying the groundwork for an out-and-out rebellion of councillors against the last budget presented by Mayor Andrea Horwath before she, and many of the people around the council horseshoe, face the voters in October.

***

The mayoral election hangs heavy in the air now. Many of the decisions and actions of council will be viewed through the lens of mayoral ambition or a desire on the part of council members to quietly place their support behind candidates and/or distinguish themselves from those running.

That was certainly the case when new Ward 8 Councillor Rob Cooper took the floor after Spadafora during what was supposed to be a pre-budget presentation question-and-answer period about the actual process of the budget meetings.

“The way I see it, I got two budgets in front of me,” Cooper said. “I got one that came out at [a] 5.5 [percent tax increase] and one that came out at [a] 4.25 [percent tax increase]…my expectation of the budgeting process, we’d have one document, but we don’t.”

He continued: “When I ask questions about what the latest budget items were, I was even told that some of the questions couldn’t be addressed unless we went in camera,” he said, implying that some of his questions were such that, to answer them, council would need to lower the cone of silence and keep the questions and answers from the public.

It then fell to the budget chair, Councillor Maureen Wilson, and the city’s General Manager of Finance, Mike Zegarac, to clear up what Cooper had unleashed in the room. Wilson started, letting Cooper know that, no, there were not two budgets, but that there was a preliminary draft released in December at the request of council and a final draft released on January 20 as required by law.²  

After Cooper pressed his belief that there were “two different budgets” and that he had “never seen a budget process like this before”, Wilson once again needed to remind Cooper that council asked for a preliminary draft so they could mull it over during the winter break (after Cooper had been sworn into office, meaning he, too, had the ability to consider the budget over the holidays) before sitting down to debate the final draft in January. “Respectfully, if members of council are not happy with that which is being provided to them, then you are an author of your own unhappiness,” Wilson told the chamber.

Zegarac, for his part, needed to tag in to remind council that the only things they needed to go in camera for were private and personnel matters, as well as contractual matters, meaning that it was highly unlikely any of Cooper’s questions would need to be shielded from the public.

This is Cooper’s first time at the table for a budget conversation, which explains why he said he had “never seen a budget process like this before”. Then again, Cooper has been a long-time Progressive Conservative Party operative, working diligently to elect the party that imposed these changes. Authors of their own unhappiness, indeed.

But what Cooper was laying down is worth considering, if only to once again understand the strategy council’s right wing will employ during this year’s municipal election. “There are two budgets” speaks to the idea that City Hall is dysfunctional and mismanaged, meaning right wingers are needed to “take Hamilton back” and restore “common sense” to our local government. “Some of my questions can’t be answered in public” makes it seem like the right wing bloc on council is a fearless opposition, standing up for taxpayers and being threatened with “cancellation” if they stick their noses where they don’t belong.

Even if Cooper doesn’t run for mayor and passes the right wing baton to another contender, it still signals that on which the right wing campaign will focus. It’s a healthy blend of “sticking up for taxpayers” and “only I can fix it” - a kind of watered-down-MAGA-meets-hyperlocal-Poilievre kind of message. It’ll be interesting to see where they go with that.

Wilson and Councillor Nrinder Nann helped to get things back on track by reminding their colleagues that it was probably a good idea to actually hear the presentation on the budget before debating the specifics. After a quick break, council mostly stuck to their agenda that day with very few hiccups along the way, with one notable exception.

After Mike Zegarac’s budget presentation, Ward 5’s Matt Francis took issue with the omission of “local community arenas” under the heading “priority areas”. In response to Francis’s question, Zegarac provided an answer about all community spaces being priorities before Francis once again brings up the issue of Wild Waterworks. “I want to thank the [Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA)] chair for taking this seriously. Councillor Clark, he’s been a collaborative leader and communicator as a leader should be and I appreciate how he handles his role as the chair of the HCA,” he says (unsubtly taking a dig at the mayor), before providing some Coles notes on Wild Waterworks.

But then he gets to the meat of his argument (having lost the wedge that Wild Waterworks could have been). “The proposal to take the ice out of Stoney Creek arena…this is really an ineffective attempt at saving taxpayer’s dollars. Taxes go up and services go down. I hear that everywhere I go. Taking ice time away from kids at 6:00 PM on weekends and just saying we can shift it to another arena is just a perfect example of that…”

The speech goes on for some time. He talks about how hard it is to move ice times around, how kids tend to be in school during weekdays and can’t use the ice, how busy the arena is, how silly it was for the city to “waste money” on the Barton Tiffany Outdoor Shelter, how the arena is in good shape. “Is this really how we’re running our city? We talk about respect? How about respect for taxpayers around here?” he asks no one in particular.

The gist of his very long speech is that:

1. The cost is only $161,000, so keeping it in the budget is “insignificant”;

2. The mayor didn’t call him to talk about this proposed cut, which isn’t what real leaders do;

3. He’ll be bringing forward a motion on February 6 to “save” the Stoney Creek Arena, and;

4. He’ll be bringing forward motions to defer repairs to the “arena”, which he said “represent significant cost savings for taxpayers far in excess of the savings of removing the ice.”

Francis gave notice that he’ll bring forward his motion to keep the ice at Stoney Creek Arena on February 6, 2026.

I note the date because it’s just one day shy of 365 days since another hyper-specific Francis motion came to a budget meeting.

See, way back on February 7, 2025, Francis brought a motion to council to trim $25,000 from the city’s budget by cutting the “Poet in Place” program.

The “Whereas” statements on that 07-02-25 motion are interesting.

“WHEREAS, council has declared an affordability crisis…WHEREAS, the threat of looming U.S. tariffs will create an economic recession in Canada…WHEREAS, fiscal responsibility is a priority for the municipality…WHEREAS, [the Poet in Place program costs] could be redirected to provide tax relief to residents by applying the savings directly to the tax levy…” It’s loaded and targeted and oh so populist.

The motion would have seen the $25,000 allocated to the program (a $10,000 honourarium for the poet and $15,000 to install artwork/fund programming) be moved to the city’s capital reserve fund “for the purpose of funding infrastructure projects such as roads, sidewalks, and parks.” That motion failed on an 8-8 tie after Francis was unsuccessful in luring Ward 15 Councillor Ted McMeekin to the right wing side for that vote.

For those keeping track, that’s:

• $161,000 for ice at a Stoney Creek Arena = GOOD

• $25,000 for Hamilton-wide public art = BAD

Now, to be fair to Francis, he did say he was going to pair his motion with proposals for “significant cost savings for taxpayers far in excess of the savings of removing the ice” by suggesting a deferral of maintenance on the arena. And, yes, that will represent some savings for taxpayers.

This year. Kinda. If you don’t think about it too hard.

Deferring maintenance isn’t a way to find savings. All it does is push necessary expenditures down the road so that something that costs $250,000 (a made-up number for illustrative purposes) to fix this year might be closer to $300,000 in even just a year’s time. Factoring in inflation, changing supply chains, and the fact that not fixing a small problem now means it might become a BIG problem later, the final bill for taxpayers might be way more than if they just kept those expenses in the budget this year.

In essence, Francis is proposing saving the taxpayers of 2026 some money by charging the taxpayers of 2027, 2028, 2029 or whenever way more. Standing up for taxpayers today by hurting them tomorrow.

Interesting logic from the team that crows on endlessly about “raiding reserve funds” to keep taxes low. Especially because using the city’s savings account to prevent massive tax increases has only become necessary because a) previous councils regularly used deferring costs as a way to keep taxes artificially low, and b) the right wing has unrepentantly poisoned the well of public discourse against any and all investment in public services, creating a situation where even suggesting we raise taxes to adequately fund anything results in threats of a “taxpayer revolt” at the ballot box.

It’s the right-wing populists’ world and we’re just living in it.

But, in the end, Francis won’t even need to bring forward his motion to “save” Stoney Creek Arena. Five days after that meeting and after a couple of major defeats at council (more on those in a minute), Mayor Horwath issued a statement saying she was directing “staff to ensure the ice plant at the Stoney Creek Arena remains included in the proposed 2026 budget,” while squarely placing the blame for the proposal at the feet of staff (also more on that in a minute).

***

When the question period after Zegarac’s budget presentation concluded, councillors took the floor to deliver their assessment of the budget process so far.

“This year, the mayor didn’t reach out to each one of us after her budget cuts were made, after she made the assessments when staff were done. I don’t recall the phone ringing for me, saying ‘hey, let’s have a conversation about the impacts in Ward 2,” Councillor Cameron Kroetsch said, taking the mayor to task for what he saw as her poor communication, her calling public budget meetings without notice, and her imposition of cuts without consulting community members or councillors.

Councillor Clark also took issue with the lack of communication, saying that members of council would receive calls complaining about service cuts imposed by the mayor that those same members of council had no input on. Ward 14’s Mike Spadafora railed against what he saw as a term-long “spending spree”, focusing intently on how many staff had been hired at city hall.

“I know I run the risk of being highlighted in a social media post if I continue the narrative of possibly speaking out against the process,” Ward 10’s Jeff Beattie said (it’s unclear if he meant Joey Coleman’s reporting on the budget process or if there’s some other online forum where his votes and statements are disseminated), before highlighting some of the cuts with which he took issue.

Ward 11’s Mark Tadeson said he would do work to find better savings that protected what taxpayers care about. Ward 15’s Ted McMeekin made a plea for intergovernmental cooperation so the burden isn’t just on the backs of local ratepayers. Ward 8’s Cooper made the rather bold claim that, “I’d be shocked if the [tax increases for the] next four years were under 8 percent”.

There were critiques from right, left, and centre. While the core reasoning for their concerns may have been different, each councillor circled back to the idea that the budget was created by the mayor with little-to-no input from the community and our elected council.

The mayor, joining the meeting by video conference, responded, saying that “collaboration is with more than just one person. It takes two, takes three, takes four, takes five, and so my door has always been open.” She noted that, while she often invites councillors to participate in financial decisions, in her recollection, few actually take her up on her offer.

And then councillors voted on the reports.

The rebuke was stunning. In an 11-to-5 vote, councillors rejected the motion to “receive” Mayor Horwath’s budget directive memo. Then, moments later, in a 10-to-6 vote, they also rejected receipt of Zegarac’s budget presentation.

Technically, those votes mean nothing. They are symbolic of their collective frustration at the budget process and an indication that they will fight, and fight hard, against much of the mayor’s budget.

A few hours later, Mayor Horwath released a statement on social media that did not acknowledge the defeat, but noted that she looked “forward to the discussions around the amendments that Councillors will bring forward.”

Adding to the Mayor’s budget headache was the extremely savvy move by the Hamilton Public Library (HPL) to make a major service announcement the very same day. Hitting the Spec’s website a day early and the front page of the paper the on the day budget deliberations started was a story about how the Central Library - the flagship of the HPL in the heart of the city - would be closing on Sundays. This temporary service change was due to the lack of funding the HPL has to help the city’s vulnerable population who seek shelter in the library for lack of anywhere else to go on weekends. The HPL’s chief librarian told the Spec: “We can’t really put other library members or residents and staff in a situation where we’re not adequately supporting them.”³

That move, by itself, should be a reminder to never underestimate librarians. Librarians have been thrust into the role of catch-all public servants, required to be tech support, literacy teachers, stewards of public spaces, accessibility experts, social workers, teachers, technicians, historians, research assistants…the list is nearly endless. But, after that delightfully strategic move, we will have to add “political masterminds” to the list.

And that’s because, on Tuesday, January 27 - the first meeting back after the “snow event” weekend - one of the presentations to councillors was on the library budget.

The HPL went into budget discussions asking for a 5.25 percent increase to its budget to meet the needs in the community. They were told by the mayor to cap that increase at 4.25 percent - $375,000 less than what they need for the services they provide.

Council’s conversation around the library budget was less clean than their rebuke of the mayor, but still signaled another point of contention. While Cameron Kroetsch spoke to the need to fund libraries adequately to meet the need in the community, Rob Cooper took a more conventional right wing approach, critiquing the fact that there were some missing audited budget documents (from the city, not the HPL) and that, in the absence of those, they just “seem to know [they] need more money.”

But, even amongst council’s right wing block, there seemed to be some recognition that underfunding the HPL would be a tough sell this year. “I’m saddened by the Sunday [closure] announcement, I’m very saddened by that and let’s hope we can turn that around…I’m very open minded to the 5.25 [percent request]. I know where my priorities are in this corporation and in my community,” Ward 6’s Tom Jackson said.

It was no wonder, then, that Ward 3 Councillor Nrinder Nann told the meeting that a motion would be coming forward “calling for a city-wide approach and partnership”, suggesting that the HPL might get all it wanted. Nann was one of the few councillors who voted in favour of “receiving” the mayor’s memorandum, meaning that a vote in favour of increasing the HPL’s budget to 5.25 percent might have the support of between 11 to 15 members of council - a “veto proof” majority.

Another blow to the mayor’s budget.

***

By January 28, it was clear that council was in outright rebellion against Mayor Horwath. And she did not help matters one bit.

The discussion that day was supposed to be on the “Healthy and Safe Communities” portion of the budget. But, before the initial items could come forward, Horwath took the floor to provide a clarification about the Stoney Creek Arena issue.

“The direction was unequivocal when it came to any kind of changes to ice time or hours of use of hockey and ice skating arena facilities,” she said, before noting “What I did - what I always do - is, instead of chopping people’s heads off or embarrassing staff, I did the professional thing, which is ask them to have a look at what happened and give me some advice as to how to fix it.”

Basically, the mayor said that she never really wanted cuts to arenas and so she went back and asked staff to “fix” that proposed cut.

But then, she adds a line that undercuts both her previous statement and the entire budget process. Indeed, if any one line has the potential to become Horwath’s version of John Turner’s 1984 self-destruct button of a line, “Well, I’ve told you and told the Canadian people, Mr. Mulroney, that I had no option,” or Jack Layton’s biting 2011 dig at Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, “You know, most Canadians, if they don’t show up for work, they don’t get a promotion,” it may be this one.

“Again, I thought it was important to let folks know that I found out at the same time as everybody else…”

That was, in essence, the mayor saying that she found out about the cuts to Stoney Creek Arena after she released her budget.

Francis jumped at that. “I do find it curious that the mayor doesn’t know what’s in the mayor’s budget,” he said. The mayor jumped in with a point of order almost immediately.

“I’ve stated clearly that I learned about the situation at the same time as everyone else…but for a member to then suggest that’s not the truth is actually a point of order…I’m offended by it and I want it withdrawn,” she said while Francis audibly repeated “no”.

“It’s not a point of order, with the greatest respect,” said Brad Clark, noting that Francis didn’t question the “truthfulness” of what the mayor said but was, instead, “surprised that the mayor had not read her own budget.”

Chair Wilson rules that it isn’t a point of order, so the mayor pivots to speaking to a point of privilege.

Time for one more “Municipal 101” side note!

• A point of order is intended to request a ruling on a breach of meeting procedure.

• A point of privilege is intended to quickly raise concern over improper, unparliamentary, or otherwise uncivil behaviour.

Minor side note, but an important one.

The mayor tries to push back, but keeps returning to her original statement, evidently missing that Francis didn’t say she was being less-than-truthful, rather that it was shocking that she didn’t know what was in her own budget.

Cameron Kroetsch chimed in providing some different wording. “I think what I heard, and what I’ve heard from residents when they’ve reached out to me about this, is the question ‘Didn’t the mayor look at the budget before it was released publicly?’ That is the question I’m hearing,” he noted before outlining the expectation in the community, namely that the mayor tasked staff with designing a budget which she would then go over in detail before releasing it so that any possible miscommunications or issues - like closing Wild Waterworks or defunding the Stoney Creek Arena or requiring the HPL to make dramatic service cuts - would be cleared up ahead of time.

Wilson again ended the discussion shortly after and the intended presentation began.

By Friday morning, Hamiltonians awoke to a front-page Scott Radley editorial with the headline “Mayor blaming staff for arena issue makes both look bad.”

Radley, in three rhetorical questions, summarizes that short debate at council. “Isn’t this her budget? If the rink somehow got on the list without her authorization, how did it stay there? Didn’t she proofread the whole thing a few times before it was released?” the paper-of-record’s taxpayer-focused columnist mused.⁴

***

Council will continue to meet and work this week before Friday’s big General Issues Committee meeting where they will first have an opportunity to debate amendments to the mayor’s budget. The agenda isn’t complete yet, but they have, so far, 31 pieces of written correspondence, the majority of which are pleas to not “defund” the Stoney Creek Arena. As per the mayor’s note last week, that particular proposed cost savings is off the agenda.

But that doesn’t matter at this point. The issues are too great to be fixed by saving ice time at one arena.

During their initial meeting, councillors complained about a lack of collaboration and communication. Councillors from all ideological backgrounds and all corners of the city had similar critiques. They were surprised by aspects of the budget when, in reality, they should have had a hand in finding savings and identifying where investment was needed the most.

Councillors raised the idea that, last year, the mayor was opposed to a hard ceiling on tax increases while, this year, the conversation was guided by an arbitrary number. Some councillors said the “out-of-thin-air” 4.25 percent tax increase cap means a lower quality of service for residents even though taxes are still going up (best exemplified by the proposed HPL cuts). Others said that 4.25 percent was still too high and that deeper cuts were needed (though not when it came to community resources in their wards, of course).

But, worst of all was the comment by the mayor last week that she “found out at the same time as everybody else…” about some of the cuts. She later clarified to the Spec that “she ‘absolutely’ looked at the budget prior to it being released to the public”, but that isn’t the point anymore.⁵

The erroneous reports of the end of Wild Waterworks, the quick turnaround on the Stoney Creek Arena cuts, the underfunding of the HPL…each of those points signals one thing very clearly.

Mayor Andrea Horwath has lost control.

This October, Horwath will be in a fight for her political life. With council in out-and-out rebellion against her leadership with just three months to go until registrations open for the municipal election, that fight just got a lot harder.

If council successfully reworks her budget into their budget, then she’ll be walking into this campaign without any allies, without any notable wins, and with very serious lingering questions about her leadership abilities.

Council may have just handed the mayoral election to somebody else.

Heating up in the deep freeze

Photo by Fridi Antrack on Unsplash - Edited by author

The 2026 municipal election here in Hamilton will happen on Monday, October 26th, 2026.

There’s something about the symmetry of that date that makes my brain happy. Lots of “O’s”, all those “2’s”, and the soft repeat of the “26”? Niceeeeeee. It’s like poetry.

No armchair diagnoses, please.

Similarly, the idea of October weather makes my brain happy when placed in contrast to the misery that is our current frigid state. Sure, I’m a summer boy, but I’d take a crisp October day over this polar nonsense any day.

But October 26th is just the end of the campaign. There’s a lot to get through beforehand.

***

Candidates can officially begin registering on Friday, May 1, 2026 and have until 2:00 PM on Friday, August 21, 2026 to submit their paperwork. That Friday in May is the “official” start to the campaign, but candidates have to get ready well before then. Real, competitive campaigns recognize the need to get the machinery in place ahead of time. Campaigns need to ensure their candidate can canvass their community multiple times before the vote, attend as many events as possible, and do the hard work of informing voters about the basics of local government if they even have a shot at winning. All that means a viable campaign (which make up about 15-to-25% of campaigns) needs to get organized long before the doors to City Hall open on that first Friday in May. Exceptions can be made for candidates with unparalleled name recognition (see: the current mayor), but, for most council candidates, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

With previous municipal elections, we could easily tell when the campaign unofficially started. The 2010 campaign started on June 30, 2008 with Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel’s piece “Eisenberger’s night of the long knives”, chronicling the former mayor’s inability to lead council at the midpoint of his first term. After that, prospective candidates realized just how vulnerable Eisenberger was and began positioning themselves as contenders.¹ The mayoral race sometimes sets the pace for the entire campaign, allowing eager council candidates the unspoken “permission” to kick things off, albeit quietly.

For the 2014 election, it was another Dreschel column that kicked things off. On the front page of the August 26, 2013 edition of the Spec, Dreschel informed the community that Ward 1 councillor Brian McHattie had begun forming his own version of an “exploratory committee” to gauge support for a mayoral campaign.² McHattie indicating an interest in the mayor’s chair meant that the council campaign in Ward 1 could unofficially begin, as could other contests around the city. Matthew Green made his announcement that October and the pace of council candidate announcements snowballed from there.³

In recent years, the campaigns have started with more of a whimper. The 2018 campaign wasn’t a barnburner by any stretch of the imagination, even with new council wards and some high-profile departures of those council members seeking higher office.

The top candidates in 2022 didn’t make any definitive announcements until well into that year. Even though Keanin Loomis was the subject of some “speculation” in February of 2021, he waited until January of 2022 to make anything official.⁴ Mayor Horwath waited until late July - just weeks before the cutoff for nominations - to register, long after many of her supporters had begun to back or, at the very least, consider voting for Loomis, whose campaign had a solid 8 month head start on the former NDP leader’s bid.

This time, she wasn’t leaving anything to chance and came out with her intention to seek a second term way back in July of 2025. Granted, she only did so because Joey Coleman prompted her on the matter, but she could have equivocated if she was on the fence in any way.

***

Sure, a handful of right-wing populist personalities in the community made their council ambitions known back in June of 2025 and a smattering of fringe candidates have made “announcements”, but there hasn’t really been a groundswell of support for anyone in any direction.

All that’s not for a lack of trying, though. The city’s developer-backed right-wing political machine has been doing their damnedest to make this a “change” election. They’ve been working hard to synchronize their messaging, whip up as much anger as they can muster, and blame every problem in Hamilton - the state of the roads, the slowing pace of development, the fact that homelessness exists, the coming recession, your own general sense of midwinter ennui - on this current term of council. If it’s good, thank the political right. If it’s bad, blame The Ladies and The Gays (Plus Craig)™. It’s a simple strategy.

Like all right-wing populists, they’re hellbent and determined to unleash their dragons, conveniently ignoring the fact that they have absolutely no ability to train them once they’re loose.

Ultimately, though, they’re in a pretty good spot, campaign-wise. They have the money, they have the determination, and they have the connections necessary to run strong campaigns without the need to do the same legwork as candidates with centre/centre-left/progressive/urbanist/generally-not-rage-based values.

It helps that the local paper of record, the Spec, has one dedicated municipal columnist who clearly and regularly articulates their messaging to a wider audience.

***

Scott Radley’s commentary, which is often published right on the front page of the paper, directly supports the message of Hamilton’s right-wing populists, feeding into the narrative that this October’s election will be nothing short of a “taxpayers revolt”.

“Hundreds of new employees have been added to the municipal payroll,” he wrote in another front-page editorial this past Thursday. “Huge amounts have been added to the operating budget. Plenty more has been tacked on to the capital budget, too. Which has all led to what will be a 21.5 per cent hike in property taxes in one term.” Oh, the humanity!

More than just echoing the populist playbook on taxes, Radley hints that someone is lurking out there, ready to take on Horwath and the “tax and spend” council of 2022-2026.

“If some candidate running against [Horwath] says he or she can return to the days before this term of council when increases generally fell into the two per cent and a bit range - and can show a credible path to that result - will that person find favour with the electorate? That’s to be determined. Though here’s betting someone will give it a shot.”⁵

Sure seems like the columnist knows something’s brewing.

***

Just two weeks ago, Radley published another piece - this one on A4 of the Friday, January 9 edition of the Spec and a companion piece to Radley’s podcast, “Placeline Hamilton” - on new Ward 8 councillor Rob Cooper’s first few months on the job. In the article, Cooper openly muses about running for mayor because, as the councillor says, he wants control over the budget process. “There’s only one person who’s really going to decide what the budget is…that’s the mayor,” Cooper told Radley.⁶

Cooper, an ideologically-driven conservative with extensive connections to the local press, later told the CBC that, if his experience with the tax budget mirrors the experience he had with the water budget (namely being mostly left out while the mayor directs the conversation and city staff prepare the numbers), “it’s not going to work for me.” He then walks right up to the line, saying “If you want to make seismic change in a community like Hamilton, there's only one way to do it - through being the mayor.”⁷

The comments are as notable as how the CBC changed their graphic after the story was published; when the article came out at 4:00 AM, Cooper’s photo was beside Loomis’s above the story. By mid-afternoon, Loomis’s photo had been dropped, leaving just Horwath and Cooper as the mayoral contenders with photos on the story.

***

For his part, Loomis told the CBC that he would “have more to say about [the election] in the coming weeks.” 

But Cooper appears to have preempted things and is quickly stealing what little spotlight there is in the city. That makes sense, considering Loomis spent the better part of the past four years as the assumed front-runner to take on Horwath while Cooper was, up until a few months ago, a little-known backroom Conservative Party operative who narrowly made it onto council with just 19.4% support from voters in Ward 8. He has to do a little more work to get his name out there than Loomis, who has kept a high and positive profile since his campaign in 2022.

A possible ace up Cooper’s sleeve is the fact that he has a long history with this city’s Conservative/Progressive Conservative establishment. McMaster University political scientist Peter Graefe told the Spec following Cooper’s win that he “likely had an advantage due to his long history with the Tories and benefited from the party’s databases - in addition to his networking skill as a former riding association president.”⁸ That kind of connection can come in handy, especially as the city’s ever-shrinking electorate drifts more and more to the right.

With Radley writing endlessly about “bonkers” tax increases, a coalition of right-wing populists running for council seats across the city repeating lines about the need to “reign in spending”, connections to Hamilton’s three PC MPPs and two Conservative MPs, and access to a vast network of well-funded, deeply-entrenched, and highly-organized right-wing operatives in Hamilton, Cooper might just make a meal of the mayoral election.

Other factors might work in his favour as well. Progressives continue to sour on Horwath’s administration and Loomis is dragging out any announcement about his intentions (which leaves him little runway to make a strong bid and makes it harder for anyone else not in the Horwath or Cooper camps to start organizing if he doesn’t run). Populists, as the theory goes, thrive in a void.

***

Complicating things for the city’s right-wing machine is the fact that, in that same CBC article from Saira Peesker in which Cooper strongly suggested he wants to be mayor, the majority of sitting council members said they are going to run for re-election. Nearly all of the centre-right/right-wing populist bloc on council have declared their intentions to stand again, save for Tom Jackson in Ward 6 and Ted McMeekin in Ward 15. Neither of those two said definitively that they won’t be running, with Jackson unavailable for comment before the story (it would be a genuine surprise if the 11-term incumbent didn’t run again) and McMeekin saying he’ll spend the summer thinking things over with his family and team (it would be a genuine surprise if the one-term councillor who has spent five decades in politics and has made an indelible mark on Hamilton did run again).

Incumbents have an incredible advantage when it comes to municipal elections. Across Ontario, over 80% of incumbents were successful in their re-election bids during the 2022 municipal elections, up from 76.5% in 2018. In Hamilton, the average number of incumbents who lose their seat in any given election (based on data from 1960 to 2022) is approximately 2 and, in many of those cases, it’s the mayor who loses re-election. From Lloyd Jackson to Andrea Horwath, Hamilton has had 11 mayors (including Vince Agro’s year as acting mayor after Vic Copps’s heart attack). Of them, seven have been defeated in their re-election bids.

In five of Hamilton’s elections from 1960 to 2022, no incumbents were defeated and, in seven of them, three or more incumbents lost their seats (with 2022 being one of those elections). That means that Hamilton runs about average in Ontario for incumbent success rates, which are still extremely high. Once a candidate wins their first election, it can be very difficult to replace them unless they go willingly.

Around six council members are reliably opposed to the right-wing populist playbook and a few more (like Ward 9’s Brad Clark) represent a more mainstream, “classical” conservatism. There are no guarantees in municipal politics, but the right would have a hell of a time defeating even a couple of those council members, assuming all follow through with their bids for re-election. And, the more work the right puts into winning those council races, the fewer resources there are for Cooper and his mayoral bid. Alternatively, the city’s right-wing establishment could simply focus on Cooper’s campaign for mayor and try to hold the plurality they have on council, optimistic that they can, when the time is right, entice the requisite number of council members to their side for budget votes to prevent the need for an unsavoury mayoral veto.

All this is to say that the city’s right-wing establishment has a few options available for them. That, of course, ignores the inevitable infighting that happens when a group of politically-engaged Hamiltonians get together and assumes that another right-leaning candidate like Chad Collins or Vito Sgro or Peter Dyakowski doesn’t enter the race. But given Collins’s poor polling, Sgro’s past electoral results, and Dyakowski’s lack of seriousness about the race (his chilling call to take “your city back” aside), it sure seems like Cooper will be the conservative choice for mayor.

***

There are still a great many “unknowns” as the election heats up. Will Doug Ford throw another grenade into municipal affairs just before the election? Will his government abolish the office of school trustee, leaving 22 local elected officials in search of other opportunities? Are there other high profile mayoral candidates out there just waiting for the perfect time to announce their entry into the race?

Then there’s the great mystery of who might run for council and (if the seats still exist come election time) trustee. If Cooper makes a mayoral move, does that mean Terry Whitehead will be back for another kick at the can? Will the troika of right-wing populists who mused about council runs against perceived progressives last year be joined by other fellow travellers? What about the city’s non-establishment, pro-Palestine left? How about the conspiracy theorists and culture warriors who made bids for trustee and council and the mayor’s chair last time? Who will take up the mantle and become this generation’s Brother Baldasaro!?

There are 98 days until nominations open for the 2026 municipal election. In that time, the sun will begin to poke out more and more, the snow will melt away, and the world will, once again, come alive.

The municipal campaign might seem like it’s hibernating, but it’s beginning to rouse from its slumber. The deep freeze may be keeping it subdued, but it’ll come alive before you know it. Best be ready when it does.

A sea of change

Photo by visualsoflukas on Unsplash - edited by author

Depending on who you asked, David Lewis was either a brilliant new force in Canadian politics or little more than an “angry…shrewd, even cunning political animal.”¹

By 1944, Lewis had lived a thoroughly exciting life. Born to a passionately political family in a poor Jewish shtetl in today’s Belarus, his family fled the Russian Civil War after his father’s Bundist politics (the Jewish Labour Bund being a secular, social democratic, autonomist political party in pre-revolutionary Russia) brought him into conflict with the Bolsheviks. They came to Canada, trading the last name “Losz” for the Anglicized “Lewis”, and ended up where many Jewish emigres from the region did - Montreal. There, the young David excelled in school, was accepted into McGill, and began his own political activism. From there, Lewis earned a Rhodes scholarship and moved to Oxford where he linked up with Labour Party organizers, got into fistfights with fascists, and ruffled the stiff, uptight feathers of the British elite who balked at his radicalism and oratorical skill. Despite an offer to be parachuted into a safe Labour seat with a guarantee to be elected to the British House of Commons in the UK’s 1935 general election (Canadians were, at the time, only British subjects and had the right to run for parliament here or in the “home country”), as well as a partnership at a prestigious London law firm, Lewis opted to return home to Canada. A more appealing challenge had been offered by the leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), J.S. Woodsworth, who implored him to bring his skills back to help the fledgling party.

Upon his return to Canada, Lewis took a job with an Ottawa-area law firm, balancing his legal practice with his work for the CCF. That proved to be too much and, in 1938, he left the firm to become the CCF’s full-time National Secretary.

An incredible political tactician, Lewis worked to soften some of the party’s rougher edges and make it more appealing to a broad array of Canadians. This brought him into conflict with those of a more radical bent, many of whom would leave to join the Communists and pledge to oppose Lewis in all his efforts.

At the same time, he worked with one of his friends from McGill, the political theorist Frank Scott, on Make This Your Canada, a comprehensive book outlining the CCF’s economic and political theories. By 1940, it was Lewis’s turn to jump into electoral politics in his own right. He was appointed the party’s candidate in York West, a thin strip of a riding encompassing what are today the western suburbs of Toronto. In that year’s federal election, he earned just 13% of the vote.

Three years later, he was named the party’s star candidate in the Montreal-area by-election for the riding of Cartier. A riding with a large working class, Jewish population, the CCF believed this could be the party’s chance to win its first seat in Quebec. The Conservatives opted to skip this by-election, knowing that the scene would be uncharacteristically messy. The Liberals, who were defending the seat, nominated a local war hero and lawyer. The nationalist Bloc Populaire nominated a candidate who sought to capitalize on the Quebecois anger over conscription, as well as a growing sense of Francophone pride in the province.

But the biggest threat came from the Communists, who nominated Fred Rose. Rose was an activist who, like Lewis, immigrated from what would eventually become the Soviet Union as a child. The Lewis and Rose families lived in the same poor Montreal neighbourhood and both their political sons were so close in age that Rose was just one year above Lewis at Baron Byng High School (which would later become a scene in many of the books written by another one of its notable alums, Mordechai Richler). But the paths of Lewis and Rose diverged after their high school days; the latter landed himself in jail for his campaigns against Montreal’s capitalists and the hard right Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis while the former was cloistered within the walls of McGill and Oxford.

The campaign was brutal. The Communists called Lewis a “fascist” and a political opportunist. The Liberals not-so-subtly informed voters they would rather have a Communist in the House than a CCFer. The Bloc locked down the Francophone vote, fanning the flames of nationalism at a time when that ideology had set half the world ablaze. In the end, Rose won by just 150 votes over the Bloc, becoming the first and only Communist elected to the House of Commons. Lewis placed a distant fourth.

Demoralized, Lewis knew he would need to recalibrate and find a place more sympathetic to his brand of social democracy. A place where labour candidates had found success and held positions of power. A place where the growing union movement was beginning to transform the working landscape.

He found just such a place, 600 kilometres to the southwest.

***

In July of 1944, Lewis made a surprise announcement. Instead of running in Toronto or Montreal, he would make a bid for the vulnerable seat of Hamilton West.

The riding was, for nearly all of its history, a Conservative stronghold. From 1908 to 1940, the Hamilton West Tory machine had the seat on lockdown. But, in 1940, the party’s candidate, former alderman John Marsh, was defeated by his Liberal opponent, Colin Gibson of the city’s legendary Gibson family. Prime Minister King, recognizing how much of coup Gibson’s victory was, promptly named him Minister of National Revenue.

Lewis figured that, in a battle between the Liberals and Conservatives, there was a chance the CCF could sneak up the middle and pull off a surprise victory. Encompassing everything in city limits west of Wellington Street, the riding had pockets that may have provided natural voters for each party; wealthy enclaves for the Tories, upwardly mobile middle class families for King’s Liberals, and close-knit working class communities for the CCF.

On Monday, July 17, 1944, the Hamilton West CCF Association held their nomination meeting at the Royal Connaught. In the running were Lewis, perennial candidate William Jack, and faithful party member Frank Malloy. Lewis won the nomination easily. He told the gathered members that the race in Hamilton West “will be a contest between the forces of progress and the common people, represented by the CCF, and the forces of reaction and monopoly, represented by the old parties.”² For the election, Lewis listed the East Avenue home of his Hamilton East colleague’s financial agent as his address.

From the moment he announced his candidacy, local forces organized to oppose him. The Spec, then owned by the deeply conservative Southam Company, took the lead, burying what few articles they wrote on him deep in the less-viewed pages of the paper and snidely commenting on, of all things, the size of his rallies. Of a pre-election meeting in 1945, the paper glibly remarked that it was “a small one attended by about 50 persons.”³

The election shaped up to be a spirited battle. Gibson and Lewis were joined on the hustings by Progressive Conservative candidate Chester New, who was then the head of McMaster’s history department, and Dr. Sam Sniderman of the Communists (political observers were quick to note that Lewis, once again, had a Jewish opponent running to his left, though Sniderman was a deeply engaged member of the community who had just returned from serving as a Captain in the army. Sniderman - unrelated to the Sam Sniderman of “Sam the Record Man” fame - would die suddenly three years later after a short illness).

When it came time for candidate profiles in the Spec, Gibson and New received lengthy write-ups, noting their many accomplishments, their admirable families, their contributions to the community, and, interestingly, their athletic prowess. Gibson’s award-winning marksmanship and New’s success in aquatics, curling, and general collegiate sports were highlighted. In contrast, Lewis earned two perfunctory paragraphs, noting his time at McGill and Oxford, his full-time work for the CCF, and his failed bid for office in Cartier. Despite not being religious, his profile was ended with the line: “He is of the Hebrew faith.”⁴

Lewis, when the local media deemed it appropriate to even mention him, was treated as an outsider. His policies were maligned and his organization was disparaged. It is no wonder, then, that on election day, he placed third with 23.6% of the vote. In their election recap, the Spec echoed the sentiments of the riding’s winner, Gibson, running stories about the local results under the bolded headline: Interprets Federal Vote as Rejection of Socialism. Lewis was blunt with the Spec, telling the paper that the CCF campaign in Hamilton suffered because of how the political elites locally and nationally attacked the party and gave “the people what, in our opinion, is a wrong understanding and distorted view of CCF policies and intentions.”⁵

He returned to Hamilton for the city’s “burning year”, 1946. At a rally in support of striking Stelco workers at Woodlands Park on August 27, Lewis told a crowd of 6,000 that the federal government’s use of the RCMP during the strike may inspire a Canada-wide general strike, that Stelco management was in violation of federal laws, and that Controller Nora Francis Henderson’s account of mayhem in the city was dangerously hyperbolic. Using phrasing that was decidedly of-its-time, Lewis said of Henderson: “There is nothing worse than a hysterical woman in politics, but there is nothing as impossible as when a Tory woman in politics becomes hysterical!”⁶ Lewis’s phrasing was poor and, by today’s standards, could be interpreted as sexist, but his contention was that Henderson was mischaracterizing striking workers when she said they were a disorderly mob that made Hamilton unsafe for all.

The next year, federal riding boundaries were redrawn. The unwieldy riding of Wentworth, which once encompassed all of today’s City of Hamilton aside from the lower city between Paradise Road in the west and Ottawa Street in the east, was split in two. Much of rural Wentworth was appended to Brant County, leaving a much smaller, more urban riding of Wentworth in its wake. This riding included the working-class east end between Ottawa Street and the Red Hill Valley, the growing working-to-middle class suburbs on the mountain, and the towns of Dundas and Stoney Creek.

It was in this riding that Lewis next tried his hand at electoral politics. He deftly defeated his fellow CCF candidate from 1945, Hamilton East’s Roy Aidow, for the nomination. Lewis - described by the Spec after his nomination as “short, dark David Lewis” - was bullish in his nomination speech, promising to win the riding of Wentworth and help the CCF form government at the federal level. Alderman Bill Warrender, one of the most right-wing members in Hamilton city council’s history, wrote to the Spec to attack Lewis’s candidacy, noting again that “Mr. David Lewis doesn’t even live in the city,” and that “it is obvious, therefore, to anyone that the National Socialist machine is at work and that the ‘big guns’ find that Hamilton is a soft spot for the spreading of their propaganda,” purposefully mischaracterizing the CCF as the same fascist menace that had been defeated only a few years prior.⁷ As malicious as Warrender’s letter was, there was a kernel of truth to it; Lewis was still based in Ottawa and used the home of CCF MPP Joe Easton as his address for the campaign.

During a pre-election meeting in 1949, Lewis told a crowd of party supporters that “the CCF will sweep Hamilton” in the election and that, in the riding of Wentworth, “the contest is clearly, and only, between the Conservatives and the CCF,” mentioning rumours that the Liberals had considered not running a candidate out of fear that the vote would split in favour of Lewis. Lewis’s comments were optimistic at best; the CCF had slipped in the polls from a high of 21% in October of 1948 to just 16% by the time he gave his speech. Typical of the Southam-owned Spec, the article was buried on page 8 between an article about the US Army Band playing at Gage Park and concerns over “striking seaman” at the docks (meaning labour strife, just to clarify).⁸

The placement of the Spec’s column was apt, then, when they ran a candidate profile of him a few days before the election. “The gap between the background of David Lewis,” they wrote, “and that of the majority of the people in the Wentworth constituency…is as wide as the seas.” This time, the paper really leaned into it, informing readers that the family “changed their name to Lewis” and that the candidate “had spoken no English until he was twelve years old”. All the more “remarkable”, the paper opined, that he had made it to McGill and Oxford, then. “Mr. Lewis, age 38, is an intellectual of the first order [and] a political careerist,” they wrote, before saying that his victory would “be a tough assignment for any candidate under the best of circumstances, but the difficulties of an outsider with limited contacts and scant acquaintanceship with the voters of a constituency are formidable.” Indeed, Lewis’s Communist opponent received a more positive review from the Spec, though that may have been due to his being Stanley Ryerson, the great-grandson of Egerton Ryerson himself.⁹

Lewis improved on his result from 1945, but still failed to capture the seat, earning 27% of the vote. It would be 13 more years before he was elected to parliament.

After Tommy Douglas stepped down as leader of the brand new NDP, Lewis took his place and, amidst a Liberal minority government, was able to extract important concessions from Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, including the creation of Petro Canada. But, as is often the case for the NDP in minority parliaments, their work ended up making the government look good at their own expense, and the party limped into the 1974 election facing down a wave of Trudeaumania.

The Spec, once Lewis’s most ardent opponent, took a more nuanced view of his campaign in ‘74. The paper’s editorial team rehashed what their predecessors had said of Lewis, but quietly acknowledged where they were wrong. Instead, they considered what Lewis had done for Canada during his time in politics, concluding that “even those who disagree most violently with his party’s platform will have to agree that in their present leader, the New Democrats have a superb political organizer, an articulate spokesman and a man who does what he feels right no matter how enormous the odds.”¹⁰  

On election night, Lewis lost his seat, as did 15 of his caucus members. Not a single New Democrat was elected to represent Hamilton in that election. Lewis stepped down and spent his last years writing and teaching in Ottawa.

When David Lewis ran for office in Hamilton, the local political machinery labelled him an outsider, an opportunist, and a radical. They hinted at (and, sometimes, outright pointed to) his background in negative ways. They mislabeled his politics, mocked his pursuits, and did their best to ostracize him.

What hits closest to home for me, though, is how he was branded “an intellectual of the first order [and] a political careerist.” This, as the Spec implied, meant he had no business even being in a working class city. Lewis’s skills and talents and passion were weaponized against him, used to say, outright, that he didn’t belong.

In many ways, today’s political strategies haven’t changed much from 1949. Hamilton’s political elites and their wealthy friends fixate on who “belongs” in this city and the political conversations we have here. It’s an easy tool used by shallow actors, creating tiny little groups of acceptability. Step outside those groups, or raise your voice too loud, and you’re labeled an “outsider”. Former councillor Terry Whitehead said as much in 2022 when he told the Spec’s Scott Radley that anyone with left-leaning critiques of the previous council were “barbarians at the gates”.¹¹

The opinions of certain councillors can be dismissed because they’re too “woke” (read: gay and progressive). The motivations of some councillors are called into question because they’re too “loud” and “out-of-touch” (read: women who have the courage to speak up). The perspectives of some members of council and trustees and MPPs and MPs and candidates don’t matter because they have an “agenda” and are “activists” (read: they’re People of Colour or Jewish or Muslim or queer or disabled or too young or too old or New Democrats or Greens or left-leaning Liberals or they just didn’t kiss the rings of the people who hold the real power in this city - the developers and the publishers and the backroom political operatives and the old boys who linger in local coffee shops, hungry to relive their glory days - with enough reverence and awe).

I’ve always admired David Lewis for standing up to the entrenched political elites in Hamilton during some of our city’s most formative years. His work here, and across Canada, helped transform this country. He had missteps and made mistakes, but he was, as the Spec wrote in 1974, a leader who did what he felt was “right no matter how enormous the odds.” That’s a quality sorely lacking amongst some in positions of leadership today, much to our collective disadvantage.

Now, 81 years after David Lewis presented himself as a candidate to the voters of Hamilton West, another Lewis is on the ballot for your consideration.

I’ve been rather up front about my history with the New Democratic Party. After the last federal election, I published a lengthy personal history, chronicling my journey from bright-eyed young idealist in 2008 to demoralized and jaded rebel by 2021.

That post came long before the official kick-off of the leadership race right after Labour Day last year. Indeed, from the time I posted, it was two months before any candidate even declared their intention to run to replace Jagmeet Singh.

In that time, five serious candidates have emerged: President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Rob Ashton, Campbell River city councillor Tanille Johnston, Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson, farmer and past school trustee Tony McQuail, and past NDP candidate and journalist Avi Lewis - David Lewis’s grandson.

Two others - Montreal-based fringe agitator Yves Engler and his wife, Bianca Mugyenyi - have attempted to run. Engler’s candidacy was rejected by the party because of his history of, as the CBC noted, “engaging in Rwandan genocide denialism, echoing Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine and making comments ‘consistent with anti-Semitic attitudes’.”¹² Mugyenyi’s candidacy application is under review.

The CBC’s senior Parliamentary Correspondent, David Thurton, has assessed that Ashton, Lewis, and McPherson are presently in a three-way tie for first place and, in the absence of any real polling, it’s hard to disagree with that claim. Ashton is bringing heavy labour support, Lewis is out-fundraising his opponents, and McPherson is collecting plenty of endorsements from party insiders. But Thurton also remarks that “While the NDP leadership campaign has the makings of a compelling political news story, for those outside the party, it's hard to tell.”¹³

You’d think more Canadians would be paying attention, considering the alternatives. The Conservatives are happily continuing their process of MAGAfication, best exemplified recently by a local-area MP’s social media habits. Long-time Tory MP Dean Alison of Hamilton’s neighbouring riding of Niagara West took to X - a platform he uses obsessively and where his pinned tweet is still a screenshot of a note he wrote on his phone blaming “DEI extremists” for trying to destroy the “Western way of life” - to spread misinformation about Mark Carney banning X and “trying to take your rights away because [he doesn’t] think you deserve them.”

In contrast, the Liberals have offered almost no substantive opposition to this most recent dramatic escalation of American aggression, even as our sovereign neighbours prepare for a direct invasion and 31% of Canadians indicate they are sure the United States will soon try to invade our country. Long gone are the days of Defence Scheme No. 1 and, instead, Canadians wait quietly, searching “when should I start a militia” and “I’m not right wing but are guns okay and where do I find them” on the Internet, all while our government issues well-meaning statement after well-meaning statement.

Indeed, as the people of Greenland prepare for a full-scale American military attack - an attack that may drag Europe and the United States into an all-out war - the current government has been eerily silent, so much so that the Walrus published a piece yesterday entitled “Greenland Is on the Brink. Canada Is Nowhere in Sight.”

It sure seems like those elbows fell pretty quickly after the election.

***

Not for not, but if the response to the idea that urban residents feel less safe in cities despite falling crime stats is to try and make them feel more safe, then should it not also be the policy of the Canadian government to try and make Canadians feel more safe as we face this existential threat from a hostile foreign power? MP John-Paul Danko, who built a career as a municipal politician whipping the community into a lather about encampments and crime and public safety at the local level, has spent his time in the House of Commons continuing on with his “crime in cities is out of control disorder is everywhere society is falling apart” rhetoric while only mentioning the actual, real threat south of the border to score political points against opposition members.

On that point…Hansard is a great way to keep tabs on what our local MPs are doing up in Ottawa. One of the few times that Danko has actually mentioned the Americans was on December 10 of last year. During a debate in the House, Danko responded to comments from Michelle Rempel Garner, a Conservative MP from Calgary, who was calling for a tightening of Canada’s immigration system. In his response, Danko calls Rempel Garner “straight-up racist”, accuses her of using “MAGA-theory talking points”, and calls her “the member from Oklahoma”, referencing the fact that she spends much of her time in that state with her American horse therapist husband. Rempel Garner then says that Danko “will be voting in favour” of the amendments to the immigration system she proposed, which doesn’t make any sense, but I’m sure sounded like a sick burn to her. A Bloc member chastises both of them for bickering, leading Rempel Garner to fire back that she was just responding to “that incomprehensible tirade from a backbench Liberal member whom I just dunked on”, referencing Danko.

Unparalleled professionalism all around. Great work everyone. I feel our democracy getting stronger with every word.

I digress, but only slightly.

***

The fact that Canadians aren’t paying attention to the NDP leadership race is concerning. A leadership race is a time for a political party to define itself, fundraise to ensure the new leader can hit the ground running, and figure out how it can present itself to the electorate. The hope is that, as the Liberals and Tories carry on with their usual games, a sizable number of Canadians would want to participate in building a viable and principled progressive party that can inspire people and strengthen our fragile democracy.

That being said, it does look like the NDP leadership race might be heating up as we approach the January 28 deadline to sign up as a member and be eligible to vote for the next leader. Over the past few days, Lewis has picked up the backing of David Suzuki and MP Leah Gazan while MacPherson scored Charlie Angus’s endorsement. At the same time, the Ashton campaign is suffering after the passionately anti-AI candidate was found to have used AI to answer questions during his recent reddit “ask me anything” event.

Back to where I started with all this, I haven’t been particularly involved with the New Democrats over the past few years. That changed when Avi Lewis announced his leadership campaign. After reading through his ambitious platform, I was inspired to re-up my membership to support his candidacy. As the leadership campaign has progressed, I have been consistently impressed with his ideas, organizers, and passion.

That’s why I am happily casting my ballot for Avi Lewis for leader of Canada’s New Democrats.

I know a great many of you, dear readers, will have different perspectives. I have many readers who are Greens and Liberals, many who are New Democrats backing other candidates, and many who are not formally aligned politically. And that’s perfectly okay. In a healthy and vibrant democracy, we can and should be allowed to have spirited debates about our perspectives and share who we are supporting in any given election without fear of having our subsequent or previous thoughts and actions being permanently dismissed.

I’m supporting Lewis because he will fight for a truly mixed, diversified, and robust economy that doesn’t leave regular people behind. His ideas are bold - the exact kind of bold thinking we need in this moment to counter the unrestrained rage, fear, and anger coming from the political right. Lewis’s plan calls for building one million social, co-op, non-profit, and supportive homes, bolstering our public health care system, making meaningful progress on the climate crisis, and providing real public alternatives that challenge the power of corporate monopolies in Canada.

But I admire the passion and ideas from the other candidates as well. In fact, Tony McQuail’s passionate calls for the New Democrats and Greens to work closely together echo what I have been saying for many years. MacPherson has been a strong voice in parliament, Johnston is a fresh new voice, and Ashton brings an important connection to organized labour. Each candidate offers something unique that has the potential to turn the page in a positive direction for the NDP and for the country.

Every Canadian (in Ontario, anyone 13 and up) can join the NDP to vote for the party’s next leader. Even if you aren’t willing to become a member, I’d encourage you to follow along with the party’s leadership race and see if the values of any of the candidates in the race align with yours.

***

Before he came to Hamilton to run for office, David Lewis published Make This Your Canada. In it, he wrote that, in the post-war period, Canadians were offered a unique opportunity. “Democracy must expand and become again creative. It must move forward, unafraid, to the next logical and progressive stage in the evolution of human organization…Unless we advance to the co-operative commonwealth, we may be forced back into the fascist darkness. We have our chance now in Canada. Let us arise and take it.”¹⁴

Avi’s campaign has that same spirit. And, in a moment when the fascist darkness is swirling around us, that kind of spirit is more important than ever.

Crime Story

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash - Edited by author.

Crime is out of control.

Driven by an increase in social disorder, some crime stats show a shocking jump from previous years, and Hamiltonians are feeling unsafe in their own community. That feeling hasn’t been helped by the fact that, thanks to some tense interactions before the last election, the Hamilton Police began stocking up on new, more intense weaponry. Residents across the city have a deep sense of unease and distrust.

In response, the Hamilton Police budget has ballooned. An exasperated Chief of Police keeps repeating that the force simply can’t hire enough officers to make residents feel safe. Some truly upsetting crime trends, like sexual offenses involving children, have been climbing. And some large-scale police operations - dramatic, frightening, and involving illegal guns - have just added to a perception that the city is increasingly lawless.

With an election coming up, the mayor makes a dramatic call for a community-wide meeting on crime, hoping it will signal to Hamiltonians that their municipal government is working overtime to make them feel safe and secure in their community. With any luck, that conference and the boost to police funding will have a noticeable impact before the municipal election, where concerns about spending, municipal dysfunction, and public health may take a back seat to fears of a crime wave crashing over Hamilton.

But the mayor is confident that a soft-on-crime label won’t stick. Known across the city, for better or for worse, the mayor always knows how to turn an election around. It’s been done it plenty of times before and any feeling in the community about a crime wave - real or imagined - can’t stop the mayor’s mighty electoral machine, especially as possible opponents waffle on the prospect of entering the race.

Hamiltonians may have thoughts on crime, but it’s unclear that will impact the mayor’s chances.

The mayor, with the confidence that so many have come to expect, isn’t giving up without a fight.

He is Vic Copps, after all.

***

Amidst the jubilation of the Centennial year - 1967 - Hamiltonians flew into a panic over the city’s crime rate.

Statistics released that summer showed that crime had jumped in the city by 11.4%, mirroring a province-wide trend. Crimes associated with social disorder were leading the spike. The Hamilton Police reported increases of 333% for charges of prostitution, 167% for illegal gambling, and 123% for “general wounding”. There were 796 more petty thefts in 1966 than in 1965, 418 more break and enters, and the same number more assaults. Particularly upsetting was the 110% increase in charges laid relating to sexual assaults, with a notable spike in the number involving minors.

The Deputy Chief, Gerald Reed, told the Spec that “the increase in crime here is consistent with that across the North American continent.”¹ But it would not have been a stretch for any aspiring magistrate to pin the blame on Victor Copps, Hamilton’s dynamic mayor since 1962.

Police Chief Leonard Lawrence was quick to provide some context, though. The increase in crime, he told the Spec, had been attributed to new reporting methods and a boost in funding to the Vice Squad. Particularly as it related to the increases in charges relating to gambling and sex work, Lawrence said “because of aggressive work by our Vice Squad…we have made more arrests and have concentrated in these areas, therefore the number of occurrences show an increase.” But he also took the opportunity to call for more funding and more officers, bemoaning the fact that the force was “18 men below strength last year [1966].”²

Lawrence’s attempts at calming the population were likely thrown off by a daring raid carried out by the Hamilton Police, in conjunction with other local police forces and the RCMP, in early September of 1967. After a multi-agency probe uncovered militant cells of anti-communist Yugoslavian forces operating in the area, the Hamilton Police conducted a massive operation, seizing 22 illegal guns and over 2,700 rounds of ammo from seven homes. The weapons were tied to a local right-wing, monarchist Orthodox priest, whom the Mounties feared might try to harm Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, visiting Montreal that month to see his country’s pavilion at Expo ‘67.³  

The bad news for Mayor Copps kept coming when, in December of that year, the Spec reported that the budget for the Hamilton Police kept increasing, reaching the then-unheard of sum of $4,586,390. The City’s Police Commission (a forerunner to the Police Services Board) accepted the budget as presented with no amendments, happy to provide Chief Lawrence with enough funds to hire 12 more officers (6 shy of the number he wanted).⁴

Committed to getting ahead of the story before the 1968 municipal election, Copps called for a “top-level conference” on crime. That eventually became a serious sit-down with Lawrence and the Police Commission. Heading into the election year, the reporting on crime became more nuanced. Lawrence told the Spec that statistics could be misleading, pointing to a 100% increase in sexual assaults from January of 1967 to January of 1968; the staggering figure was because the number jumped from 0 to 1. And other things that might indicate a crime wave could easily be explained. A jump in the number of fraud cases was because the Hamilton Police broke up a counterfeiting ring and a spike in car thefts was found to have been thanks to “the growing number of persons leaving their cars unlocked or with the keys in the ignition…especially in bad weather.”⁵

By the middle of the year, the tide had turned. The previous year’s 11.4% increase in crime had been whittled down to a scant 3.3%, driven mainly by more charges being laid by the Vice Squad, and those pesky car thefts that so bothered Hamilton’s motorists.⁶

With Hamiltonians at peace, crime was barely an issue in the 1968 election, despite the city’s opposition threatening to run at the mayor from the right. Indeed, one of Copps’ most vocal opponents opted to avoid the 1968 election entirely. Former Mountain council member Brian Morison - who ran an aggressive right-wing campaign against Copps in 1966 that took aim at the mayor for his failed run for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in ‘64 and included a Spec ad claiming Hamilton’s mothers were “afraid to use our parks” because of violent crime - quietly slipped into broadcasting, becoming CHML’s “local political analyst” for the municipal campaign.⁷

Crime was only mentioned occasionally, with mountain residents calling for more police patrols in their new, suburban neighbourhoods, and Communist Party-backed Board of Control candidate Harry Hunter saying that the police should not have funding for “chemical and other forms of crown control” equipment, referencing the force’s purchase of tear gas two years prior.⁸ Few candidates for public office thought it pertinent to discuss “fighting crime” in their campaigns; indeed, many would have found the idea an unsophisticated and unbecoming tactic for a respectable civic leader.

And with that, the crime panic of ‘67 fizzled out with a whimper.

The parallels between 1967 and 2026 are striking, to say the least.

An increasing police budget, concerns over gun violence, charges relating to social disorder creating a perception of an unsafe city, an increase in crimes against the most vulnerable, and a politically-savvy mayor keen to get ahead of the story before an upcoming municipal election.

But, as Marx so astutely observed in The18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: “come on, Hamiltonians, learn your damn history already.”

Or something like that.

***

There have been other “crime waves” in Hamilton’s history. In the depths of the Great Depression, a rash of petty thefts, safe crackings, and a few high-profile murders dominated headlines through 1935. The city’s new chief promised to come down hard on crime and, by year’s end, boasted an 80% conviction rate (leaving out the inconvenient fact that all those charged with murder were acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence).⁹  

A nine-month spree by the “Alley Arsonist” in downtown Hamilton that caused over $1 million in damages stoked fears of another crime wave in 1993, particularly as the recession dragged the city deeper and deeper into its post-industrial slump.¹⁰  

And an early 2000’s crime wave was deemed to have been stopped after the Hamilton Police Service (HPS) declared “war on crack cocaine”, which they claimed help prevent everything from break-ins to sexual assaults. “The whole drug culture is the engine that drives crime in the community,” the then-Deputy Chief told the Spec.¹¹

But, in each of those instances where our city was said to have sunk into the pits of depravity, the feeling that crime was on the rise seemed to be driving the conversation. In 1935, the “crime wave” was thanks to a few gangs of organized criminals robbing banks. It took a 40-person taskforce to figure out that the “Alley Arsonist” that terrorized Hamilton in ‘93 was actually just a bunch of bored teenagers setting fire to garbage cans. And, despite their claims that their “war on drugs” made Hamilton safer in 2004, statistics indicate that crime had actually been on a downward trajectory since even before the dawn of the new millennium, regardless of the HPS’s early ought’s fixation on crack.¹²  

The current moment shares a lot with those imagined “crime waves” as well.

On December 30, 2025, a “new” poll from Liaison dropped. “New” is in quotation marks as this poll is just more data from the same big “2026 municipal election” poll done by Liaison Strategies and the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada that I wrote about on November 10. They sure are getting a lot of mileage out of this one poll they did over the 22nd and 23rd of October last year.

Like the other data released from the poll, this block of info includes some responses from a statistically-notable number of Hamiltonians (800, to be exact).

When asked the question: “In general, would you say that crime in Canada as a whole has increased, stayed the same, or decreased over the past year?”, an overwhelming majority of Hamiltonians - 74% - answered “increased”. Across all age categories, respondents from Hamilton were under the impression that crime was on a steady upswing throughout 2025. When asked about crime in Hamilton specifically, over 70% of respondents believed that murder, assaults, robberies, break-and-enters, and fraud have all increased as well. A marginally smaller number of respondents - 68% and 67% respectively - said that car thefts and hate crimes had increased as well.

No matter how you cut it, over 2/3 of Hamiltonians think that crime is up up up.

One tiny problem: it isn’t.

The Spec was able to get full crime data from the HPS for 2025 which showed a marked decrease in nearly every category of crime. Auto thefts are down 36%, homicide is down 30%, break-and-enters are down 29.5%, robberies are down 21%, and assaults are down by a modest 2%. The only category where trends are consistently and troublingly increasing is when it comes to hate crimes, which are up 5% since 2024 and a mind-numbing 286% since 2020.¹³ We likely won’t get a full hate crime breakdown until sometime in the summer, but the numbers for 2024 showed that members of the Black (79), queer (72), and Jewish (53) communities were the most targeted (here’s a piece I wrote on that last year) and are likely to remain the groups that face the most hate.

Police Chief Frank Bergen spelled this out very clearly during the Community Safety Summit last November, telling the assembled group: “We can statistically tell you that the crime severity index in the city is going in the right direction, but the perception of safety is not there.”

There are a few theories as to why there’s this disconnect.

David Valentin, who runs Liaison Strategies, told the Spec that he believes “the gap stems from the media people consume, whether it be the news or posts on social media,” saying that he, personally, has seen a lot of videos of crime on TikTok.¹³

Toronto-based sensationalist news outlet CP24 reported on this survey when it came out at the end of December. The network’s confused hosts laid out the findings for Toronto (which, again, showed 76% of people believe crime has been surging) and contrasted that with the reality that crime is on the decline in the big city. Without even a shred of irony, they mused about how strange that was, before continuing with their wall-to-wall coverage of stabbings, murders, and public drug use, punctuated by looping roll of Ring camera footage of trucks being stolen by masked gangs in Markham, Mississauga, and Brampton.

“We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.” - CP24

The Spec also interviewed Anthony Doob, a former criminology prof at U of T who noted that individual crimes can have “ripple effects”, leading people to believe that an area is unsafe if one or a few highly publicized crime occurred in that location.¹³

A team of researchers from Sweden noted something similar in a survey of older adults and their perceptions of crime. While they found that fear of crime isn’t the primary concern of older people (isolation and health are top-of-mind), there are some who are deeply fearful of crime. This is usually because they believe crime is rising, stay home or avoid social situations out of fear, become more fearful, isolate themselves further, believe crime is going up even more, etc. This creates what the researchers called a “fear of crime loop”. The only way to address this, they note, is to make people feel safe. “A greater sense of safety and trust might mitigate the perceived threat of crime,” they note.¹⁴

That can be tough because of another theory posited by Doob, namely that “People think crime is up because everyone is saying it is.”¹³

The idea that crime is “out of control” was among the central themes repeated ad nauseam by many of the leading candidates in the Ward 8 by-election held last year. Second-place candidate Terry Whitehead went so far as to rent a fake “Batmobile” to show how he would tackle what he called “the out-of-control crime in the City of Hamilton”. And the first of six skimpy platform points of the eventual winner, Rob Cooper, was “Tackle Violent Crime”.

This locks the community in that “fear of crime loop”. Politicians say crime is rising, people become fearful of crime, they tell pollsters they believe crime is on the rise, they vote for candidates who promise to get tough on crime, those politicians say crime is rising…and so on.

But, of course, there’s another theory. The Spec article grazed past it, noting the results of another survey done by researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University in conjunction with the HPS. The biggest concerns for respondents in that particular sample were, as the HPS noted in their press release on the survey, “social disorder, open drug use, and property crime.”

A commenter on the r/Hamilton subreddit summarized that in the context of the Liaison poll wonderfully when they wrote: “I think 99% of the time when people are talking about crime, what they actually mean is public disorder (i.e. visible homelessness, public intoxication on drugs, etc.).”

We don’t have the full list of questions asked by Liaison, only what they deemed it appropriate to share with the public. But when asking a question as broad as “In general, would you say that crime in Canada as a whole has increased, stayed about the same, or decreased over the past year?” it is almost a certainty that some people will conflate “crime” and “disorder”.

There’s that word again.

I brought it up when writing about the “scaffolding” raised in front of the York Boulevard Salvation Army centre, noting that Globe and Mail columnist Robyn Urback opined about the growing “disorder” in Canadian cities and how the only way to stop it is to line up behind big, strong dads like Bradford Bradford, the Toronto city councillor already campaigning against Olivia Chow for the city’s mayoralty in October.

And, as we lumber toward the October municipal election, we here in Hamilton have our fair share of aspiring candidates and political movers-and-shakers trying to make disorder the central theme of the campaign.

They point to encampments, social service providers, and people living with mental illnesses and addictions as proof that Hamilton has become a lawless wasteland where mothers are scared to take their children to parks, women can’t walk the streets alone at night, and families cower in fear at the prospect of entering the lower city. Endless references to the “Gage Park bike chop shop” and the “dangerous illegal guns” found in encampments float around social media as “proof” that we need our own big, strong dads to unseat the woke coven of The Ladies and The Gays (Plus Craig)™ and bring swift, brutal justice to the law-abiding taxpayers of Hamilton.

But scratch the surface, even just a little, and the whole thing falls apart. The “disorder” in Gage Park? Eight bikes, presumed stolen, and “components of a long-arm gun” that were not intact and inoperable.¹⁵

And the fixation on “dangerous” encampments? Just today, the Spec reported that, as of the last “point-in-time” enumeration of people experiencing homelessness, just 244 actively lived in encampments or other outdoor locations.¹⁶ To date, there have been no quantifiable metrics, no statistics, no identifiable and tangible and grounded connections between the presence of an encampment and/or people experiencing homelessness and a spike in crimes. No data, no figures, no comments from police, nothing. Just a load of feelings shared by people who see disorder, who have been told by cynical politicians that crime is surging, who are shown a near-endless loop of Ring cam footage of thefts on television, who are scared and isolated and growing more scared and more isolated day by day.

Put bluntly, we have politicians in this community - elected leaders and likely candidates - who are baselessly stoking fears about a non-existent crime wave and preying on feelings of insecurity, in large part by dehumanizing people living with mental illness and addiction, all to bolster their chances of electoral victory on October 26, 2026.

And, ultimately, it might work to their advantage.

The political right dominates the crime conversation, in part because they offer simple, familiar solutions. Crime is on the rise, they say, so we should hire more police, pass tougher laws, and open more jails. And anyone who even questions the police budget or suggests we look at strengthening social services instead of the force, must be hounded for their transgressions from now until the end of time.

In this case, there is no crime wave on which they can capitalize. So, instead, they point to the social disorder around us - disorder created and enabled by levels of society-destroying inequality, injustice, and poverty about which they have little to say (or, in some cases, actively support) - call it “crime”, and instill as much fear as possible to fit with their narrow agenda.

***

In the 291 days between now and the municipal election, those cynical actors on the political right will continue to shout about crime and disorder. They’ll work to make people as scared as possible, all so they can sell voters the idea that they, and they alone, can fix it.

Every little crime story - every report of a car theft, story about violence, feature on a drug bust - will become fodder for their campaigns. Every event, as small as it might be, will be isolated, warped, and fed through their rage machine. Every person on the margins will be labeled a threat, every critical voice will face the wrath of their organization (and, speaking from experience, they’ll do their damnedest to silence those voices).

But the facts don’t lie. The crime wave they are warning against isn’t even a ripple. The dangerous threats they fixate on are really just people in need. And the solutions they offer haven’t ever, won’t now, and never will make people feel safer.

Crime isn’t out of control. But the city’s right-wing political machine will work their hardest to convince you it is. I can only hope that, if, for the moment, we’re abandoning facts in favour of feelings, then the voters of Hamilton will feel it necessary to reject the kind of fearmongering politics being peddled by right-wing politicians and the big, strong, manly dads they will inevitably back in this October’s election.

And then maybe, just maybe, we can get back to talking about facts.

…but first, a note from The Incline.

Where has the time gone? No, seriously, where did it go? I feel like I blinked too hard in July and suddenly we’re a stone’s throw from 2026.

After the whole unpleasantness with the City wrapped up in late October, I had a rather ambitious goal to start publishing more. That goal was reprioritized thanks to a painfully busy semester of teaching and research. Have to pay the bills somehow! All that meant that I was only able to get two editions out over the past few months. Sure, I spent three weeks researching my last edition on the Salvation Army in Hamilton, but my newsletter output has dropped noticeably since August.

That means I’ve been missing some big developments that will impact Hamilton, our province, and the country as a whole as we drag ourselves - exhausted, disillusioned, but still clawing our way ever forward - into 2026.

***

On Tuesday, December 16, Hamilton Centre’s Liberal MP, Aslam Rana, was one of six MPs briefly held at the border of the West Bank by Israeli authorities before being denied entry to the occupied territory. Hard to say if this will ingratiate the fortuitous parliamentarian with the deeply passionate political community of folks in Hamilton Centre for whom the situation in Palestine is a top concern, but it did manage to get him some press that backbenchers are rarely afforded.

I had a new piece run in The Spec about Doug Ford’s ongoing assault on Ontario’s increasingly fragile democracy, namely the province’s outdated electoral districts, the plan to amalgamate our conservation authorities, and the looming decision on whether to abolish the office of school trustee. Here’s a gift link if you’d like to check that out.

Many Hamiltonians found themselves on the hunt for new third spaces after democracy* on Locke announced their closure just weeks after their employees successfully unionized for better working conditions. Their fight for, as was reported by the CBC, changes to “health and safety, scheduling and tipping” at the café was evidently too much for the owner, who decided to close the west Hamilton institution rather than negotiate fairly with workers who were exercising their constitutional right to join a union. Adding insult to injury, the owner closed up shop even earlier than previously announced, putting the café’s workers out of a job right before Christmas. Needless to say, the other businesses owned by the same individual - Donut Monster, Paisley Coffeehouse, and the Mulberry Coffeehouse - will not be getting my business until the ownership changes and/or each business is unionized. Hamiltonians stepped up, though, and raised over $23,000 (to date) for the employees who were laid off through a GoFundMe campaign (which is still active here).

And then, of course, there’s the fact that December has undoubtedly been Mayor Andrea Horwath’s mensis horribilis.

***

The high point for Her Worship came on Wednesday, December 10, when the province announced it would be granting Horwath’s request for a Ministerial Zoning Order (MZO) for the big ol’ vacant three hectare expanse that once was and shall again be Jamesville. The much-anticipated redevelopment of the site had been in planning purgatory for years after CN Rail launched an appeal to try and stop new homes from being built there. The rail company’s worry was that noise, vibration, and odors from their nearby shunting yards would lead residents to complain and possibly sue to stop CN’s operations, so their appeal was a preemptive strike designed to cover their bases. The MZO terminates that appeal and makes it far more likely that redevelopment will proceed imminently.

The public comments collected before the MZO was issued were released by the province and ended up being great for the mayor, with many directly praising Horwath for her advocacy on this file.

It was all downhill from there. The same day, council voted to “delay” the implementation of the much-needed stormwater fee that was set to go into effect next summer. A rebellion by suburban and conservative urban councillors pushed the fee start date to January 1, 2027 - meaning that A) the fee will now be much higher than anticipated when it is implemented, and B) a new council - which may be much, much, much more right-wing - might have a chance to terminate it before it even begins. A couple more “Sewergate” events is a small price to pay if it means “standing up for taxpayers”, right? That minor legislative loss was one more example of how the mayor is seeming less-and-less like a trustworthy legislative captain for the Good Ship Hamilton.

The very next day came the sad news that a child had been struck and killed by an HSR bus on Wilson Street, marking the fourth pedestrian fatality on Hamilton’s streets in the span of a month. Blaming the mayor for that tragedy would be exceptionally crass, even for the kinds of embittered malcontents who scurry around in the comments sections of The Spectator (comments were mercifully turned off for most of the stories about this tragedy) and on social media. Advocates have been calling for greater road safety for years, and the sheer number of fatalities on city streets as of late serves to undermine the collective confidence in our municipality's ability to keep all Hamiltonians safe whilst using active transportation, taking transit, and driving.

That very same day, local reporter Joey Coleman dropped a story that he had been teasing on Bluesky for a while. At the beginning of the month, a bitter dispute between Horwath and her ex-partner over the crumbling home owned by the mayor in the Landsdale neighbourhood became extremely public. Coleman’s reporting sparked interest from the city’s legacy media, who have picked up the baton and run with it.

The story is complicated, but the basics are this: the mayor had an engineer assess her property → the property was deemed unsafe → the city issued an emergency demolition permit → a judge invalidated that permit because the city’s building inspectors were denied access to the property by the tenant and could not verify the engineer’s report → the judge encouraged the city to “reach a mutually agreeable resolution to the dispute” → a new emergency order for immediate repairs was issued → the tenant (Horwath’s ex-partner) still refuses to leave → work got underway to ensure the home doesn’t collapse → the tenant continues to interfere with the work, leading to more court appearances and more media focus on this story.

This whole story feels very personal and sad, but the optics of it are really bad. There’s the fact that the first order was invalidated, which might give some the impression proper procedure wasn’t followed because this is the mayor’s property (even if that isn’t the case). There’s the fact that the mayor owns a dilapidated rental property while the city still endures a generation-defining housing crisis, leading some on social media to throw out the word “slumlord” as a descriptor (not the kind of thing someone who spent years leading a social democratic party would want being used to define them). And there’s the fact that Horwath has consistently declined to comment on this issue, meaning important context is missing and other, less flattering narratives, have come to fill the void.

Horwath isn’t called the “Steeltown Scrapper” for nothing, though. In the last Saturday Spec of the year, the mayor unofficially launched her re-election campaign with an op-ed oozing with optimism. “Hamilton is surging forward,” she writes, saying “There is a powerful momentum in our city, driven by the resilience, creativity and grit of our community.” She positions herself at the vanguard of the city’s progress, making note of advancements in business, construction, and the arts. She reminds Hamiltonians of the MZO, takes time to reflect on the number of new affordable housing projects in the city, her commitment to public safety, her advocacy in the face of US tariffs, her work with the port authority, investments in roads and seniors housing and city hall modernization.¹

It’s a strong piece that is meant to dissuade opponents and remind the city’s assorted political machines that Horwath is not accustomed to losing elections. And, frankly, she’s got the most runway right now. Rumour has it that local developers are securing donation pledges for a right-wing candidate who was, up until recently, a Liberal MP for the area, but there haven’t been any definitive announcements from that camp. There have been a few rumblings that Ward 14 councillor Mike Spadafora was considering a run, but I’d say that’s unlikely in 2026 (if the political map is favourable, it is possible in 2030). The silence from perceived front-runner Keanin Loomis is leaving many to speculate that he is unwilling to leave his role at the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction in light of how tariffs are impacting the industry and the fact that serving as mayor might offer someone of his talents less of a chance to make meaningful change than he could in his current role.

While December may have been Horwath’s mensis horribilis, 2026 might end up being her tempus vincere.

Veni vidi Oskee frickin’ vici, if you will.

***

So, yeah, there’s been a lot happening as of late. And, as much as I’d love to write about it all, life keeps getting in the way. Since this newsletter is a passion project that nets me about $20 a month in tips (which are always appreciated and can be made through my Ko-Fi.com page), it means that other work sometimes takes priority.

My goal in 2026 is to be slightly more consistent with publishing, but there are some big projects I have on my radar. I’d love to get at least two editions out every month (maybe moving to Mondays or Tuesdays for publishing instead of Thursdays or Fridays? TBD on that…), so I’m putting my goal schedule out into the universe.

As always, I’m so incredibly grateful to have you as a reader. A strong, healthy, vibrant democracy requires us all to share ideas, know more about our past, and dig into current events. Knowing we’re all in this together helps keep me going.

With that, please enjoy this reflection on someone our community lost very recently.

The Public Trust

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash - Edited by author

In February of 1996, a piece of speculative fiction ran in the Hamilton Spectator. An aspirational piece, it imagined the city thirty years on, conjuring a hopeful image of a world now just hours away.

“In the year 2026, Hamilton is acknowledged as the best place to send your child to school in Ontario,” the piece begins. “Children go to vibrant schools in safe neighbourhoods, where the community strongly supports the education they are receiving. The whole child is nurtured.”

It outlines how this fantastical world of the future was created: mentorship programs connected underprivileged youth with nature and literacy programs, a municipal Children’s Council was established to focus on youth issues, a new educational coordinating committee was set up to link local businesses with public school graduates, elected school councils operated in every school community, McMaster University’s researchers study Hamilton’s schools extensively to provide insight on how to adapt teaching methods, and the Public and Catholic boards have been merged with the promise that religious instruction for all faiths could be offered to those who seek it.²

The piece was part of the paper’s “Looking Towards Hamilton’s Next 150 Years” series in honour of the city’s sesquicentennial (150 year anniversary). Rather than speculate on what education would be like in 2146, the author opted for a more realistic and achievable thought experiment. That made ample sense, considering they were already working on the front lines of education in Hamilton, and had been a fierce advocate to public schools for decades at that point.

Many of the speculated changes have not come to pass, unfortunately. But the enthusiasm of the author was reflective of her passion for education and her commitment to this community. It’s all the more sad, then, that the person who penned that optimistic piece - former public school trustee Judith Bishop - will not be able to see the Hamilton of 2026 she once encouraged us all to imagine.

So as we approach that optimistic year - a year in which the office of trustee might be abolished altogether - please enjoy a reflection on a person whose commitment to Hamilton could not be understated.

At the start of the 2010’s, there was an atmosphere of tension in the city. Demographics were changing, decades of sprawl-oriented development had changed the character of the city, and the provincial response to the Great Recession meant that, among other things, education funding just wasn’t what it used to be.

In early 2010, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) announced they would be striking Pupil Accommodation Review Committees for the city’s 18 public high schools. These committees - known colloquially by their acronym “ARCs” - were being established in accordance with new provincial guidelines around how schools would be funded.

The funding regime for public schools in Ontario underwent a massive change during Mike Harris’ tumultuous seven years in power. Early in 1997, the PC government’s Common Sense Revolution was in full swing, with Harris using his legislative supermajority to entirely remake the province to align with his dream of a neoliberal utopia. On January 13, 1997, the province announced legislation that took all taxation power away from local school boards, merged them into new amalgamated “district school boards”, and gave themselves power to dole out education funds as they saw fit. That latter change resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars being cut from public education and thousands of front-line education workers losing their jobs. There were large teacher’s strikes, but they failed to shake the unflappable Tories, whose goals for undermining public education were realized beyond their wildest dreams.³

After forming government in 2003, the Ontario Liberals made few changes to education funding, carrying on with Harris’ legacy and placing the burden of difficult decisions on the backs of school boards which still had no taxation power. A special fund created in 2004 to allow schools to access private funding for repairs barely scratched the surface, creating a timebomb for local school boards.⁴

In Hamilton, pressure had been building for some time. From 2002 to 2003, 14 schools were closed during a period in which the HWDSB was under provincial supervision. In 2002, the province replaced all 11 trustees with “corporate renewal consultant” Jim Murray due to the board’s passing a budget that included a $16 million deficit. At the time, then-MPP Dominic Agostino told The Spec that Murray’s job was to do the “dirty work” for the provincial government.⁵ Murray redrew school catchment areas, closed schools, and trimmed the board’s spending in line with provincial priorities.

Even with that reorganization, pressure was still mounting. The provincial funding formula just wasn’t working, but the government’s response was to force boards to close schools, rather than undo the damage of the Harris years.

In early 2010, ARCs were struck for area high schools. And the HWDSB was blunt when letting residents know about the intent of the ARCs - they were consultative bodies, not deliberative ones. “It’s ultimately the decision of the trustees, based on the work of the committee,” Dundas trustee and HWDSB chair Jessica Brennan told The Spec. Later in the process, the board’s new chair, Tim Simmons, told the local paper that “We have 113 schools and if you look in plain numbers, we have enough students for 80 to 85 schools.”⁶

The 2010 trustee election came and went, two new faces joined a board of seasoned veterans, and the ARC process chugged along. Shortly thereafter, the board decided to close the downtown Education Centre - a mid-century gem of a building that might have been the only decent thing to come from Hamilton’s disastrous experiments with urban renewal. The public was outraged and it seemed as though our elected trustees were actively ignoring the wishes of the community.

Then came the elementary school ARCs.

One of the elementary ARCs focused on what was called the “Dalewood” area. In reality, this meant west Hamilton’s Westdale and Ainslie Wood neighbourhoods. The two communities, which had already lost Binkley Elementary School in 1979 and Princess Elizabeth Elementary School in 1983, looked like they might lose another.⁷

The ARC came up with innovative solutions on how to keep the three remaining schools in the neighbourhood - Prince Philip, Dalewood, and George R. Allan - open in spite of decades of disinvestment. The committee did impressive work, including drafting plans to reclassify sections of buildings to align with provincial funding formulas and bringing to light the fact that Prince Philip in Ainslie Wood had received $120,000 in capital repair funding since 2000 while George R. Allan in Westdale had received $1.4 million - over 11 times as much.

In the end, the ARC recommended all three schools remain open, as their estimates found that closing one would only net $350,000 in savings. Beyond the monetary figures, parents worried that merging the school communities would lead to overcrowding and Ainslie Wood residents feared the loss of a community hub in the neighbourhood.

The ARC’s report was in contrast to the staff-proposed option, which recommended closing Prince Philip and sending its students to George R. Allan. This, the board claimed, would result in savings from not having to invest in capital repairs for Prince Philip.⁸

One last meeting was held on March 20, 2012 to discuss the fate of Prince Philip. It was standing room only in the condemned downtown Education Centre. A 1000-signature petition to keep Prince Philip open was submitted to trustees. A teacher told the board “Your vote to close Prince Philip school will obliterate one highly effective learning environment and negatively impact [George R. Allan].” The crowd begged trustees to keep their school open.⁹

On April 30, 2012, the trustees of the HWDSB met to decide what to do. In the end, a motion was brought to the floor to adopt the staff recommendation, closing Prince Philip and reducing the number of elementary schools in Westdale and Ainslie Wood to just two. It passed 6 to 5.

The motion was moved by Wards 1 and 2 trustee Judith Bishop.

***

This was the backdrop for my first, and to-date, only, run for public office.

I was an ambitious young politico, fresh off my student politics days and diving headlong into graduate school. But I wanted to put my education into practice, so I followed the news about the ARCs, met with concerned residents in the community, and, one year out from the 2014 municipal election, announced that I would be running for school board trustee. “We need an ‘activist’ school board, one that helps make change in Hamilton,” I wrote in a blog post announcing my candidacy. “A progressive, forward thinking school board can be part of the change in this city, not part of the problem.”

I never really thought of myself as running “against” Trustee Bishop. I had wanted to provide the people of Wards 1 and 2 with an alternative that could blend urban planning and school board issues while providing a fresh, new perspective.

Well, realistically, I had wanted to provide any alternative, as HWDSB voters in both wards had not cast a ballot for trustee since 2000 when Bishop beat a single opponent with 71% of the vote. For the next 14 years, Bishop had served without any person in the community stepping up to offer themselves as an alternative, returning to the board by acclamation three times.

A part of me was relived when, in mid-July of 2014, Bishop announced she would not seek re-election.¹⁰ Bishop had been a dedicated public servant and a champion for children in the community for decades. But, by the summer before the 2014 municipal election, myself and three other people in the community had registered to run for the school board (one would later drop out after moving out of the city and two more would register in the last few days before nominations closed).

While I believed the voters in Wards 1 and 2 deserved a choice, I did not necessarily think Bishop herself shouldered all the blame for what happened during the Dalewood ARC. She, like every trustee, was forced to do what they could with the limited powers afforded them. The province stripped trustees of their powers and assigned them the unpleasant task of fundamentally changing the structure of communities. That’s why I wanted to bring my understanding of urban planning to the table. That’s why I wanted to be an “activist” trustee. That’s why I wanted to offer my voice to the voters of Wards 1 and 2.

I wrote in my campaign announcement: “I know and respect some of the trustees on the board and will be running as a progressive candidate, not simply an anti-establishment candidate…It’s time for an honest, constructive conversation. That’s what elections are for.”

Trustee Bishop knew that better than most. Her service and dedication to the community stretched over decades, as she first took office before I was even born. And, while the drama of the Dalewood ARC served as one of the final chapters in her long career of public service, there was so much more to her story than those chaotic few years before the 2014 election.

***

Judith Bishop’s life was, above all else, dedicated to social justice and the welfare of children.

Bishop was born in Yorkshire in 1942. Her parents quickly sent her off to boarding school, which she followed with undergraduate studies at Nottingham University. After working with an exchange program during her student days, she connected with young Africans fighting for justice, travelling to Zimbabwe immediately following her studies. For two years, she worked on Oxfam-led daycare, nutrition, and literacy projects. In 1965, she met a young teacher, Alan, working at a local school and they soon married, sharing a passion for justice and education. From there, they moved to Cape Town where they both taught at the local university. But their focus on equality and their political views resulted in the couple being expelled from apartheid South Africa by the nationalist government. After their expulsion, Alan enrolled in Oxford and earned a PhD in English. In 1972, he landed a job as a professor at McMaster University and brought the family to Westdale, where they settled into a house on Barclay Avenue.¹¹

While Bishop stayed at home to raise the couple’s three children, she remained deeply involved in the struggle for justice around the globe. Bishop helped found a local chapter of Amnesty International shortly after the family landed in Hamilton. Serving as the group’s chairperson, she organized letter writing campaigns to free prisoners of conscience and worked to liberate those held unjustly around the world.¹²

Bishop’s advocacy had, by the 1980’s, expanded into the realm of school board politics in Hamilton. During the 1980 municipal election, Bishop served as the president of the Hamilton Home and School Council (HHSC), a parent-led organization that works as an advocacy group that, according to the HWDSB: “strives to give parents an understanding of schools and to be informed, constructive partners with educators.”

The HHSC was formed in 1933 after home and school groups had been established at give local schools. Nearly 50 years later, Bishop was in charge, and led the organization into the 1980 election, encouraging residents to become more aware of trustee elections. Their advocacy revolved around getting trustee candidates to commit to supporting a more “fair system of evaluating who goes and who stays when teacher cuts have to be made,” better informing parents about changes to class sizes, and opposing closures as vigourously as possible. “School closures are such a disruptive force in a community that they must be a last resort,” Bishop told the Spec days before the election.¹³

***

1985 was a year of labour unrest across Ontario. Hydro workers, Eaton’s employees, postal workers, Air Canada staff, steelworkers, and Beer Store employees all launched strikes or threats of labour action. Hamilton’s teachers were no exception.

Without a contract since the end of August of the previous year, Hamilton’s public high school teachers attempted to negotiate with the Hamilton Board of Education (the HWDSB’s predecessor). By April, it was clear the union’s concerns over staffing and their desire for participation in a dental plan were not going to be addressed.¹⁴

Then, on Page 5 of the May 7 edition of the Spec, an ad appeared. In bold type, the ad read “We believe our offer to secondary teachers is fair and reasonable”. It laid out what the Board of Education was willing to offer, provided stats on class sizes, and ended with the lines: “In view of the present economic climate in the Hamilton community, we believe our offer is reasonable. We shall continue to seek a fair and equitable agreement.”¹⁵

The ad enraged the teachers’ union, who called it “a distortion of the facts”. Board chair Ray Mulholland told the Spec “The public pays and is entitled to information”. The situation deteriorated and, by Monday, May 13, 1985, Hamilton’s secondary school teachers were on the picket lines - the first strike of high school teachers in the city’s history.¹⁶

Amidst the strike, Bishop and a group of Westdale parents devised an idea to start their own “school” in a local church basement, bringing in speakers on everything from botany to the justice system, and keeping Hamilton’s youth primed and ready for when the strike ended. But, by late August, the union and Board of Education had come to an agreement and the strike ended, allowing schools to open just in time for the new semester. Bishop was quoted as being “delighted” that the strike was over and said she would pass along the ideas for lectures to the principal of Westdale High “in the hope he may be able to follow through on some of them.”¹⁷

Even though the plans for an alternative school fizzled, Bishop had become a recognizable figure in the city’s education community. So it was only natural that, in late October of 1985, she announced she would be running for one of the two Ward 1 trustee seats (each ward had two elected public trustees at the time) on the Board of Education. Her platform was simple: appropriate programs for each child, more accessibility in the school system, better funding for education, and a policy of “open discussions” with community members and teachers. But Bishop was up against two incumbents - Bob McMurrich and Marjorie Baskin - making her first foray into electoral politics a challenge. On election night, she fell 840 votes short, but placed a very respectable third. No incumbent trustee failed to win re-election that night, even after the labour chaos of the previous summer.¹⁸

***

Her electoral defeat did not stop her enthusiasm for education. Bishop continued to serve on the Board of Education’s Special Education Advisory Committee, becoming a passionate advocate for students with special needs. And, in 1987, Bishop won a Woman of the Year award for work.¹⁹

It was only natural, then, that Bishop would announce another bid for a Ward 1 trustee seat in 1988. In one of the closest races in the city that year, Bishop beat four other challengers for the second trustee seat in the west end, spending $2,136 (around $5,000 in today’s currency) on her successful bid. Speaking with the Spec after the vote, she said she would visit every school in the ward to get a better feel for the issues they faced.²⁰

She hit the ground running, making good on her platform commitments to improve transparency and communication. One of Bishop’s first acts as trustee was to push the board to “consider ways of improving opportunities for communication between the board and the public”, as she worried wealthier, “well-organized and articulate” communities might have an unfair advantage in pressing their agenda. She launched a committee to study student nutrition, continued her advocacy for students with special needs, pushed the board to better inform taxpayers about their budgeting process, advocated for the Board of Education to start a recycling program, and pressed the board to expand their English as a Second Language program. And, when a trustee introduced a motion in 1991 that would have required Hamilton’s grade school students to sing “God Save the Queen” each morning, Bishop opposed it, saying that “Pride in Canada and its traditions doesn’t have to be expressed in an overt, nationalistic way.”²¹

Bishop’s advocacy did not go unnoticed in the west end, and voters returned her to the board by an overwhelming margin in 1991.

As the world marched into the 90’s, Bishop’s advocacy took on a more grounded, almost populist tone. While she took a stance against providing condoms in area high schools (saying “In the health curriculum we are teaching students that the most responsible attitude for young people - especially in these days of AIDS - is abstinence.”), she did back a proposal for a Public Health-run health centre at an area high school to provide students with resources to combat smoking, alcoholism, and STIs. When reports surfaced that many Hamilton-area high school grads had less-than-stellar literacy rates, Bishop took issue with the way the board reported such matters, calling for staff to just use “plain English that people outside speak.” And, in 1994, Bishop penned a lengthy article for the Spec about how the school trustee system could be reformed to meet the needs of a changing world. Her proposals included reducing bureaucracy, giving more autonomy to individual schools, and letting local boards set more policy. “Toronto should not be the source of all decisions,” she wrote.²²

Voters in the west end appeared to agree most enthusiastically when the returned her to a third term that year. Bishop won approximately 43% of the vote, topping the polls and earning over 1,400 more votes than her nearest competitor.²³

***

The next term would be a challenging one. Bishop became the chair of the board’s Program Committee and immediately began dealing with the changes to education that came from Harris’s new, ideologically extreme government. Bishop fought hard to maintain daycare spots and funding for Junior Kindergarten programs, but, by 1996, the board found themselves with a $5 million deficit. At the end of the 1996 school year, Bishop was among the trustees who voted in favour of laying off teachers to make up the budget shortfall. Hamilton’s trustees were, once again, being asked to do more with less.²⁴

Bishop was unbowed. In response to the province’s plans to shrink the number of school boards, Bishop joined the Ontario Education Alliance, a group dedicated to opposing the Harris government’s ideological reforms. “I really fear for the coming generation of children in this community,” she told a meeting of the group in Hamilton, noting that the province’s cuts had forced them to eliminate language programs, social workers, and essential training for students in need. And, when the province’s reforms did pass and school boards were fundamentally restructured, Bishop warned that the changes “could be weakening a voice for children”.²⁵

Bishop decided to seek election to the new HWDSB, created when the Hamilton Board of Education was merged with the neighbouring Wentworth board. The number of trustees was cut down to just 11 and Hamilton’s board decided to combine Wards 1 and 2 for electoral purposes. Each of Bishop’s fellow trustees in the wards stood down, leaving her as the only incumbent keen on trying her hand at the new board. Her platform was simple: “There are going to be many issues with the amalgamated school board…we’ll have to sort out what’s best for all children.” She won re-election with 78% of the vote, beating a retired Niagara school superintendent and becoming one of the first members of the new amalgamated board.²⁶  

There would be no honeymoon for the trustees of the new HWDSB.

***

Almost immediately, the Harris government saddled the HWDSB with the unenviable task of closing schools to meet the financial policies coming from Queen’s Park. Bishop linked up with councillors to fight the closures. In a meeting with the Spec editorial board, Bishop said, “20 years ago we closed a little school in Binkley and there are people still who are very, very angry about that school closure. Well, how much more angry are people going to be about a process in which there’s been no involvement, they’ve had no input?” The Spec backed the council/school board collaboration, praising local leaders for speaking “up effectively against the province’s big-stick approach and its impact on Hamilton,” noting that trustees and councillors were working on finding “creative ideas to keep schools open where enrolment may not warrant it, [recognizing] that schools aren’t simply buildings - but public institutions that are shared by the neighbourhood and ultimately the community.”²⁷

By 2000, things had reached a breaking point. Trustees were being critiqued for shrinking music programs, more school closures, and increasing class sizes. Then, in the fall, negotiations between the HWDSB and the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) broke down, putting teachers in a strike position right around Halloween - and just weeks before the 2000 municipal election. In a surprise move, the management of the HWDSB immediately went for the nuclear option and locked teachers out on October 30.

For the entire term, Bishop had the dismal task of justifying the board’s actions. It was Bishop who needed to pen a letter to the Spec explaining the cuts to the music program. It was Bishop who needed to explain how underfunding for infrastructure meant schools might need to close. And, while the ETFO opted to not run a candidate against her as they did in other wards, they also withheld their endorsement, less-than-subtly snubbing Bishop and leaving much to the imagination when a spokesperson told the Spec: “We [the ETFO] don’t want trustees who don’t have a conscience and don’t know how to bargain fairly.” Despite the awkwardness around the absent ETFO endorsement, Bishop easily won re-election, earning 71% of the vote in the last electoral contest she would have in the City of Hamilton.²⁸

In 2001, Bishop earned the ultimate honour for a school trustee and was named Chair of the Board by her colleagues. She took that responsibility and ran with it, continuing with her advocacy for better funding for public schools. In early March of 2002, Bishop made waves when, at a luncheon meeting of the Canadian Club, she publicly challenged Progressive Conservative Education Minister Janet Ecker to better fund schools and consult with Ontarians further before making changes to the province’s grade school curriculum. The confrontation exposed the gap between local trustees and provincial authorities; as Bishop rose to challenge the Minister, Ecker sarcastically quipped to the assembled guests “I knew sooner or later this would happen.”²⁹

That feisty interaction would set the stage for the provincial takeover of the HWDSB that summer.

***

The trustees of the HWDSB couldn’t cut any deeper. The province had been starving the public school board for years and, without a promise of new funds, they had no where else to go.

With a deadline of August 2 to submit balanced budgets to the province, the Bishop-led HWDSB still had a $16 million deficit. And they weren’t interested in drastic cuts.

In response, the new Education Minister (Ecker was rewarded with the post of Finance Minister after backing Ernie Eves to replace Mike Harris in the PC leadership race that year), Kitchener-Waterloo MPP Elizabeth Witmer, announced an audit of the HWDSB. To Bishop, this was welcome news, believing it would show the province just how dire the funding situation had become. And, to make the auditor’s job easier, the trustees made the decision to preemptively cut around 50 jobs in an effort to reduce their operating deficit. That move led the Spec’s satire columnist (yes, the local paper once had a sense of humour) to write that the trustees of the HWDSB had all begun to suffer from a case of “spontaneous spinal infusion”.³⁰

The trustees of the HWDSB and the community anxiously awaited the auditor’s report, which was delayed multiple times without explanation. During the delays, boards across the province were being taken over by the Ministry and Hamilton’s trustees feared it would be their turn next.

Then, on Monday, August 19, 2002, the report came in and the worst fears of the trustees were realized. The provincially-appointed auditor recommended the board be taken over and that 16 schools be closed, including at least five during the upcoming school year. Bishop was livid, angrily telling the Spec (in a quote that made the front-page), “We’re not into politics, we’re into children’s services.” A photo of Bishop that ran alongside a story about the auditor’s report captures the chaos of the moment; a bespectacled Bishop, standing before an array of microphones, holds a cupped hand to her mouth, and is captured, mid-shout, as she “calls for quiet” so she can answer the questions of assembled reporters.

Photo and caption from the Hamilton Spectator, August 21, 2002.

The community sided with the trustees. For her tireless advocacy, Bishop earned a glowing profile in the Spec, praise from then-MPP David Christopherson, and overwhelmingly positive words of encouragement in letters to the editor.

But the province wasn’t backing down. Witmer gave the HWDSB’s trustees one week to pass a balanced budget. In a six-to-four vote, the trustees decided to not reconsider their original budget, with trustee Reg Woodworth dramatically saying “[The province] created the crisis and now let them live with the crisis.” The very next day, Hamilton’s public trustees were all-but dismissed and the province’s appointed supervisor, Jim Murray, was given extraordinary powers to close schools, cut programs, and balance the books by any means necessary.

In the ultimate insult, Murray’s first act was to remove Bishop from her trustee office and claim it as his own.³¹

***

Her powers stripped, Bishop continued to serve as an advocate for Hamilton’s youth. She pleaded with the province’s review panel established to update the school funding formula to make necessary changes so school boards could fund public education. She challenged Murray when he cut the supply teacher budget. When Murray’s new budget was adopted but the province refused to relinquish control to local elected officials, Bishop and her fellow trustees publicly called for their powers to be restored. In December of that year, Bishop penned another lengthy column in the Spec outlining the impact of school closures and stating that, even though their powers had been removed, “trustees continue to hold a moral responsibility to be the watchdog for Hamilton-Wentworth’s public education.”³²

Even sidelined, Bishop’s focus was on maintaining the public trust.

It was only after Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals formed government in late October of 2003 that provincial supervision of the HWDSB came to an end. With only weeks to go before the municipal elections, a “transitional management team” assumed responsibility for the board until new trustees could be sworn in on December 1, 2003. Bishop, having been acclaimed to office, was appointed to the “co-management” team intended to ease the community back into democratic control over schools. At a public meeting to discuss the restoration of local power, trustees were berated by community members who blamed amalgamation, partisan interests, shortsightedness, overspending, and politicians in general for all the board’s ills. In the wake of the supervision and public backlash, Bishop opted to not seek another term as chair, handing the reigns of power back over to long-time Ward 4 trustee Ray Mulholland.³³

After 2003, Bishop returned to her work of front-line advocacy. She worked on summits to improve public engagement with the board, wrote extensively on the need to tackle childhood poverty, and continued to advocate for improved education funding.³⁴ Before the 2006 election - in which she was once again unopposed - Bishop mused that the board’s composition might be reflective of the kinds of people who can afford to do the full-time-work-for-part-time-pay of trustees: “The only people at the moment who can put in a lot of time are those who’ve got husbands in secure jobs who don’t mind subsidizing their wives, or they’re retired, and that’s not very healthy for an organization dealing with young people.”³⁵  

Another tenure as board chair followed from 2006 to 2009, albeit one that was far less controversial than her previous stint at the helm. There were some minor sparks when the HWDSB’s trustees signed onto a call for one unified school system, leading Bishop’s Catholic counterpart, Pat Daly, to say Hamilton’s separate school trustees were “extremely disappointed” by the HWDSB’s “very hurtful” actions.

Speaking with the Spec in 2007 about the pressures of the job (30 to 40 emails a day, 12 hours of work, missed time with family), Bishop said that politics wasn’t appealing to many women because of how society has forced standards on them: “In the past we’ve been socialized that a good woman was one who didn’t make too much of a spectacle of herself…in a way, that’s what you’re doing when you get into this sort get into this sort of arena.”³⁶

She finally had enough. In stepping down as chair, Bishop said she wanted to avoid creating a dynasty and preventing succession planning. “It’s important that you don’t stay too long,” she told the Spec.³⁷ While some speculated she would not seek re-election in 2010, she did, and was acclaimed for the third and final time.

After her retirement from politics in 2014, Bishop remained active in the community. She wrote extensively, carried on with her advocacy, and was known to play a mean game of badminton. In November of this year, Bishop penned an op-ed in the Spec about how the current government’s Bill 33 - which may see trustees abolished entirely in Ontario - “reverses an Ontarian tradition of local involvement in education policy,” and that “Bill 33 must be stopped and public education needs to be properly funded.”³⁸

Five days after the publication of that piece, Bishop passed away suddenly at age 83.

***

In everything she did, Judith Bishop’s focus was always on social justice and the welfare of children. Her passion for this community and for local schools was so incredibly evident in all her work and the years of service she gave to Hamilton. Right up until the end, she continued to advocate for the things in which she believed with such passion.

Hamilton is a better community for having had Bishop’s voice at the table.

In her piece from 1996, Bishop hoped that, by next year, Hamilton would be a place where “children go to vibrant schools in safe neighbourhoods, where the community strongly supports the education they are receiving.”

With the way the Ford government is eying education, it’s hard to say if that dream will be fully realized. But, by her work, she did all she could in pursuit of that goal. And that’s a legacy worth remembering.

The perks of being a walk-through-scaffolding-flower

Photo by author - Edited by author

There was an opinion article in a recent edition of the Globe and Mail that you may have missed. It made the rounds on social media, sparking the kind of intense debate likely sought by the editor that approved it. Penned by the politically ambiguous/casually conservative columnist Robyn Urback, the article - entitled “Cities have normalized delinquency” (running under other names online) - rails against today’s municipal governments for ignoring the “signs of social decay” all around us.

Even as opinion pieces go, the article is unbecoming of the Globe. It is so full of right-wing populist talking points, there’s little room for any of the vague and cherrypicked “won’t somebody think of the children!?” examples Urback shoehorns in to offer the appearance of substantiation. Urback makes claims that “social activists” are forcing encampments and public drug use on a terrified public against everyone’s will and without the consent of the community.

Just a quick sidenote, but every progressive activist I know would go to great lengths to have even 1/10th the power those on the right think we have. All of us are sitting out here, desperately waiting to find a sliver of a percent of a chance of gaining even a modest electoral victory while the populist right claims we’ve assumed control over every last institution and organization in society. Absolutely and unreservedly bizarre claims, if one assumes they’re made in good faith and not just strategic hyperbole to whip the base into a lather.

Urback’s article is chalk full of arguments that would get a first year J-School student a C- on a midterm paper. The columnist conjures an army of woke strawmen to do battle against: “You don’t support a safer consumption site metres from a school? Well then, you must be okay with drug-users dying. You want encampments forced out of parks? How would you like to be forced out of your home?”¹ To whom are you speaking, friend? Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s.

The column avoids any tough observations about the why of the matter, offers no discussions about the drug crisis, makes no effort to discuss the housing crisis or the unwillingness of the provinces and federal government to come to the table with a meaningful solution and funding package. Urback offers little more than the same kind of conservative anger that’s been bubbling since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic - an anger that’s propelling the council campaigns of the next generation of conservative activists who see the issues of crime and homelessness as their ticket to lifelong electoral success. You know, the horde of late 30’s/early 40’s “I’m just a big strong dad here to protect my helpless wife and kids” types.

Urback offers a “solution”, though, which extends no further than supporting Toronto’s right-wing populist mayoral candidate (and prototype of the “oh so strong manly man super straight macho little buff dad” candidate) Bradford Bradford’s crusade against deviants and delinquents. Adding to this, Urback makes unspecified calls to “clean up our public spaces”, enact ‘zero tolerance’ policies for drug use in public, “stop using stupid euphemisms like ‘unhoused’ and get real about what’s happening.”² The piece veers about as far from supporting evidence-based policies and long-term solutions as you can get, but real policies certainly get in the way if your goal is to sell papers by kicking those imagined “woke social engineers” in the teeth, right?

The article is divisive and silly (and John Lorinc offers a very good urbanist critique of it in Spacing which I highly recommend checking out). Despite this, it also reflects a mood in cities in the present moment, namely that today’s urban areas are characterized predominantly by disorder. Urback says as much, writing that we must get tough on people experiencing homelessness because doing so “is not simply a matter of restoring the use of public spaces for everyone, but restoring a sense of order.”³

Order.

That word is going to come up a lot in our politics from now on. A great many eager politicians will present themselves as the champions of order, vowing to use force to crack down on the “delinquents” that Urback and the populist right blame for the ills of society. No more drugs, no more visible homelessness, no more graffiti, no more litter, no more crime. Just order.

Of course, many of the solutions presented by these champions of order are little more than thin façades intended to hide, shuffle, or relocate problems instead of actually addressing them.

Here in Hamilton, we were treated to a very real example of exactly that when, in the days before the much-hyped grand re-opening of Copps Coliseum, a strange bit of “scaffolding” went up in front of one of the venue’s neighbours - a neighbour that long, long predates the newly repainted entertainment venue and that has been struggling to provide help where it is most needed.

***

On Wednesday, November 19, the Strathcona-based writer and photographer Wayne MacPhail posted a photo to the r/Hamilton subreddit with the headline “What’s Up With the Sally Ann Wall?”

Screenshot of the post from the r/Hamilton subreddit

The photo shows the front of the Salvation Army’s Hamilton Booth Centre, partially obscured by yellow crowd control fencing. The fencing is adorned with thin sheets of coarse black material. A collection of decorative planters serve to both break up the monotony of the scene and provide reinforcement for the wall. Information provided later indicated that the wall, despite looking worn, had been put up in the early morning hours on the same day.

In the post, MacPhail asks: “It sure looks like this barrier is meant to prevent Coliseum attendees from being exposed to the unhoused. Am I wrong about that? Anyone have any intel?” By the time the post was locked by the subreddit’s admins, it had 108 comments ranging from outrage at the callousness of the wall to unequivocal support for it and whatever harsh measures can be implemented next. Two commenters independently used the opportunity to call downtown a “cesspool”.

Reporting from Joey Coleman and from Teviah Moro at The Spec helps to fill in the gaps. The Hamilton Urban Precinct Entertainment Group (HUPEG) - the private consortium which has signed a lease with the City of Hamilton giving them total control over downtown’s largest entertainment venues until 2070 for the hefty sum of $1 a year and a property tax exemption on all but 0.28% of the assessed $80.4 million value of their holdings⁴ - requested a permit to install the wall. HUPEG is calling the wall “walk-through scaffolding” that will, in their words, “ensure public safety is maintained within the right-of-way while work is underway.” The “work” referenced there is apparently going to happen to the façade of the Booth Centre, though explanations could not be provided as to how the fencing, which is on the sidewalk and around 1.5 metres away from the front of the building, would protect anyone from any overhead work, nor was there any indication as to how the visual barrier (in the form of the black fabric on the outside of the fencing, facing the Coliseum) would keep people safe from dangers like falling bricks or paint cans.⁵

***

HUPEG bills itself as a “regional consortium” led primarily by the Carmen’s Group and the Mercanti Family, with LiUNA, the Meridian Credit Union, and Paletta International (now the Alinea Group) rounding out the main players. The goal of HUPEG is to create a "Distillery District-inspired area” complete with entertainment, commercial space, and residences, calling the renovations to the Coliseum and surrounding venues a “generational city-building project”.⁶  

The presence of the Salvation Army’s Booth Centre rather obviously complicates this goal.

The folks behind HUPEG have expressed a desire to see the Booth Centre relocated for years. Back in 2021, when HUPEG was just getting started on its “generational city-building project”, some of those involved indicated that conversations had kicked off with the Salvation Army about their finding a new location to help, as Spec columnist Scott Radley noted in an article, “redefine this part of the city and give it a more upscale feel.” In the same article, HUPEG representatives stress the Booth Centre was not being “forced” to move, but that discussions were “underway with a number of property owners in the downtown to see if there’s a spot that would fit the needs of the men’s centre.”⁷

A year later, the idea of a relocation came up again, with HUPEG representatives noting that “Cities have to have social services, and cities have to have arts and entertainment. You want them to be in the most optimized locations.” Then-Mayor Fred Eisenberger was characteristically blunt in his assessment, saying the Booth Centre is “out of sync” with HUPEG’s redevelopment plans. But, again, HUPEG stressed the Booth Centre was not going to be forced to move and the Salvation Army said it had no plans to relocate.⁸

Things became slightly more serious in 2023 when a consultant’s report on the Hamilton Farmer’s Market included a surprise reference to “construction/disruption” to the Booth Centre between 2025 and 2030. The Salvation Army was apparently caught off guard by this, saying that, as far as they knew, it was “status quo for the Hamilton Booth Centre.” The folks behind HUPEG quickly denied providing any information to the Farmer’s Market consultants either, further deepening the mystery.⁹

The mystery cleared up a month later when the agreement between the City of Hamilton and HUPEG was released by council. Buried in the fifth chapter of the agreement is clause 5.10, which reads:

The Salvation Army, once again, expressed shock that they were included in the agreement and stressed they had “no intention at this moment of relocating.”¹⁰

Then, in June of 2025, came another surprise announcement, this time that the Salvation Army and HUPEG were actively collaborating to explore a relocation of the Booth Centre with help from the City of Hamilton (in essence, exactly what was laid out in 5.10 of the City’s agreement with HUPEG). Months later, with the grand re-opening on the horizon, HUPEG reassured councillors and the public that safety would not be a concern for those attending events at the newly rebranded “TD Coliseum”. While some members of council raised the idea (without providing any evidence) that crime in the city was out of control and that people experiencing homelessness constituted an “elephant in the room”, the folks behind HUPEG that everything would be fine for the big launch. At the same time, they told the Spec they were “not in a position” to comment on the Booth Centre.¹¹

And then, on November 19 - just 48 hours before HUPEG opened the doors to TD Coliseum, welcoming fans in for the venue’s first real public performance by none other than the legendary Paul McCartney - up went the “walk-through scaffolding”. The permit for the “scaffolding” is apparently valid until late January of 2026.¹²

The Salvation Army’s Booth Centre long predates HUPEG. In fact, the current Booth Centre building predates even Copps Coliseum by 35 years. The Salvation Army’s presence in that location goes back so far, they were a fixture on York Boulevard when that particular part of the corridor was still called “Merrick Street”.

So let’s back way up to better understand the Salvation Army and its presence in Hamilton.

The Salvation Army is a derivation of Methodism, the Protestant orientation that believes in “sanctification” (spiritual maturation to the point of acting and living out of “pure love” for God and the elimination of original sin), “works of piety” to help achieve sanctification, and “works of mercy” for those who are suffering. Readers will note that I attended Catholic school and have had to do a lot of reading to even come close to understanding all the different flavours of Protestantism, so I hope that brief description does Methodism justice.

The Salvation Army itself was founded by William Booth, a preacher who trained in the Methodist tradition, but balked at the rigid confines of the religion as it had been organized. Setting off on his own (with his wife and a few followers), he established a Christian mission in London’s impoverished east end where he combined proselytizing with acts of charity. Booth and his followers built a movement that, by 1878, had begun calling itself the “Salvation Army”, modelling the church after the military and using on-the-street acts of charity and marching bands to draw attention to their cause. Ever the underdogs, the Salvation Army gained a legion of detractors, with opponents claiming Booth was out to exploit the poor and undermine the Anglican Church. One Conservative MP even went so far as to label Booth the “anti-Christ” himself.

The Spec first makes note of Booth’s movement the same year they started using the Salvation Army name, 1878, including an update on their activities in a section called “Miscellaneous Items”, which recounted curious goings on from around the world in the form of one-to-three sentence briefs. Amidst reports about the wonderful teas of Ceylon and declining marriage rates in Prussia, the Spec noted that Booth’s “Salvation Army” - in particular his “body of lady preachers” - had been “causing some excitement in the north of England.”¹³

A few short years later, the Salvation Army had begun to establish a presence in Hamilton, albeit to the chagrin of local institutions. On the morning of June 14, 1882, a group of Salvationists brought their instruments to the Great Western train station (roughly where today’s West Harbour station is) and began an impromptu concert to raise awareness of their cause. The station officials present were having none of that sort of thing and promptly shooed the musical evangelizers off the property.¹⁴

The following year, the Spec reported that “The Salvation Army does not appear to get along very well here,” noting an unsourced conversation “overheard” by a reporter. The conversation, purportedly between two women, concerned their interest in attending one of the Salvation Army’s “hallelujah meetings”. One of the women wanted to attend to see what it was about, to which another replied “I can’t go; my husband wouldn’t let me…he’d rather let me go to Madame Rentz’ minstrels than to one of those meetings,” referencing the salacious all-female singing and dancing troupe that performed in tight-fitting clothes (there’s no evidence they performed in blackface, appearing to trade that upsetting trend in entertainment at the time for a more scandalous form of sex-forward act).¹⁵

For the first few years of the Salvation Army’s presence in the city, they moved with some regularity. Their primary meeting hall - called a “barracks”, in keeping with the military terminology - shifted from a space on Ferguson in 1883 to a location at the corner of King and Catharine in 1884. By 1885, the church had raised $5,000 (approx. $150,000 today) to build their own local barracks at 3 Hunter Street East, near the street’s intersection with James Street South (across from today’s Hamilton GO Centre). They moved into their new location in February of 1886, accompanied by four brass bands and hundreds of well-wishers from barracks in neigbouring communities.¹⁶

***

In 1883, an irate Hamiltonian named Mrs. Gaskell burst into the Salvation Army’s barracks on a Sunday morning in June, interrupting their service with a tirade against the organization. This was, later reporting would claim, something she did on more than one occasion. Shouting at the assembled Salvationists, Mrs. Gaskell, according to the Spectator, “made a number of charges against the Salvation Army. She called the barracks a den of iniquity and said all the toughs of the city congregated there.” Mr. Gaskell had, evidently, begun spending what Mrs. Gaskell considered all-too-much time at the barracks, particularly with select female congregants. One of said congregants, a Nellie Kiezer, informed the Spec that “Mrs. Gaskell is a very jealous woman,” but that the two had a frank conversation and come to an understanding about Mr. Gaskell’s…devotion to the cause.¹⁷

Mrs. Gaskell’s interjection represents just one of dozens of instances of disorderly (ah, there’s that word again) conduct that proliferated around the barracks of the Salvation Army. Before their move to Hunter Street East, residents living around their first meeting hall on Ferguson made a public plea to the Hamilton Police for help clearing the sidewalk of the “young gentlemen that hang around the door” of the barracks for the sake of the women in the neighbourhood. The various barracks of Hamilton featured prominently in the more scandalous columns of the Spec with reporters telling tales of fist fights, drunken outbursts, and dramatic late-night arrests of wanted criminals. There was more intense drama at barracks across Canada; a disagreement between two worshipers ended in a knife fight at a barracks in Essex County, a barracks in Quebec City was bombed by upper class hooligans while Salvationists were in service and, in London, a deliberate fire destroyed that city’s barracks, which happened to be one of London’s oldest buildings, having started off as a Congregationalist church in the early 1800’s.¹⁸

As the church began to establish itself, the scandalous behaviours associated with its meeting halls began to drop off. In Hamilton, this tempering of passions happened when the local Salvation Army was informed their barracks was not long for this world.

The barracks on Hunter Street was, unfortunately, in the way of the redevelopment of the city’s downtown train station. In 1895, the Toronto, Hamilton, and Buffalo (THB) Railway bought the barracks and all the homes along Hunter Street between James and John to make way for their new station, quickly demolishing them so they could get to work.

The church found refuge in a tiny hall on MacNab Street while they negotiated the purchase of a lot at the southwest corner of Hughson and Rebecca (where today’s New City Church is located). Within a year, the site had been secured, plans had been drawn up, and the Salvation Army was advertising their forthcoming digs with quaint illustrations in the Spec. The new location - eventually upgraded from a barracks to a “citadel” - opened to the public on Saturday, May 23, 1896, with the Spec reporting that those worshiping within would, for many years, “battle against the hosts of evil and give many a hard knock at Satan.”¹⁹

The Salvation Army’s Rebecca Street Citadel - Hamilton Spectator, February 1, 1896 (Spec archive link - Paywalled)

The Salvation Army’s churches served multiple purposes. They were places for religious services, halls for community events, centres from which they could coordinate their outreach efforts, and shelters for those in need of a place to stay. By 1908, the organization was running a soup kitchen out of the Rebecca Street citadel. The church distributed 400 baskets of fresh produce, staples, bread, and beef to the needy across Hamilton for Christmas that year, funded through their new program of collecting money in open kettles near newsstands in the city.²⁰

The following year, just before Christmas, the leaders of the church announced that the Salvation Army had completed the purchase of 94 Merrick Street, the former Walter Woods Broom factory. Their intention was to turn that building into a shelter they called the “Men’s Metropole”. The Salvation Army’s proposal was to house around 60 men who would work in the salvage and reuse store they planned to operate on the premises.

In early February of 1910, officers of the Salvation Army brought a request to city council to support their efforts with a $1,000 grant. The meeting - which dealt with, as the Spec phrased it, “the tramp question” - saw members of council and affiliated civil servants provide comments entirely reminiscent of debates that still rage in the city. The city’s Chief of Police speculated that the Metropole’s “inception would be advertised all over the country, and there was a danger of the tramps flocking to the city.” The mayor believed that many of the city’s “vagrants” were married men with children who “were not inclined to the supporting habit.” And, of course, council ultimately deferred the decision until they could study how the Salvation Army’s operations in Toronto worked.²¹

The Metropole opened on Monday, April 18, 1910 before council could decide on providing financial support. Two weeks later, council met and voted to deny the grant to the Metropole because, in the words of a member of the Board of Control, “it is a good institution, but this is a matter of business.”²²

Two months after the Metropole opened, an out-of-work cigarmaker who had taken up lodging at the shelter was found dead in his room. While the official ruling was that he died from heart failure, his passing was a less-than auspicious event in the early days of the Salvation Army’s charitable mission on the site it still occupies to this day.²³

The Salvation Army Men’s Metropole as it looked in 1949 just before its demolition. The building on the far left - a former broom factory - was the original site and was expanded when the structure in the middle and on the right of the photo were added. These buildings were replaced by the current Salvation Army Booth Centre in 1950. Photo from the Spec, June 21, 1949.

***

The Salvation Army played an outsized role in the First World War, coordinating distributions of care packages for soldiers, providing food and shelter on the front lines, and offering combatants spiritual guidance amidst the horrors of war. It was during the First World War that Canadian soldiers began referring to the Salvation Army by an affectionate nickname: the Sally Ann. There is debate as to whether this is because of the organization putting women front-and-centre of their religious and charitable work, or if it was simply a catchy little moniker with fewer syllables.

On the homefront, the organization had ingratiated itself with everyday people thanks to their steadfast commitment to the war effort. In the dying days of the war, after a successful drive to send tents to soldiers, the Spec reported that the city was forever grateful for the organization; “Hamilton has always a warm spot in its heart for the Salvation Army,” a reporter observed, reflecting just how much attitudes had changed in the 35 years since the paper first began reporting on the church’s efforts to recruit in the city.²⁴

As soldiers returned home, they brought with them a deep affinity for the organization, which had kicked its charitable efforts into overdrive. Indeed, their mission was an important source of relief after the Great Depression hit the city. By 1931, their religious services took on the feel of political rallies; a service in late March of that year saw representatives from the city’s military, commercial, charitable, and industrial concerns, along with ministers from other Protestant denominations, participating in what was billed a “mass meeting”, over which Mayor John Peebles presided.²⁵

The local Salvation Army ended up providing much of Hamilton’s outreach to the unemployed during the Depression. This would bring it into conflict with a municipal administration committed to economizing their way through the crisis. In December of 1932, the Salvation Army sent correspondence to the city about their charitable efforts from the year before. In it, they noted how they provided 900 daily meals and 260 nightly beds to “unemployed single men” in the city. Conservative Ward 4 Alderman George Hancock took issue with this, telling council that the program, “the cost of which had been paid by the city, was not fair,” presumably because of the charity’s focus on unemployed men without families. On Hancock’s urging, council voted to instruct the Board of Control to respond to the Salvation Army expressing concern over the matter.²⁶

Through the Depression and the Second World War, the Men’s Metropole continued to provide relief to those in desperate need. By 1946, the Salvation Army reported that, in the first 10 months of the year, they had already provided beds on over 40,000 occasions and fed 2,770 meals to those in need. The organization warned that a great many of the permanent residents on Merrick Street were the elderly who could not afford a place to live on their own.²⁷

***

In 1949, the Salvation Army celebrated 55 years of service in Hamilton, revealing to the community that, since their Merrick Street mission opened (which had been renamed from the Metropole to the Men’s Hostel) in 1910, they had served 1,792,140 men. And need was only growing. With approval from the higher-ups in the church, the Salvation Army decided to demolish the existing structure on Merrick Street and build a new, larger capacity shelter that could accommodate up to 180 men a night (that number would drop to 150 after adjustments were made during construction). The new building would include a recreation room, a kitchen, showers, upgraded washroom facilities, and work space for those seeking refuge. Though many in the community lamented the loss of the original building (deemed a “city landmark” by the Spec), the chair of the local Salvation Army stressed that “the need for new facilities could scarcely be exaggerated.”²⁸

In one short year, the new building - the Salvation Army Men’s Social Service Centre - was ready to begin accepting those in need.

On September 12, 1950, the building was formally opened when Bill Goodfellow, the provincial Progressive Conservative Minister of Welfare, unlocked the doors in a ceremony which included Mayor Lloyd Jackson and representatives from social service agencies across Hamilton. In a moralizing speech at the event, Goodfellow reminded those gathered that, while “there was a responsibility on the part of citizens to help those needy persons unable to help themselves, there was no responsibility to help any able-bodied person” and that there was a “growing tendency to depend on government aid” which, he believed, “would result in the loss of Canadians of their initiative and thrift.” While Goodfellow offered a healthy dose of conservative individualism, Mayor Jackson took a different approach (possibly informed by his own Liberal orientation), praising the Salvation Army as “an integral part of Hamilton life” and a model of “practical Christianity”. And, with that, the new mission was declared open.²⁹

The building, though open, was not entirely complete. A fundraising campaign to provide the Men’s Social Service Centre with all it needed was, in the Spec’s phrasing, “abruptly suspended” in May of 1950 when the Salvation Army refocused their efforts on collecting money to support those impacted by devastating floods in Manitoba that year.

In 1952, the Salvation Army relaunched their original campaign under the leadership of former Ward 1 alderman Bessie Hughton, hoping to bring in close to $100,000 (around $1.2 million today) to complete the Merrick Street centre and support Grace Haven, their home for “the unmarried mother and her baby” on James Street South (roughly where today’s St. Joe’s emergency room is). The need for more resources was made clear amidst the campaign when the administrators of the Men’s Social Service Centre reminded Hamiltonians that “the hostel is always crowded to capacity, with accommodation strained to the limits.” That year, the Spec was filled with articles about the work done at the Men’s Social Service Centre; articles profiled the men who had been provided a job opportunity after a stay at the hostel, men who struggled with alcohol but had begun to counsel others after becoming sober, of the prisoners helped when they had no where else to turn after completing their sentences. The campaign managed to bring in around 65% of their goal, far less than expected due to a shortage of canvassers and the strain of the Korean War on the community.³⁰

The need for the services offered at the Merrick Street mission only grew as time marched on. In 1958, the shelter served over 62,000 meals to those in need. The next year, the number had ballooned to over 84,000. Into the 1960’s, those overseeing the city’s social services continually reported a growing number of people in need. By 1963, there were 20 Salvation Army social service organizations in Hamilton, providing thousands of meals each year. Need grew, but the size of the Merrick Street Men’s Social Service Centre did not.³¹

A story from a snowy evening in March of 1966 puts that fact in perspective. With the temperature below freezing, the Men’s Social Service Centre was, once again, full. When an elderly man, drunk and without lodging, sought a bed, he was turned away by staff who informed him there was no space left. He stumbled out into the street where he encountered two Hamilton police officers. “Arrest me or I’ll break a window,” he told them, hoping to spend the night in a warm jail cell instead of on the street. The officers refused, so the man, with his bare fists, began pounding on the windows of the shelter. When one broke, the officers finally took him in. He was swiftly sentenced to three months for vandalism.³²

Instances like that would only increase in regularity. In the late 1960’s, a decision was made to “deinstitutionalize” people in psychiatric facilities. These institutions, flawed as they were, served as a home for many with complex mental health challenges. For many, these were the only homes they had ever known. When deinstitutionalization began, countless numbers of patients fell through the cracks and into the lap of the Sally Ann.

Growing need also meant the Salvation Army had to spread its scant resources thin. In the spring of 1971, conditions at the Men’s Social Service Centre had deteriorated. People accessing services there complained of rampant theft, soiled bedding, a “jail-like atmosphere”, and non-existent recreation programming. The Hamilton Welfare Rights Organization, a militant group that had begun making a splash in the city the year prior with their pickets of municipal buildings and social assistance offices, organized a protest in front of the Merrick Street shelter. The program lead at the Men’s Social Service Centre told the Spec, “this is the first time we’ve ever been picketed.” The protest garnered some positive results, with the Salvation Army committing to better cleaning and more consultation with those staying in the shelter.³³

***

As Hamilton’s grand downtown urban renewal project blasted and smashed its way through the core, the world around the Men’s Social Service Centre kept changing. York Street became York Boulevard and was rerouted at Bay Street into what was once Merrick Street. That meant that, in 1976, the shelter’s address was updated from “94 Merrick” to the “94 York” we know today.

The city marched into the 1980’s and downtown kept changing. After a $180,000 renovation to the Men’s Social Service Centre, a Spec profile outlined what the Sally Ann dealt with on “Skid Row”. Foreshadowing what was to come, the reporter observed that, “in recent years the rehabilitation program has assumed a greater importance, as those in need of the Salvation Army’s careful concern have become younger.”³⁴

The Centre faced two serious threats over the next few years. When the provincial government began advancing their GO Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT) project - an elevated, automated, cartoonishly retro-futuristic intercity rapid transit concept - they focused on a route that would have seen the sky high trains run down York Boulevard and along a path that intersected with some of the Salvation Army’s buildings on the street. The Centre’s facilities were saved when the provincial government mercifully abandoned the strange project in 1985.³⁵

And then there was the far more personal betrayal of Herb Kelly. On July 22, 1991, Kelly, the newly promoted director of addictions and rehab at the Men’s Social Service Centre, told colleagues he was leaving early for an appointment. Those who attended the programs put on by Kelly described him as an “affable” and “charismatic” man who understood what they were dealing with, given that Kelly was, himself, a recovering alcoholic. Even if he told people in the program that he had a history of using stolen credit cards and gambling excessively at casinos around Canada and the United States, the men he counseled still trusted him. The trust was so deep that many described him as a close friend. That’s probably why, when he told participants that, as part of their journey toward sobriety, they should entrust him with their money to prevent them from purchasing alcohol, many handed their savings over willingly.

Kelly never returned from that doctor’s appointment. Indeed, after collecting nearly $8,000 from the addicts he was supposed to help, Herb Kelly skipped town and was never heard from again. The case remains unsolved to this day.

It took a year before the Salvation Army’s rehab program was back to where it was before Kelly’s disappearance. But, even then, damage had been done. Kelly’s replacement told the Spec, “coming here, the biggest problem I found was that trust had been violated…they’d put a lot of trust in this person, and he basically destroyed all that.”³⁶

***

Later in 1992, the federal government struck a deal with the Salvation Army to serve as a temporary halfway house for criminal offenders. The program was immediately controversial, but became even more so when, in August of 1993, a paroled violent offender walked away from a rehab program at the Men’s Social Service Centre. The offender made his way to Sudbury where, in October of the same year, he shot a police officer. This event led the Canadian Police Association (CPA) to call for the closure of the shelter, saying that the “blood trail” led back to York Boulevard. The Salvation Army pushed back, saying it had not been appropriately informed of the offender’s violent past, which would have disqualified him from their programs entirely. Less than two weeks after the CPA made its demands, the Salvation Army announced the termination of their rehab program on York Boulevard. The shelter continued to provide refuge for those in need and host the halfway house program under its roof.³⁷

The building was renamed the Booth Centre in 1996. This did little to detract from the controversy over the federal halfway house operating there. Heartbreaking articles about those living in the shelter long-term or a piece (once again refuting the baseless claims that “out-of-towners” were being shuttled into Hamilton to access our social services) that focused on how many working people lived at the Booth Centre because they were unable to afford the average rent in Hamilton of $790 a month (from the fall of 2000) did little to change public opinion.³⁸

A violent attack on a store clerk in 2004 made matters worse. York Boulevard was busy on that morning in May when an individual staying at the Booth Centre as part of the federal halfway house program walked across the street to Jackson Square. The offender entered a store, attempted to assault the manager and, in the process, stabbed them repeatedly. There were complex mental health issues at play, but the community was shaken. Later that year, Mayor Larry Di Ianni received a commitment from the feds that the halfway house would be moved from the Booth Centre when their lease expired in 2006. After Fred Eisenberger defeated Di Ianni that year, he reiterated the call for the halfway house to go. It wasn’t until the start of Eisenberger’s second non-consecutive term in 2014 that the federal government announced it would close its 22 year “temporary” halfway house program by January 1, 2015.³⁹

A few weeks after the COVID-19 Pandemic was declared, a person living at the Booth Centre tested positive for the disease, sparking fears that the strange new illness would seriously impact the city’s most vulnerable and change how social services were provided. The shelter was the centre of multiple outbreaks, including a surge in March of 2021 that saw around 60 cases at the Booth Centre. After multiple staff members became ill in 2022, the shelter began halting admissions.

As the virus swept through the community, healthcare providers needed to battle a second crisis; a spike in overdose deaths in 2022 saw four deaths at the Booth Centre and calls from community advocates for the Salvation Army to open a supervised consumption and treatment services (CTS) site on York Boulevard. The Booth Centre declined to participate and, a short while later, the provincial government all-but banned CTS sites.⁴⁰

While the Salvation Army was dealing with those twin crises and Hamiltonians navigated our way through a world changed by the Pandemic, the city handed the keys to the Coliseum and much of the land in the 0.15 square kilometre, nine block chunk of the city’s core between Cannon, James, Market, and Bay to HUPEG for the creation of the Downtown Entertainment Precinct. And that brings us to today.

***

The Pandemic laid bare the crises in our community. A broken mental healthcare system, the abject failure of the war on drugs, the depths of cycles of poverty, the social abandonment of seniors, the unwillingness of governments to invest in desperately needed housing, a culture that venerates selfishness and consumerism while shaming those who fall through the growing holes in our social safety net. The York Boulevard Salvation Army has dealt with all of them from that very location where, 115 years ago, they turned a broom factory into a refuge.

When former Mayor Eisenberger announced that HUPEG had won the bid to renovate and control the city’s largest venues in 2021, he spoke of a post-COVID renaissance: “Once we're past the predominance of this pandemic, people will be yearning for entertainment,” he told the CBC.⁴¹ Judging by the attendance at the first few concerts at the new TD Coliseum, he was right.

But just because the people yearn for live entertainment doesn’t mean the massive, complicated, very visible problems that became so much worse during the Pandemic have gone away. Putting up “walk-through-scaffolding” and shielding concertgoers from crises with ugly black fabric won’t make things better. Nor will uprooting an institution that long, long predates the newly repainted Coliseum across the way.

The Salvation Army is not perfect (their past approach to members of the queer community has been deeply troubling, though they have begun to slowly make amends). The centre they operate at 94 York Boulevard is similarly complicated. There are very real concerns from many in the community about the quality of the care provided, the effectiveness of the organization’s strategy, and the inability of them (and so many other social service providers in the city) to adequately respond to the increasingly complex needs of those seeking help.

Hiding the Salvation Army behind a privacy barrier is no solution. Neither are the outraged calls for a return to “order” from the “bunch-o-dads” who will train their conservative anger at people in need during the next municipal election campaigns across Ontario.

For 115 years, the Salvation Army served as a helping hand on York Boulevard for those who fell through the holes in our social safety net. They’ve done what they could, even when the city has been less than supportive. Now, hidden behind “walk-through-scaffolding”, the future of the Sally Ann is in question. The holes in the social safety net are growing larger, the problems faced by the people who access their services are growing more complex, and the private interests who now control our city’s core are growing impatient.

The York Boulevard Salvation Army might be hidden from view, and it might soon be relocated, but the problems they exist to address won’t go away.

So when “just another neighbourhood dad” knocks on your door next year selling you their vision of “restoring a sense of order” to the city, ask yourself if their plans amount to little more than throwing a tarp up and hiding the real problems in our community. Ask yourself if they know the history of the agencies they demonize as part of the “poverty industry”. And ask if there might be a better way to address the crises we face.

Poll by poll

Photo by author - edited by author

The mayor of it all

Just a hair shy of Hamilton’s 2026 municipal election - 364 days, to be precise - a fascinating poll dropped that might give us some indication as to what we can expect in next year’s campaign. With anxiety about the state of our democracy at an all-time high and legitimate fears amongst many in the community that we are staring down a right-wing wave that has the potential to reshape the city as we know it, this poll gives us the first real glimpse into what we can expect during next year’s campaign and whether we can breathe a cautious sigh of relief.

***

The poll was commissioned by the “National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada” (NEPMCC). There’s little information on NEPMCC available, though their website is a delightful throwback to the glory days of Geocities sites assembled thoughtfully in a million high school computer labs across the world. They have a limited social media presence and the bulk of their posts reference their annual booths at the Canadian National Exhibition - indeed, almost every single post they have made references the grand opening of their booth and little else, which begs the question: what are they promoting at said booth? Next year’s booth opening?

Of course, there is some information available on the NEPMCC’s non-booth-related activities if you know where to look; the NEPMCC has received over $11.5 million in funds from Canadian Heritage since 2007 for a host of journalism initiatives.

While the poll was commissioned by the NEPMCC, it was conducted by Liaison Strategies, a government relations and polling group founded in 2018 by David Valentin. With a “B+” rating on 338Canada.com, Liaison is in the middle-of-the-pack for pollsters, putting it below established groups like Léger and Mainstreet Research (the latter of which Valentin helped found before leaving in 2018 to set up Liaison), but above firms like Campaign Research, the somewhat partisan pollster “preferred” by the Ford Tories at Queen’s Park.

Like many other polling groups in Canada, Liaison has connections to partisans and other political actors. Sabrina Nanji at Queen’s Park Observer has referred to Valentin as a “Senior Liberal Operative”, the firm has been critiqued by the folks at Open Council for underrepresenting NDP and Green support in provincial polls, and Valentin is currently a registered lobbyist for none other than the NEPMCC.

That should not cast doubt on the legitimacy of the poll that came out on October 27 which, with 800 respondents from Hamilton and a margin of error at ±3.46, looks to be an interesting snapshot into the mood of the city’s civic electorate with one year to go until we head to the polls.

Granted, polling has become less reliable overall as of late, best evidenced by how pollsters absolutely bombed the 2025 Newfoundland and Labrador provincial election. Over the past year, all but one poll showed the governing Liberals in the lead, with some showing their support as high as 59%. On election night, the opposition Progressive Conservatives won a surprise majority, severely diminishing the credibility of some major national polling firms and causing many to ask if polling as we know it is ill-prepared to meet this current, chaotic moment in politics.

Still, let’s see what the Liaison poll shows for Hamilton.

Much has been made of the results showing that, among the mayors of Ontario’s 10 largest municipalities, only our own Mayor Andrea Horwath has a negative approval rating. Of those polled, 41% indicated they approved of her performance while 47% disapproved, giving her a net result of -6%. In contrast, Mayor Olivia Chow in Toronto has a +10% approval rating, Brampton’s Patrick Brown has a +22%, and Vaughan’s Steven Del Duca - so thoroughly rejected by the voters of Ontario in the 2022 provincial election - has a +31% approval rating.

Opponents of the city’s one-term mayor were further buoyed by the mayoral poll itself.

Results of the September 22 to 23, 2025 Liaison Strategies poll of 800 Hamilton voters

If asked to vote today, the respondents of the Liaison Strategies poll from Hamilton would elect Keanin Loomis over Andrea Horwath by a modest margin. Among all voters, Loomis leads Horwath 38% to 33%. Among the decided, Loomis leads Horwath 46% to 40%.

This poll shows us a couple of things.

First, reports of Mayor Horwath’s imminent electoral obliteration are much overblown. The mayor leads with some important demographics, including women (39% to Loomis’s 34%) and people under the age of 49. Those same demographics were more likely to say they approve of the mayor’s performance when compared to their male and older counterparts. That she leads with any demographics must come as a surprise to the denizens of Hamilton’s online spaces who have, since November of 2022, been living under the assumption that the mayor would either retire after one term or be trounced at the ballot box next October. Well, at least I think they believed that, unless they actually like the mayor and really despise some other person in the community named “Andrea Horvath” that a surprising number of Facebook and Spectator commenters have taken issue with.

Despite the jubilant cries of the city’s semi-anonymous social media accounts, Horwath is still very much in the race. She has some work to do, but she can’t be discounted yet. This further explains her frequent claims that she’s in-it-to-win-it in the 2026 election - another one of which was made to the Spec’s Scott Radley for his Halloween op-ed about the 2026 mayoral race.¹ Horwath isn’t in the habit of losing, having only failed in one of the eleven campaigns she has contested since the 1990’s, earning over 50% of the vote in seven of those instances.

Second, people have not forgotten about Loomis. Even when considering “undecided” voters in the poll, Loomis is at roughly the same level of support he earned when he ran in 2022 and has plenty of room to grow. The Radley op-ed notes this as well, saying that, after 2022, he was able to get over the “name recognition” hump and become a recognizable political figure in the community.

If Loomis were to run again, he would be well positioned to win this time. And looking at the issues voters in that same Liaison poll raised might offer a roadmap forward on how he could seal the deal. More on that in a minute.

Third, for all their bluster, the possible contenders from the city’s right wing aren’t inspiring voters. Former councillor and MP Chad Collins is the only name from among the city’s political right to appear on the poll, with other possible options - identified by Radley as former mayoral candidate Vito Sgro, local Conservative Party activist Peter Dyakowski, and Ward 14 councillor Mike Spadafora - notably left off. Collins barely breaks double-digits among decided voters, with just 11% of respondents saying they would be willing to vote for him if he were on the mayoral ballot. Even more discouragingly, Collins’s numbers are dismal among the people most likely to vote. Those voters 50+ - who overwhelmingly disapprove of Horwath - have all broken for Loomis, leaving Collins with scant support amongst the segment of the electorate that most reliably shows up on election day. For those 50 to 64 years of age in the poll, Loomis has a 44 point lead on Collins (and a 29 point lead on the mayor) and, for those 65+, Loomis leads Collins by 39 points (and 11 over the mayor). In the next piece down below on the poll-by-poll results for the federal election, I discuss how people 65+ helped secure some important seats for Mark Carney. Winning those folks might very well mean winning an election and Collins just isn’t there with that demographic.

While Radley’s op-ed throws three extra names into the mayoral mix, just 2% of voters (and 3% of those already decided) said they would consider voting for anyone other than Horwath, Loomis, and Collins. Now, those numbers would invariably change if you put a recognizable name into the poll, but how much the numbers would change remains a mystery. This is particularly true when you consider that each of the three mentioned possible candidates has only a modest profile; Sgro hasn’t been active in widely-read circles since his mayoral defeat in 2018, Dyakowski is mostly popular online and amongst Conservative Party activists on X/Twitter, and Spadafora, while a somewhat recognizable name in his own Ward 14 and on the mountain, may not have the needed name recognition in all the corners of the city. This means each of the city’s possible right wing candidates for mayor has an uphill battle to “introduce”/”reintroduce” themselves to the electorate - a battle that a candidate like Loomis clearly doesn’t have to fight.

Add to that the fact that each of the right wing candidates would be battling for the same small segment of the electorate with little to distinguish between each other. Collins and Sgro come from the world of right-leaning Liberals while Dyakowski and Spadafora have both offered themselves to the electorate in Hamilton as Conservatives/Progressive Conservative candidates.

If there was any lesson to be learned from Bratina’s 2022 campaign, it was that the old school variant of right wing politics in Hamilton doesn’t have the same pizzazz it once did. When placed up against a recognizable name with lingering social democratic cred and an interesting young pragmatic urbanist, that kind of politics was only good for around 17,000 votes - more than enough to win a council seat, if concentrated, but nowhere near enough to capture the office of mayor. If a man like Bratina - whose political brand seemed unstoppable during his decade-long stint at City Hall that came to a close in 2014 and was able to send him to Ottawa twice - couldn’t swing it for the right wing populists, it’s hard to imagine any of the other names on the list capturing the mayor’s chair.

The results of this poll should give the city’s right wing movement pause. On the one hand, a recognizable right wing mayoral candidate can “lead the slate” of council candidates already lining up and give them the boost they might desire in their own races. But running any kind of campaign would require resources and could further fracture the already fragile coalition the city’s political right has built. The factious gathering of developers, pro-car advocates, anti-woke online crusaders, bullish law-and-order types, labour traditionalists, and partisans from the right of the Liberal and Conservative/Progressive Conservative worlds is only united because they believe they can eek out victories in a few key races.

And, if they’re tapped into the news from the mainstream media, they may think they can.

***

There’s been a lot of media focus on some recent high-profile right wing municipal victories in Canada. Except the analysis, as is too often the case with reports from Canada’s ultracentralized and increasingly uncritical media, misses some key factors, unfortunately spreading a narrative that’s poorly researched and contextless.

Alberta held their municipal elections on October 20. These were the first in which local political parties were present since they dissipated in the late 1970’s (the rise and fall of local parties in Alberta is slightly different from their evolution and change here…but that’s a story for another time).

Calgary saw three parties run candidates. Two - Communities First and A Better Calgary - were explicitly right wing, promising low taxes, abundant services, and a crackdown on public disorder. A third party - The Calgary Party - charted a moderate, urbanist course and ran on a platform of improving transit, increasing urban density, and promoting housing affordability. While the majority of councillors elected remain independents, Communities First won 4 seats and earned 25.6% of the overall vote for councillors while A Better Calgary was only able to win 8.6% and elect a single councillor. The Calgary Party, despite taking 19% of the vote, was also only able to elect a single councillor, though two of their other candidates came within a few hundred votes of winning against right wing opponents.

The big story was the election of Jeromy Farkas, the right wing candidate who has been a figure in Calgary’s politics for over a decade since his time as a research fellow with the Manning Foundation. He served on Calgary City Council for a single term from 2017 to 2021, and quickly became the unofficial leader of the council’s conservative block. Farkas won a thin victory over Sonya Sharp, the candidate of the Communities First party, meaning two right wing candidates earned around 52% of the vote. Even more scintillating to the country’s national media is the fact that both were well ahead of the city’s incumbent one-term mayor, the politically ambiguous Jyoti Gondek.

Then, on November 2, came Quebec’s municipal elections. Like Alberta, Quebec’s largest municipalities feature the involvement of political parties, though la belle province has had partisan civic affairs for decades. For eight years, Montreal was run by the progressive urbanist political party Projet Montréal (of which, for full disclosure, I was a somewhat passive member of while studying at McGill). But the party’s leader and Montreal’s mayor, the charismatic and dynamic Valérie Plante announced she would not seek another term as mayor last year, citing growing toxicity and bitterness in politics that was making it hard for her to accomplish her agenda. The results of Montreal’s election saw the centre-right Ensemble Montréal win control of city council and the mayor’s chair on a moderately pro-car, anti-crime platform.

Both of these victories have buoyed the spirits of the political right. Canada’s media have fixated on those two sweeping successes from right wing candidates, helping to shape the narrative that municipal voters across the country are poised to support any civic candidate who promises to attack bike lanes, deal harshly with crime and homelessness, and bring a combative spirit to their city hall.

But there’s something the wider media missed - something that may have had more widespread attention if we had stronger local media and something that might be slightly more relevant for the case of Hamilton.

Last June, a member of Windsor City Council resigned to take a job leading their local public housing organization. Fifteen members of the Windsor community registered to run in the ensuing by-election. Most of those 15 candidates ran on platforms that included commitments for better, more affordable housing, improving transit, increasing urban density, creating more green and public space, and using the role of councillor to advocate for increased funding in the areas of mental health, addictions, and support for people experiencing homelessness.²

The by-election took place just last week, on October 27. The winning candidate, Frazier Fathers, (who earned over 47% of the vote) was an affordable housing researcher and advocate who campaigned on a platform of traffic calming, better parks, and implementing a rental licensing program.

(Side note, but somebody on the r/Windsor subreddit created a visualization of the by-election results in Lego and it’s ridiculously adorable.)

So while the Canadian media presses the narrative that the only way to win a municipal race is to fixate on imagined crime waves, attack bike lanes, and lean into hard right wing populism, there are more subtle cases showing that a thoughtful urbanist platform can still win elections. And that could be good news for Loomis, if he decides to run again. Indeed, with his personal appeal, established brand, and existing support in the community, it might help push him over the top. Just so long as his team recognizes what the important issues in the community might be and how he can establish himself as the most competent leader to deal with those issues.

The Liaison poll includes a couple of important tidbits on which every mayoral campaign would be wise to focus. Of those tidbits, polling on the issues of importance might be the most important.

For every municipality surveyed, crime was the number one issue of concern for voters (except in Ottawa, where it was the number two issue - a single percentage point behind affordable housing).

Hamilton was no different. Over one third of voters identified crime as their number one issue of concern, followed by taxes, homelessness, and affordable housing.

Issue importance from the Liaison Strategies poll (“Inflat.” = inflation; IDK = not sure)

Despite the reality of crime in Hamilton - that overall crime has remained steady and that some key crime indicators are showing signs of decline while crimes associated with inequality are showing signs of increase - and the fact that consistent increases to the Hamilton Police Services (HPS) budget have not yielded any significant results with regards to a dramatic reduction in crime, Hamiltonians remain deeply concerned about disorder. Side note, but I’ll be looking at crime stats in Hamilton in more detail at some point in the future.

All of this matches the confused results from the Wilfrid Laurier University/HPS survey that was released in September. While 93.7% of respondents to that survey said they believed it was safe to be outside in the city during the day, there was considerable concern over “social disorder”, namely those things that can, as the study notes, “undermine residents’ sense of safety, signal weak informal social control, and highlight neighbourhood conditions that may attract or sustain crime.”³ It is entirely possible, then, that the respondents who said “crime” was their top municipal issue in the Liaison poll might have really said, if given a more nuanced set of options, that they’re worried about the possible crime that may occur in areas perceived to be “disordered”.

Given that over 1/3 of those polled said that “crime” was their big issue, some of the possible mayoral camps can easily use this to their advantage.

Mayor Horwath has the most to lose from crime/perceptions of crime being the main issue going into the campaign. She’s held the reins of power for three-ish years, during which time people have seen little movement on issues of social disorder. There were a series of approaches she could have taken - working seriously with planners, social workers, and advocates on what changes could be made to public space to increase perceptions of safety, embarking on a similar project to the one being pursued in St. Thomas which aims to end chronic homelessness by 2027 (given that, among the perceptions of social disorder “people living in public spaces” was something 36.4% of respondents to the Laurier/HPS survey said they saw daily, constituting the single largest indicator of disorder seen by Hamiltonians), or continue on with her style as leader of the opposition at Queens Park and press the provincial government for the mental health, addictions, and housing funding needed to tackle these perceptions. Hamiltonians have not seen that action from her, nor have they seen anything else innovative and forward thinking that had made residents feel more safe. Indeed, at this point, it seems like she’ll be saddled with the fallout from the most visible effort to expand shelter space - the Barton/Tiffany Outdoor Shelter - without being able to take credit for much else.

This provides an opportunity for Loomis and Collins (or whichever right wing candidate steps up) to distinguish themselves. The right will go all-in for law-and-order, calling for a massive expansion of the HPS, harsh policing of marginalized people - people experiencing homelessness, people suffering from addictions, people experiencing mental health crises, etc. - and a general call for the end to “woke” policies that they will try to claim have caused our “crime problem”. This may have a certain appeal (more on why that’s the case in the piece below), but it has limitations.

Where a pragmatic urbanist campaign can succeed is by turning the conversation around. Acknowledge people’s perceptions of a lack of safety, yes, but tie it to how we need a diversified employment base, opportunities for youth in the form of public library and recreation programs, a commitment to affordable housing that brings non-profit providers to the table in a meaningful way, the natural connections that come with a walkable and vibrant downtown core, and a public safety program that seeks to address crime before it happens by investing in communities and people.

The importance of other issues in that Liaison poll shows this is possible. A full 23% of respondents said issues relating to affordable housing and homelessness are important to them, meaning a commitment to a plan of action that puts non-profit and community housing providers in the driver’s seat will appeal to them. Sure, 15% of respondents said taxes were their main issue, so a case can be made that investing in crime prevention now will be cheaper than being forced to pay for crime management later. And only 8% of people said “traffic” was their main concern (which should be humbling for some of the city’s political right, who have been acting as though it will be among the issues that will guarantee their victory in 2026), so hyping up strong, resilient, walkable, healthy, connected neighbourhoods - neighbourhoods where there are eyes on the street and natural interactions between people which increase perceptions of safety - seems like it will inspire more voters than enrage.

The opportunities are endless. It just depends on who will take them.

***

The October 27 Liaison poll gives us a quick snapshot as to the mood of the electorate one year out from our municipal elections. On the mayoral front, things don’t look good for Hamilton’s political right. Even though the issues might seem like they’re in their favour, a savvy political operation can quickly capture the narrative and ride a wave of support to victory. While no one should count Andrea Horwath out just yet, she’s having a hard time selling her vision to the people of Hamilton. Certain demographics are in her camp, but not by much. She has work to do, but she’s still in the running.

All this points to two main takeaways: all is not lost for Hamilton’s progressives and the mayoral election is still anyone’s race.

While it may be anyone’s race, there’s clearly one person many Hamiltonians would be all-too-eager to support. Now we just need to wait for him to make his intentions known.

The detailed results cometh

Poll-by-poll results usually come out with some speed after an election. For the Ward 8 by-election, the City’s elections department released preliminary poll-by-poll results almost immediately. The poll-by-polls for this year’s provincial election came out so fast, I was able to write about them in early March.

The results from the federal election, though, were kept under wraps for a preposterously long time. Yes, there were judicial challenges and by-elections and all that to endure, but results normally come out much quicker than they did for this election.

After an excruciatingly long time, the poll-by-polls were released this week, giving me a chance to drop all the totals into a map and visualize the outcome in the Hamilton area. So I am happy to present the Hamilton-specific results of the 2025 federal election:

Results of the 2025 Canadian Federal Election by poll - The deeper the colour, the stronger the support - Blue for Conservative, Red for Liberal, Orange for NDP

A few things to consider here.

The first is the absolute scale of the NDP’s collapse in Hamilton.

The New Democrats did not win any polls in Flamborough-Glanbrook-Brant North, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, Hamilton Mountain, and Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas. Only in Hamilton Centre did the NDP win any polls, taking 41 of the 225 active polls, and not exceeding 50% of the vote in any of the polls they took. The NDP’s support was limited to sections of Strathcona, downtown, and St. Clair/Blakely by Gage Park. The NDP’s candidate, Matthew Green, was only able to carry two polls east of Gage Avenue.

Elsewhere in Hamilton, the party performed far worse. In Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, where the party’s standard-bearer was, in essence, a ghost candidate, the NDP was only able to crack double digits in the raw vote count in 69 of the riding’s 229 active polls. In four polls, the NDP candidate received 0 votes.

***

The second thing to consider ties into the first.

Some of the poorest, most marginalized polls in the City of Hamilton went decisively for the Conservative Party. McQuesten, Normandale, the Keith, Stipley, and Rolston - neighbourhoods across three different ridings - all featured very high vote totals for Conservative candidates. People on the margins are breaking for the Conservative Party, even if the party’s policies would have no effect (or, in some cases, an adverse effect) on their wellbeing.

Then again, this is part of a pattern we are seeing around the world. In the New York City mayoral election, people living in extreme poverty and people without any post-secondary education overwhelmingly supported the centre-right-ish establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo over the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani.

And there’s a reason for this. In mid-October, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, spoke with The Guardian newspaper in the UK about a report he was about to submit to the UN General Assembly. His observation was that the shrinking of the welfare state and the shredding of the social safety net has directly contributed to the rise of right wing populism around the world. This has, as he noted, fostered a “sense of scarcity” that the hard right has taken advantage of with ease.

His warning is clear: “The message is: it is us against them. And what goes to one group must be denied to others, because there’s not enough for everyone…It’s a discourse that sets people against one another. And that’s extremely dangerous, and I do think that is what the far right is now reaping.”⁴ In the European context, De Schutter was speaking mainly about rising anti-immigrant sentiment.

While the anti-immigrant sentiment is only lingering in the background of the Canadian conversation (while still being very much present, particularly when the topic of Temporary Foreign Workers comes up), the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre successfully created a Rorschach test of a paper tiger to present to the Canadian people. Poilievre and the Tories railed on about how “regular people can’t get ahead” and leaving the “because of…” statement open to interpretation with a wink and a nudge depending on who they were speaking to at any given moment. “Trudeau” and “the elites” and “woke activists” could become anyone you wanted, anyone to direct your anger toward, anyone who stood in the way of you getting ahead.

That was appealing to people who have been left behind by the government and failed to see any benefit to the NDP’s propping up the Trudeau Liberals when life was getting harder and harder. Yes, the media did not help by fixating on the NDP’s social policies while ignoring all their economic proposals during the campaign, but, by that point, it was too late. Poilievre knew there was anger out there. He knew that anger is a very effective political tool. And he knew how to weaponize it to benefit himself, even if it meant doing little to tangibly support the people who back you.

The Tory platform was a monument to our scrambled politics. How was the plan to scrap the capital gains tax going to help working people? Or the plan to eliminate the Underused Housing Tax? Or the plan to buy more government drones and border surveillance towers? Or reducing taxes on resource extraction companies?

The only thing that could have somewhat helped working people was their pledge to reduce the lowest personal income tax level to 12.5%, but that would be offset by increased costs for things that the state once subsidized or provided, meaning that the approx. $900 they claim working people would have saved was really just a rebate that people would be forced to spend on accessing services from private providers.

The Conservative platform railed against universities, the “soft-on-crime” Liberals, and a clowder of imagined “woke” boogeymen. In the absence of a progressive party offering inspiring solutions and with a Liberal Party offering a technocrat peddling austerity, it is unsurprising that some of Hamilton’s most marginalized communities opted for Pierre’s angry vision.

But it’s clear that vision has limitations. And that brings me to the third point.

***

If these results show one thing definitively, it’s that seniors went in hard for Mark Carney and the Liberals. Those polls covering senior living neighbourhoods, retirement homes, and assisted care facilities were some of the places that returned the strongest Liberal support. And, in some cases, it was those voters who helped the Liberals cross the finish line.

On Hamilton Mountain, Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner only beat Conservative candidate and former Haldimand County Mayor Ken Hewitt by around 2,500 votes. If you strip out the the polls covering the riding’s retirement homes (including the massive St. Elizabeth’s village in the far southwest corner of the riding), Hewitt would have won by around 600 votes. Each and every large retirement community on Hamilton Mountain was won by the Liberals, and most of them with over 50% support. It isn’t at all an exaggeration to say that it was seniors who won Hamilton Mountain for Hepfner and Carney. Strong support for Liberal candidates across Hamilton shows the same pattern: seniors communities were all-in for Elbows Up.

***

So what do these results show us?

In terms of patterns, it’s hard to tell. The working class realignment is something progressives will need to contend with, and not by tacking to the right. Following the lead of right wing populists and embracing social conservatism isn’t what will win people back. Mamdani and Zack Polanski, the new left wing leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (which is surging in the polls), have shown us that with abundant clarity. People desperately want a party that gives them hope for a more fair world and that doesn’t leave people because of who they are. Whomever the next NDP leader is would do well to remember that.

Generally speaking, this map doesn’t tell us much else about trends. Older voters rejected Pierre Poilievre’s brand of angry populism, but will they remain enamoured with Mark Carney’s “Stanfield-esque Progressive Conservative” act? Working class people supported Poilievre’s Tories, but can a new NDP leader (or Green leader) lure them back? When the threat of annexation is gone, will voters in Hamilton Centre or on Hamilton Mountain still back little-known Liberal MPs, especially if they’re offered a compelling new alternative?

The answer to all of these questions will only come with time. In fact, it may take as long to decipher these results as it took for Elections Canada to publish them. But good things come to those who wait, so I’ve been told.

Scandal! At The Disco, Part II: The Unscandalening

Photo by Randy Kay on Unsplash - Edited by author

Where has the time gone? In a few short blinks, summer has slipped away and fall has landed firmly upon us. The temperatures have dipped, the leaves have turned, and a host of autumnal activities have kicked off. Apples are being picked, costumes are being donned, pumpkins are being…patched? I don’t know, I’m a summer boy.

You may have noticed that, as the seasons have changed, so too has the publishing schedule for this newsletter. I’ve been quiet recently, publishing but four editions since mid-August (and one of those was practically a “clip show”, so I’m not sure that even counts). This is for a few reasons.

The first reason is that I’ve been spectacularly busy. I am inundated with a billion little projects and jobs, all with varying deadlines and important dates and expectations. My duties to cover my bills, pay my rent, and buy veritable mountains of cat food come first, even if I would rather dedicate as much time as possible to writing about local affairs.

The second reason is that I have been under investigation after a complaint was lodged against me relating to my role as a communications advisor at City Hall and my publication of this very newsletter.

Now, as spooky season comes to a close and the Jays train their sharp, Corvidae eyes on the Commissioner's Trophy, I can finally provide an update on the situation and some insight into where this newsletter is going.

***

Here’s a very basic rundown of what’s happened to this point:

On Wednesday, August 6, I attended a hybrid in-person/remote meeting with some of my colleagues who work in other offices for elected officials at the municipal level. I had not met many of those colleagues up until that point, since I work almost exclusively from home and do not have the same kind of constituent-facing roles many of them do. It was a short, yet productive meeting, and I left not thinking anything of it.

In the hours after this meeting, details about my employment - sourced from an internal city directory - were shared with people across the city who are active in local politics. At this point, I have no information as to why those details were shared or how widely they were shared. All I know is that my details, and the details of another municipal employee with a similar name, were shared with at least one person in the community outside of City Hall.

The following day, some of those activists began posting on social media about my employment status. The timing of these posts, as well as the number of people who posted about it and the inclusion of specific details about the meeting I attended on August 6, once again strongly suggests that multiple people were in receipt of details about my employment, but this is an educated guess on my part. I responded to these posts, first in my own post on Bluesky and then in an edition of this newsletter.

The next week, a formal complaint was made to the city’s Human Resources division about me and The Incline. I alluded to this complaint in my August 14 edition, “The Heat”. In that edition, I wrote that I hoped to get back to posting in September after the investigation concluded.

The complaint initiated an investigation into my conduct, led by an independent, third-party consultant retained by the City of Hamilton who was tasked with determining if I violated the city’s Code of Conduct for employees. I made the decision to wait until the investigator had completed their work, submitted their report, and had that report accepted by the City of Hamilton before I began regularly posting again. This is why I only posted twice between August 31 and today.

Even now, the specifics of the investigation are confidential and the full report is the property of the City of Hamilton’s Human Resources division. I cannot share details beyond what has been conveyed to me, nor do I have access to the full report. As the report is a human resources matter, it is and always will be confidential. All I can say that the final report was delivered to the city’s Human Resources division a short while ago.

The basic findings have, with permission, been conveyed to me by my supervisors. Those findings from the independent, third-party consultant found that I did not violate the city’s Code of Conduct for employees.

I am grateful for the work of the City of Hamilton’s Human Resources division and the investigator, who approached the situation with professionalism and respect. I am also exceptionally grateful for the continued support of my supervisor, my colleagues in our ward office, and those who expressed support even when I could not share the full details of what was occurring.

***

The report has cleared me of wrongdoing, which I appreciate. Regardless of the final result, the entire process has provided me a great opportunity to sit back and reflect on my work here. That period of reflection has allowed me to think about my tone, my focus, and my writing style.

I would often rush to publish on a self-imposed schedule, rather than focus on proofreading or flushing out ideas with more vigour. I know now I need to take the time necessary to ensure my posts are rounded out and more fastidiously edited.

I try to inject some millennial humour and amusing observations into my writing. I will still do this, but be more mindful about the context, the tone, and the language that I use to ensure I don’t trip over the line into the world of incivility.

I make assertions about the political perspectives of influential people in the community. I need to be more diligent in reminding people that these assertions are based on a lifetime of training and my own academic analysis - analyses with which any of my peers in academia would be inclined to agree.

Going back through my archive of posts as part of the investigation showed me how much my writing style has matured since I kicked things off a few years ago. But there’s always room for improvement. I’ll keep working on that to both put my best foot forward and to not disappoint any of you folks who take the time to read this humble newsletter.

***

Even though the investigation has concluded and found that I did not violate the City of Hamilton’s Code of Conduct, damage has still been done.

A number of local right-wing activists (identified politically by their focus on law-and-order, traditional modes of governing and organizing society, the importance of property and business, the centrality of the individual and their immediate family, and a general opposition to real or imagined “leftist” forces), as well as a smattering of troll and sockpuppet accounts on X/Twitter did not wait until the investigation was done to go wide with their accusations, speculation, and unfounded claims.

In the interest of avoiding further issues, I will not directly link to the posts where these claims were made, though I do have screenshots and links to all of them.

Some activists claimed I have committed “multiple code of conduct violations”. This is false. These claims were made well before the results of the investigation were made known - which, again, indicated I did not violate the code of conduct - and made in spite of the fact that complaints and investigations should remain confidential until such time as findings are delivered so as to not impugn the character of the involved party. Whether or not the posters knew that a Code of Conduct complaint had been submitted, asserting that I had violated it was premature and has now been proven false.

Other activists claimed I am “leading” a unionization effort at City Hall. This is also false. I am not leading any such effort. I am deeply supportive of the rights of all working people to exercise their Charter right to join a union and have been very supportive of the unions that have represented me in my previous workplaces, as well as in my other roles in academia. There are incredibly talented organizers out there working everyday to advance the labour movement in Canada - a movement that helped build and strengthen this city in our post-war glory days - whom I respect immensely. At this juncture, I cannot count myself among the ranks of those organizers, though they have my full support, regardless of the workplace they’re trying to organize. All working people deserve protections in their workplace and should know that they can accomplish more by working together than they could ever hope to accomplish on their own.

Some trolls claimed that I have been instructed to write negative pieces “on Maureen’s payroll”. This, like all the other claims, is false. None of the content in this newsletter is directed by anyone at City Hall. Only I decide what I write. And, again, I am paid a wage for work completed, none of which has ever, or will ever, be connected to this newsletter.

The sockpuppet account referenced in the above example took a special interest in this case when it kicked off, unleashing a torrent of vitriol about me in their frequent replies to other, more readily-identifiable posters on social media. As much as I try to avoid the bile spewed from the anonymous sockpuppet accounts that litter the devastated, far-right, bot-infested wasteland that is X/Twitter, it is hard to not dwell on what they post. Though I can say I did literally laugh out loud when they said I was a “very lightly read, hack academic” who is “certain he’s owed tenured professorship for his almost unread opinions”. Well done, anonymous sockpuppet.

***

The only reason I paid any attention to the aforementioned accounts was because I needed to scour my social media presence during the investigation to locate any posts about my situation so that I could answer any possible questions from the investigator. As frustrating as that process was, it also proved to be enlightening, if for no other reason than it made me realize that, in 2025, Hamilton’s online and politically engaged community is deceptively small. To many, particularly those steeped in the strange brew of the internet, that may come as a surprise.

It definitely surprised me. I was involved in the early days of #HamOnt Twitter when residents, derided as “keyboard warriors” by some civic leaders, felt empowered to engage in the conversation and realized they could make substantive change with social media being their kicking-off point. The effectiveness of #HamOnt Twitter was such that, in 2014, a study by a McMaster grad student found that online activism (disparagingly called “slactivism” in the headline of this Spec article) was effective in helping change policy at City Hall, advocate for a more pleasant city, and advance sustainable infrastructure projects like the Cannon Street bike lanes.¹

That all dropped off after the 2022 municipal election. The takeover of Twitter by the world’s wealthiest person led to a mass exodus which scattered users across different platforms. Some have found a home on Bluesky (the #HamOnt hashtag over there is heavier on photos and art than on politics), others tried Threads (don’t know what the hashtag situation is over there; it’s much too boring for my tastes), a few long-winded nerds started newsletters…but there wasn’t one cohesive place for the #HamOnt Twitter powerusers in self-imposed exile to coalesce. Because of this fragmented landscape, many users simply logged off or dramatically reduced their posting frequency.

Now, a caveat: I’m speaking broadly about users from the centre and the left of the political spectrum…anyone that could ostensibly be identified as “progressive” or “urbanists” from the ol’ #HamOnt Twitter days. Or, if you’re a commenter on the Bay Observer/Spec/any given neighbourhood watch Facebook group in town, you may call those people “radical left Marxists” for being anything but full-blown MAGA adherents.

The political right, on the other hand, found that X/Twitter’s change in ownership and policy direction suited them just fine. But Hamilton’s online right-wing still only has a very small core of influencers who drive the conversation. They number around half a dozen, at most. These accounts produce the only real and unique content, often by gleaning on to stories in the news (helped along by an increasingly crime-focused Spectator) that validate their pre-existing talking points - namely that crime is out of control, taxes are bankrupting residents, and that our current city council is responsible for these and a host of other gripes held conveniently by the city’s wealthy elites and semi-retired political elites who have created and pushed the narrative that Hamilton’s decline only started after the 2022 election.

Around them are a constellation of committed reply guys - almost exclusively anonymous/sockpuppet accounts (accounts run by people who create a false or semi-anonymous persona to express views online they don’t want immediately associated with their day-to-day identity) that incessantly comment on as many of posts made by the influencers as possible. This is a tried-and-true technique for boosting posts on social media sites that, in the absence of real metrics, count any engagement as evidence that a post is popular. But even this collection of accounts with obscured, blurry profile photos (many of which feature dogs - why implicate a poor, defenceless puppy in your internet shenanigans?) is very, very small. They interact almost exclusively with each other and with the occasional user anywhere to the left of their increasingly extreme political positions who has the misfortune of trying to engage with them in any capacity. There’s very little evidence to prove that many, if any, of them are real people.

But skilled right-wing political operatives know that, at the local level in Hamilton, a coordinated online campaign will only go so far. While right-wing activists the world over have been able to capture the political imagination of voters through meme warfare, the effectiveness of internet-based campaigns that focus on culture war issues and less tangible outcomes is nullified when attempted municipally. This isn’t 2014 when a campaign like #YesWeCannon can push the civic scales and deliver results.

That’s the reason why, in the much-talked-about Liaison Strategies poll that just dropped (I’d like to discuss that in more detail later, so keep an eye out for that) Hamiltonians aged 18-34 - the most “online” demographic - would overwhelmingly vote Conservative federally (among decided, 46% to 35% for the Liberals) but still back Mayor Horwath’s re-election effort (among decided, 48% to Keanin Loomis’s 32% and Chad Collins’s 16%). The meme campaign might work at the federal level, but locally, name recognition and general familiarity go a long way.

Local politics is still a low-information environment. Voter turnout hovers around 33% and voter awareness of the issues is likely even lower than that (the number of people who want their city councillor to tackle crime is a wonderful indication that few people seem to truly understand the division of powers and responsibilities in a municipality). Relentlessly posting on social media is meaningless busy work when not paired with an aggressive real-world advertising, canvassing, and get-out-the-vote campaign.

***

So that’s the story so far. Details about my employment were shared with activists in the city, complaints were made against me, and, after a few months of an investigation, I was found to have not violated any policies or codes with my work on this newsletter.

While the investigation into this newsletter found that I did not violate the City of Hamilton’s Code of Conduct, I will still have to be careful around how I frame things and about whom I write. I will now avoid discussing certain figures in the community, be delicate in how I frame the decisions of council, and not stoop to the level of some of Hamilton’s internet trolls who trade genuine engagement for incivility.

Moving forward, I will work toward publishing regularly again. My workload hasn’t decreased, so it may be slow going for a while, but I’d love to get back to it. We’re under one year out from the 2026 municipal election, so things are going to start kicking off in town really soon.

I have some topics I would really like to spend some time on, as well as some fun historical things I’d love to explore. Over these past few months, I’ve had time to think about a few topics that would be interesting and how to present them in a way that broadens the conversation in our community.

And I’d love to host another Incline LIVE! event in the future. Yes, writing online can help to spread information and ideas farther and faster than otherwise possible, but that should be done in the service of eventually bringing people together in real life. As I noted above, doing things virtually only gets you so far, especially in the municipal sphere.

So, again, thank you to those who stuck it out with me through these past couple of months. I am so appreciative of the support and the kindness from readers and members of the community overall.

***

In my initial post on this matter, I wrote that I would not apologize for writing this newsletter or working at City Hall. That still holds true. A healthy, vibrant, functioning democracy is one where people with a variety of views can express their perspectives on a host of issues and work to persuade other people of the validity of those positions. Sometimes that means critiquing the positions of others. Sometimes that means taking a critical look at policies and positions held by those in power. Sometimes that means doing a deep dive into an issue and sharing your findings so that others in the community have as much information as possible before making up their minds. Sometimes it means showing up at a protest or delegating at City Hall or signing a petition or writing a letter to the Spec or running for office.

A democracy only works when people feel free to express their views, even if those views are critical of the perspectives of others. Debate, discussion, and persuasion are essential pillars of a democracy. In these fraught times, I think we need more debate, more critical perspectives, and a hell of a lot more democracy.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that should be a scandalous position to take.

…but first it’s Ward 8.

Photo by Esme-Shiru on Unsplash - Edited by author.

I can’t blame you if you haven’t heard of the gameshow Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.

The show’s origins are in an essay contest called “As Prime Minister, I would…”, which launched in 1995. The contest was the brainchild of controversial Austrian-Canadian businessman Frank Stronach and ran through his auto-parts manufacturer, Magna International. The essay contest prize was a varying sum of money and an internship with Magna, ostensibly to give winners connections to the worlds of politics and business in Canada. After dabbling in politics both here and in his native Austria, Stronach’s star has faded; he is currently on trial after having been accused of multiple instances of sexual assault from 1977 onward, including by some former Magna interns, though details as to whether they were also contest winners are spotty.

An irrelevant, albeit interesting fact about the essay contest is that the 1999 winner was an ambitious young second-year University of Calgary student named Pierre Poilievre, who triumphed with an essay entitled “Building Canada Through Freedom”. The future opposition leader’s proposal included slashing taxes, reducing the size of the state, and reforming the senate. Indeed, the entire essay read like a short stump speech any Reform Party-aligned politician would make in the 90’s. “Politics should not be a lifelong career, and elected officials should not be allowed to fix themselves in the halls of power of a nation,” the young Poilievre wrote. Five years later, he would be elected to Parliament where he has served non-stop since, save for a four month breather earlier this year.¹

In 2006, the essay contest was thrust into the 21st Century when it was turned into a gameshow on CTV. Hosted by the granddaddy of gameshows himself - Alex Trebek - it switched the format, encouraging youth from across Canada to ditch the word processor and submit short videos outlining what they would do if they held the office of PM. In 2007, the show bounced over to the CBC, where comedian Rick Mercer took over hosting duties.

Then, in 2008, a call went out for new applicants. As a bright-eyed young nerd who conveniently turned 18 during the application period, I threw all my energy into an application. With the help of my family, I filmed a short video entry about what I would do as Prime Minister. My whole entry revolved around my idea to provide a better deal for cities. At this point, I don’t even remember the details, but it involved a call to provide municipal governments with the power they need to improve the lives of everyday Canadians.

The application process didn’t stop at the entry video. For that year’s contest, there were a host of new requirements. Aspiring contestants were encouraged to upload YouTube videos “debating” their fellow contestants, launch social media campaigns to get people on board with your entry, host community events that promoted your idea, and engage with elected leaders and community members in campaign-style appearances. For my part, I delegated to Hamilton City Council, held events in the community as though I were running for actual elected office, and contacted local media to let them know about the contest.

A few months after “launching my bid” to be on Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, my media outreach strategy paid off. The editor of the Hamilton Mountain News, the weekly community Metroland paper atop the escarpment, reached out to say he wanted to do an interview to highlight my entry into the contest.

So I laced up my shoes, threw on my preppiest peacoat, and set out on the long journey east to the coffee shop - a quaint little local establishment called le Tim Hórton - closest to my childhood home where I, at 18, still resided. The Tims was a good 3 kilometres from my home, but I was used to the walk, having made the voyage back-and-forth nearly every day for my shifts at a Fortinos across the road.

By the time I got to the Tims, I was buzzing with adolescent energy. In my excitement, I blocked out the specifics of the interview, and was, for a time afterward, unable to recall anything I had said. All I remembered was travelling with the paper’s editor to a park near my home for some photos to accompany the article.

When the paper came out a few weeks later, I was surprised (though not entirely) to learn that I had announced I would be running for city council in Ward 8 in the 2010 municipal election.

From the December 5, 2008 edition of the Hamilton Mountain News.

The contest…did not go well for me. After a grueling series of phone interviews to whittle down the initial entrants, the last interviews were scheduled during the fall final exam period - my very first post-secondary exams ever. In the stress of it all, I had caught a nasty cold. On the day of my final interview, my head was swimming, partially from my sickness and partially from the cold medication I had taken to alleviate my symptoms.

From an echoey stairwell on McMaster’s campus, I struggled through the phone interview, providing disjointed, confused, and chaotic answers to an increasingly baffled panel of judges. I hung up knowing I had likely blown my chance and months of work. The rejection email a few weeks later confirmed my suspicions, leaving me dispirited.

I likely avoided becoming embroiled in a significant televised mess, though. Not long after my disastrous interview, a story broke in the Globe and Mail about how the show was struggling. I was evidently one of the only unique entrants, with most aspiring contestants having been recruited by producers and from the ranks of political parties in an attempt to round out the numbers and ensure some camera-worthy, skilled young politicos would make it to the final. Some entrants told the Globe that they had been approached, recruited, and encouraged to participate even if they violated the show’s rules, like the stipulation that anyone applying must not have been a candidate for elected office in the past. Some of these recruits were later disqualified, despite getting the all-clear from producers, leading to threats of lawsuits and boycotts.²

The whole affair, and a general lack of interest from the public, impacted the contest, which was quietly wrapped up after that season, never to air again.

As for me, I ended up getting a job with the student paper on campus the next year, giving up my role as president (and sole member) of the McMaster Campus NDP and my aspirations for elected office in Ward 8.

Even though I had made such a big deal of wanting to run for office in the 2010 election during my Mountain News interview, I found myself in an entirely different place in my life when the chance rolled around. While I was covering the local election for the paper, three people registered to run against two-term incumbent councillor Terry Whitehead.

In the end, two candidates unofficially dropped out, leaving Whitehead alone against local accountant Kim Jenkinson. Whitehead won a commanding victory on election night, earning over 67% of the vote. He would remain in office for another 12 years.

***

In the time since, I’ve thought a lot about running for city council.

I came close in 2014, slowly building my profile in the community and putting feelers out to see what kind of campaign organization I could build to contest the open Ward 1 seat, having moved to Ward 8’s lower city northern neighbour when I started grad school in 2012. I ultimately decided to not move ahead with that, in part because I became involved in school board affairs and, in part, because three eminently qualified candidates with whom I connected and who all had long histories in the community - Aidan Johnson, Sandy Shaw, and Jason Allen - stepped up to run. I, instead, made my one bid for real elected office, running for the open Wards 1 & 2 school trustee seat. My efforts there were unsuccessful and I placed last with just over 12% of the vote.

My fascination with local government clearly did not end there. The next decade of my life was dedicated to studying and understanding local government. I interviewed council candidates, published papers on municipal affairs, worked with advocacy groups on issues around local voter engagement.

Through it all, I held out hope. I still carried that spark of enthusiasm for municipal government that propelled me into the Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister contest and to announce, at age 18, that I wanted to be a city councillor. There was still a glimmer of that floating around in everything I did.

I’ll be the first to admit that, as of late, that glimmer has been dimming. It’s hard to remain enthusiastic amidst everything that’s happening in our community and in our world. Politics is becoming harder, less pleasant, more irrational. The conversations being had about our world don’t make sense anymore. Amidst a dramatic decline in voter turnout, the small minority of people who do exercise their democratic rights are fixated on solutions to problems that have no grounding in reality and facts. And it’s getting harder and harder to cut through the noise and have real conversations about actual ideas.

These thoughts began forming long before Monday, September 22. It would be a stretch to say the campaign for, and outcome of, the Ward 8 council by-election has even substantively changed my thinking in one direction or another. But there are some things about that particular democratic expression by a small, small group of voters in one of Hamilton’s mountain wards that do warrant consideration.

And so, let us gingerly and oh-so-carefully take a look at the Ward 8 by-election and what it might mean for this fascinating place called Hamilton.

***

Two weeks ago, the voters of the ward were called upon to head to the polls and select a city councillor to replace J.P. Danko, who was sent to Ottawa to serve as MP by the voters in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas this past April. Danko was, at the time of his election to Parliament, in the back-half of his second term as Ward 8 councillor. The councillor-turned-MP had a strong mandate, having been decisively re-elected in the 2022 election with support of nearly 2/3 of the scant few who bothered to cast ballots in Ward 8. Only around 30% of eligible voters in the ward turned out in that race.

With Danko off to Ottawa, his council seat was declared vacant and his former colleagues saw fit to call a by-election, rather than open up an appointment process whereby a member of the community (usually a former councillor) would be hired to serve out the remainder of Danko’s term. The choice to hold a by-election in a year when Hamiltonians had already voted provincially and federally - and around one year until the general municipal election - was one council was allowed to make, though certainly not one I expected or believed was apt.

The city’s residents, media, and political institutions clearly felt the same way, as the by-election campaign started and ended with a whimper. There was scant interest from Hamilton’s legacy media, no debates, and few in-depth write ups on the race, with one notable exception (more on that shortly).

All this was despite the registration of 26 candidates, making the Ward 8 by-election the longest ward ballot in Hamilton’s municipal electoral history, beating the previous record (the 2016 Ward 7 by-election in which Danko first made his electoral debut) by four candidates.

***

The new Ward 8 itself is an aberration, created in a flurry after the 2014-2018 council spent a quarter of a million dollars on a ward-boundary review that they ultimately rejected. After local residents appealed council’s decision, the now-defunct Ontario Municipal Board imposed a new ward boundary map on Hamilton, trading local gerrymandering for gerrymandering of the provincial variety.³

Geographically, socially, economically, historically, and practically, this iteration of Ward 8 - a far cry from the Ward 8 in which I grew up and had my initial political aspirations - makes no logical sense. It is a cartographic nightmare, consisting of a thin sliver of the mountain, 2.5 kilometres wide, so hard-to-place that the city’s official name for it is the “West/Central Mountain Area”. How poetic.

It includes some of the oldest developments on the mountain in the Centremount neighbourhood and some of the city’s newest homes built on former farmland in the northeast corner of Rymal and Garth. The ward’s spine is Upper James, one of the most chaotic commercial corridors in Hamilton, regularly clogged with cars and trucks flying in from the airport and Caledonia to the south, fighting their way north, into the city, down the ever-crumbling Claremont Access. As confusing as it is, the ward’s current configuration is likely to remain in place, given that there is no appetite in this community for meaningful electoral reform that ensures representation by population and a commitment to respecting communities of interest (because experts will almost inevitably say that is only possible by adding one to three councillors and, in this age of rage against government, that is likely a nonstarter).

***

The City of Hamilton, for their part, used the by-election to try some new things. Rather than require voters to cast ballots at a polling station assigned to a designated geographic area, any voter in Ward 8 could vote at any of the ward’s five general polling station. Only the residents of St. Elizabeth’s Village - the gated retirement community in the southwest corner of the ward - had a defined and exclusive polling station. While untethering polling stations from designated communities likely caused a headache for campaigns and their canvassers (using information from previous elections at the polling division-level is a great way to identify where your supporters are and maximize campaign efficiency), the move to a “vote-anywhere” system is believed to remove one more barrier to political participation that could incentivize a voter-of-convenience to cast a ballot.

Each of the vote-anywhere polls also served as advance polls, essentially creating a multi-day election that was likely believed to remove another barrier to participation.

This decision provides us with a results map that is wildly different than any map Hamiltonians would be used to seeing after a municipal election. Instead of neat lines around communities, showing the precise location of support for candidates, we instead get a map that looks like an abstract stained glass art piece.

The areas around each poll are represented as “Thiessen Polygons” or “Voronoi Cells”, indicating the “area of influence” around a point. In this case, the “point” is a polling station, and the “area of influence” is the likely zone in which the residents who cast ballots at that polling station lived. While uncommon to Hamiltonians, this form of visualization would be more recognizable to Vancouverites, who have cast ballots at “vote anywhere” polls for some time. Their municipal election map on Wikipedia, for example, shows an array of Thiessen Polygons.

A map of the 2025 Ward 8 Council By-Election results using Thiessen Polygons to show the “zones” each candidate won across the ward.

Sorry, I know that’s a lot of electoral geography, but I don’t get to talk about that as much as I would like anymore!

***

The 26 candidates were an interesting mix of personalities; among the contestants were a healthy number of fringe and perennial candidates, two “ghost candidates”, and four former elected officials looking for a comeback.

As reported by Joey Coleman, only 12 of the 26 candidates were confirmed Ward 8 residents.

The ward was spackled with election signs, creating the impression that there was a groundswell of enthusiasm for a hefty chunk of those 26 candidates. And yet, when the dust had settled, it became obvious that the enthusiasm was imagined. Only one out of every five voters in Ward 8 bothered to make it to the polls. Over 22,000 voters simply stayed home, despite the cacophony of choices offered to them.

Among those choices were some high-profile names. Former Catholic school trustee and member of one of Hamilton’s most recognizable political dynasties, Ralph Agostino; former Ward 7 councillor and NDP MP Scott Duvall; former Burlington City Councillor Barry Quinn; and the man against whom I pledged to run way back in 2008, 19-year veteran of Hamilton city council, Terry Whitehead.

***

Whitehead was the second-to-last person to register, surprising nearly everyone in the city with his reappearance just three years after he unceremoniously retired from city hall amidst a veritable sea of controversy.

The last years of Whitehead’s tenure in local government were consumed by his erratic actions and, in the words of the city’s integrity commissioner, “a repeated pattern of unacceptable bullying and harassing behaviour.” During one of his many leaves of absence, council worked on creating a “safety plan” to ensure elected officials and staff were kept safe in the event he returned to 71 Main Street West.⁴

Whitehead’s campaign was one of the only ones to receive substantial media attention. Less than a week before the election, The Spec’s Mac Christie published an extensive look at Whitehead’s controversial past and comeback attempt. In his email exchanges with Christie, Whitehead indicated he’s no longer suffering from his “incurable” medical problem (he has never indicated what that problem is and, when pressed by The Spec in this interview, obfuscated), that he’s become an “evolved” person, and that he’s found strength in those places into which politicians tend to retreat when faced with a crisis. As Whitehead told Christie: “…through family and faith, I’ve rebuilt my health, my focus, and my energy, and know I’m ready to stand up for Ward 8 taxpayers again.”⁵

***

Few other candidates were able to break through the noise in a meaningful way, though some certainly tried. Hamilton’s urbanists quickly rallied around local entrepreneur Lohifa Pogoson Acker. An energetic and charismatic figure in the community, Pogoson Acker was involved with Keanin Loomis’s 2022 mayoral campaign, even serving as the MC for his campaign kickoff.⁶ With the backing of Loomis and many of the city’s Liberal Party-affiliated elected officials (including MP Danko, who backed Pogoson Acker with less than two weeks to go until election day) , one could logically surmise that the Pogoson Acker campaign was the best chance the Loomis mayoral team would have to shake off the dust and gear up for 2026. Loomis did win Ward 8 in 2022 and carrying it by a more substantive margin next year could very well make him mayor. But, in the low-information, low-interest atmosphere of a municipal by-election, even a candidate as compelling as Pogoson Acker was unable to quickly capture the momentum needed to win.

Some of the few candidates who were able to generate any real media attention did so for all the wrong reasons. The fourth candidate to register, Waleed Ali, was called out back in June for posting a “map” of Ward 8 on his website that was a jumbled AI hallucination, placing the ward in the city’s east end, bounded by roads like “Uppel Tames W” and “H8uǝure W”, and hemmed in by the “Niapare Escaromert”. Ali’s internet troubles didn’t end there; in July, an account posted on the r/Hamilton subreddit with a glowing review of a conversation they claimed to have with Ali, writing: “I belive [sic] he is the right choice…He also studied political science in university of Toronto so that's a plus.” Other redditors were quick to point out that, while the recently-created account had a standard Reddit-generated handle, the name on the account was “Waleed Ali”.

Ali, Whitehead, and one of the three 2022 candidates in Ward 8 who contested the by-election, Sonia Brown, were called out by Joey Coleman in early September for, as he put it, “falsely claiming to live in Ward 8 when they do not.”⁷ Coleman compared election registration forms with the candidates’ comments to The Spec. The city’s paper of record did a short survey of candidates, asking, among other things, if they lived in the ward. While all three said they did live in Ward 8, Coleman noted that both Whitehead and Brown live in neighbouring Ward 14 while Ali, who used a Ward 3 business address to register, could not confirm he even lived in Hamilton. Brown dug in, spending the remaining weeks of the campaign accusing Coleman of spreading “misinformation” about her residency, despite Coleman providing copies of Brown’s nomination form, listing a home postal code on the west end of Ward 14.

***

Among the front runners in the Ward 8 by-election was Brown’s 2022 campaign chair and single largest donor, Rob Cooper.

Cooper has been involved in conservative politics in Hamilton for years, but, until this point, had mainly been a behind-the-scenes organizer. For decades, he led the provincial Progressive Conservative operation on Hamilton Mountain, shepherding the party out of the wilderness after some disappointing election results a decade back. After hitting their low-water mark of 18% in the 2014 provincial election, the Mountain PCs steadily increased their support under Cooper’s watchful eye, fielding future councillors Esther Pauls in 2018 and Mike Spadafora in 2022 as their candidates for MPP. With his help, the PCs built a solid conservative base that, by 2025, paid off and helped the party capture the Mountain seat.

Cooper’s electoral wizardry extended to the federal Conservatives as well. In addition to leading the provincial Tories, Cooper was in charge of the federal group on Hamilton Mountain, serving as the party’s reliable spokesperson when the media came calling. In 2015, during the hotly contested federal election campaign that year, Cooper was quoted in the Stoney Creek News as saying Hamilton’s working people needed to switch from NDP to the Conservatives, telling Metroland reporter Kevin Werner: “It is time for a change…Hamilton has lost 20,000 high paying union jobs since the NDP has been in power in the city.”⁸ It’s worth noting that, when Cooper made those comments, the Conservatives had been in power for over a decade.

The relationship between Cooper and Werner was something that I wrote about two years ago (looking back on that story was a great reminder of how much I’ve grown as a writer in the past few years). Cooper would appear as a “Mountain resident” in some of Werner’s stories, providing anecdotal stories about issues in the community before critiquing a city policy or the actions of J.P. Danko. In a 2023 story, Cooper told Werner that his “street has become an encampment,” all because of, in Cooper’s perspective, the city’s rental licencing bylaw. Cooper provided no proof and Werner did nothing to fact-check or analyze the claim in any detail, nor did he note that Cooper served as the campaign chair for Danko’s 2022 opponent, Sonia Brown.⁹

***

From the moment the campaign launched, Cooper maintained a spot at the front of the pack, coming out strong and asserting his campaign’s strength throughout. Despite Cooper’s attempt to convince the City of Hamilton to ban election signs in 2021, the ward was absolutely packed with his bright yellow and blue lawn signs.¹⁰

The overwhelming show of force was noticeable, reminiscent of the kind of campaign an incumbent councillor or a well-known figure in the community would be able to muster. Given Cooper’s comparatively low profile, this was noteworthy. The sheer number of signs for Cooper across Ward 8 was a hot topic for the posters on the r/Hamilton subreddit, with one commenter musing: “I wondered what all the Rob Cooper signs were for around Mohawk College. I can't recall the last time I've seen so many signs for a city election.” Others complained that Cooper signs began appearing on lawns without the permission of owners, sharing that Cooper’s organization told them some signs were being put up by someone “without the authorization of the campaign.”

A possible explanation for Cooper’s very visible presence in Ward 8 came from McMaster University political scientist Peter Graefe, who told the Spec that Cooper “likely had an advantage due to his long history with the Tories and benefited from the party’s databases — in addition to his networking skill as a former riding association president.”¹¹ Graefe’s comments are in reference to the extremely common occurrence “list sharing” - providing access to a database of identified supporters - between all major political parties and municipal candidates. Without confirmation from the campaign, it is difficult to tell the level of coordination between Cooper’s partisan connections and his non-partisan municipal campaign, though he himself did say he “parked” his Conservative and Progressive Conservative affiliations for the campaign.

Even though Cooper may have downplayed his Tory connections, his campaign was still well-funded and visible. In addition to the signs, Cooper was able to place a front-page ad in the Spec on the Saturday before election day.

***

Despite his front-runner status, Cooper’s platform was decidedly light on specifics. Consisting of just 99 words, Cooper ran on a six-point platform:

1. Tackle Violent Crime 

2. Repair and Rebuild Roads

3. End Tax Increases Exceeding Inflation

4. Scrap the Rain and Vacant Unit Taxes

5. Confront the Housing Crisis

6. Expand Public Transportation

Cooper echoed his focus on crime in his post-campaign interview with the Spec, saying that, while canvassing, he found some Ward 8 residents “were afraid to come out of their homes,” for fear of violent crime.¹¹

A study from Wilfrid Laurier University, commissioned by the Hamilton Police Service (HPS), echoed what Cooper was saying: Hamiltonians feel unsafe and believe their neighbourhoods are becoming less and less safe. The survey found that almost 68% of Hamiltonians are worried about vehicle theft, 55% about break-ins, and 45% about gun violence in their communities. Particularly telling was that many respondents to the survey expressed concern about “disorder” - namely people visibly using or impacted by drugs, people experiencing homelessness and/or mental health crises, and the general presence of encampments in the community.

The only problem is that those worries do not correlate with the reality of crime in the city.

In the Spec’s report on the Laurier study, they noted that crime is down in Hamilton, despite increased concerns.¹² The HPS’s own 2024 Year End Report confirms that crime is on the decline and that serious crimes in Hamilton are down substantially. Homicide is down, robberies are down, assault is down, property violations are down. Yes, there was a 14% increase in the number of stolen cars and the clearance rate for those crimes is quite low, but things like counterfeiting, identity theft, and harassment over the phone and email have both climbed much higher and quicker than car thefts, meaning there’s a dramatic disconnect between what we focus on and what’s fast becoming a real problem.

While people are transfixed by the dramatic Ring camera footage of late night car thefts that plays on a loop on CP24, their elderly relatives are having their identities stolen and their family members are cyberbullying people with increasing intensity. People are frightened when they see people using drugs on the street or experiencing mental health crises in public spaces, but there’s no correlation between visible disorder and the city’s crime rate. People are scared, but seem more frightened about the idea of crime rather than the reality in which we live.

Still, the Spec’s Scott Radley published an op-ed a few days after Cooper was elected noting that crime and taxes will define the next election. “…If Monday’s result is any indication of the way people are thinking, we may just have seen the template for the citywide campaign next fall. And the issues that’ll drive it,”¹³ Radley wrote.

What Radley is saying - based on what Cooper indicated after his victory - is that, despite falling crime rates, crime will be a major topic in the next election.

***

While that might be confusing, Radley’s comments on taxes are far more clear: “It’s entirely likely that many of those seeking office will see what happened on Monday and decide fiscal restraint must be a key plank of their platform. Or they’re deciding to run because of this,” the Spec’s city hall columnist opined.¹³

On taxes, Cooper’s limited platform was simple: keep property tax increases as low as possible and cancel other taxes designed to address the housing crisis and make up for a financial shortfall due to years of underinvestment in the infrastructure needed to ensure our municipal infrastructure has the support needed to function.

When contrasted with Cooper’s other platform planks - tackling crime, improving roads, providing housing, and expanding transit options - there seems to be a mismatch. It appears, from a cursory reading of the 99 words of Cooper’s platform, that he advocated for more services and less tax which, by itself, seems like it will be challenging to accomplish.

The roads budget is ballooning precisely because of years of undertaxation and underinvestment in essential infrastructure. The police budget is the single largest municipal budget line - a line that increases, without fail, every year. The housing crisis remains a challenge for the municipality to address on its own, and yet Cooper is advocating for the abolition of a tax specifically designed to incentivize people to rent out their vacant units or sell properties they aren’t using efficiently, using financial incentives to change consumer and owner behaviour - making the Vacant Unit Tax a decidedly pro-market, pro-capital, conservative idea.

But it wasn’t just Cooper. As Radley points out, the top three candidates - Cooper, Whitehead, and Barry Quinn - all made public safety, improved services, and low taxes the hallmarks of their campaigns. Fifth-place candidate Asuf Khokhar went even further, promising a property tax freeze, absolutely no new taxes, and massive infrastructure and service upgrades. Only Pogoson Acker took a different approach, calling for better communication with residents, budgeting based on ensuring a solid return-on-investment, and building community through investments in youth, seniors, and newcomers.

Now that’s he’s won, it’ll be interesting to see how Cooper squares the contrasting components of his platform and faces the increased challenges of providing municipal services in Doug Ford’s Ontario.

Maybe Radley is right. Maybe the 2026 election will see voters demand more for less, quality on a budget, fiscal restraint and increased spending. Maybe voters will expect more police, smooth roads, on-time garbage collection, upgraded infrastructure, and abundant housing, all for a fraction of what they’re paying now. And maybe, as Radley ominously portends, candidates are gearing up to run precisely because this is the demand from the community.

***

Hamilton’s conservative-leaning establishment has been nothing short of overjoyed at Cooper’s victory. The Bay Observer’s John Best wrote that Cooper’s background would be an asset in the city’s upcoming budget discussions, noting that Cooper: “brings a level of business background to the council table not seen in decades.” Despite noting Cooper’s Conservative and Progressive Conservative affiliations, Best styles him as a “centrist” candidate.¹⁴

Declared and prospective right-wing candidates across Hamilton have been celebrating Cooper’s victory as an indication that the tides are turning and that conservative candidates will clean up at the polls in 2026. Participants in the Spec’s comments section - which has become, in tone and style, little more than a members-only, pay-to-access Facebook comment clearing house - echoed this as well, celebrating a return to business principles and a rejection of “activism”, “far-left ideologues”, and the “organized Marxists [who have taken] over much of our local Council.”

A selection of the comments on the Hamilton Spectator website reacting to Cooper’s victory.

While the city’s right is justified in celebrating the election of a conservative voice to city council, any prognostication about what Cooper’s victory might mean for next year’s municipal election would be overly simple if it resulted in little more than a belief that conservatives will increase the size of their caucus at 71 Main West.

And this is because there has been little consideration for the way the votes split in the election or for the margin of Cooper’s victory. Cooper beat Whitehead by just 87 votes - a margin of just 1.5% of total votes cast. And while 87 votes is more than any one of the bottom 16 candidates in the race was able to earn on their own, and more than the vote total for the bottom 6 candidates in the race combined, it’s still a very, very narrow margin.

Cooper’s victory is as much a win for the first-past-the-post electoral system as it is for the political right. Indeed, earning just 19.4% of the vote means that Cooper enters office with the single smallest mandate of any city councillor in the amalgamated city’s history, beating the previous low that Donna Skelly earned (19.6%) when she beat 22 candidates for the open Ward 7 seat in the 2016 by-election.

The “mandates” for Hamilton City Councillors from 2000 to 2010 - meaning the percent of the popular vote they earned that allowed them to win. Candidates names are accompanied by their ward and when they earned that vote total.

Cooper earning just 19.4% means that over 80% of Ward 8 voters wanted someone else to represent them. And, with voter turnout at 20.9%, that means that Cooper was elected with the support of just 4% of Ward 8 residents.

All that said, Cooper will get another shot at convincing voters shortly; after being sworn in on September 29, Cooper will serve a total of 413 days, 179 of which (or 43.3% of his term in office) will be during the 2026 municipal election, in which he will likely run for a full term.

***

What the results also show is that 17.9% of Ward 8 voters (3.7% of eligible voters) were willing to give Terry Whitehead another chance in office. Despite Mac Christie’s mid-campaign profile of Whitehead that outlined, in detail, his troubled time at city hall, 1,042 voters were willing to take a chance on the seasoned civic politician.

His flashy campaign likely helped remind Ward 8 voters of their erstwhile councillor. Much-discussed campaign ads from September 15 are the perfect encapsulation of the lengths Whitehead went to in his attempt to return to office.

In one, dramatic music plays as headlines from local crime news stories flash across the screen. Stories about car theft rings, home invasions, and gun fights appear as Whitehead, in a voice over, says “Superheroes cannot fix the out-of-control crime in the City of Hamilton”. Then, smash cut to, Whitehead, sitting in the driver’s seat of a replica “Batmobile” that appears to be parked in some kind of storage facility’s parking lot. “I’m not afraid to stand up to the criminals and gangs that are ravaging our city. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again,” he says, as the camera cuts between close-ups and wide shots of the Batmobile. He ends with a call to residents: “Join me to take back our streets and restore respect for our taxpayers.”

In another, Whitehead says that “Hamilton’s not Gotham and Batman’s not real, but crime in Hamilton is very real.” After listing crimes, Whitehead says “When I was on the Police Services Board, I stood up to criminals and gangs and I was tough on crime and I will do it again.” It’s worth noting that members of the police services board do not have any interactions with criminals in any formal capacity, nor do they have the power to direct the Chief of Police or police officers to “get tough” on crime. The end of the ad is a confusing jumble of logos surrounding a quote: “Crime is out of control, while our Politicians are silent” and the words “This Ends 09.22.25”.

The ads were met with near-universal derision from the r/Hamilton subreddit and from Bluesky users when Coleman posted about the ad after they were released. But his Instagram account features a healthy mix of other kinds of ads. Interspersed between his endorsements - from the Chedoke Bocce Club, the Sweet Paradise bakery, and his successor, Ward 14 councillor Mike Spadafora - are ads where Whitehead stands on a trail, talking about assaults that happened on similar looking trails, or ads where Whitehead pauses during canvassing to discuss car thefts (this one’s hard to hear over the buzz of cicadas in the background), or ads standing in front of houses where the candidate chats about the impact of tax increases on seniors.

Whitehead’s online ads were only a small portion of his campaign’s focus. For all his issues, Whitehead is a savvy politician who recognizes that few of the people who were likely to vote in the Ward 8 by-election were spending significant amounts of time on social media. That’s why his message - “crime is out of control” and “respect for taxpayers” - was simple, reflected the beliefs in the community (even if those beliefs don’t always jive with reality), and could be repeated easily. But he made himself visible in plenty of ways; Whitehead’s sign game was one of the few that came close to matching Cooper’s and many of Whitehead’s posts online referenced his canvassing schedule. Indeed, his “packed” schedule was cited as a reason why Whitehead pulled out of a scheduled interview with Christie for the Spec story detailing his comeback attempt.⁵

In the end, his strategy almost paid off. Whitehead won the count at three of the ward’s polling stations, including a decisive 27.4% in the polling station for the area south of the Linc. But Cooper’s vote efficiency at the polling stations closer to the Escarpment, combined with Pogoson Acker’s strong performance in the Centremount and Inch Park neighbourhoods and Barry Quinn’s absolute sweep of the St. Elizabeth’s Village retirement home poll (the former Burlington councillor won 80.5% of the votes cast there) cut off Whitehead’s path to victory. If 87 votes had switched from Cooper to him, though, we’d be looking at Ward 8 Councillor Terry Whitehead once again.

***

What becomes of the “also rans” is somewhat of a mystery. Much was made (including by me) of former councillor and MP Scott Duvall’s entry into the race. But, much like former mayor Bob Bratina’s comeback attempt in 2022, Duvall’s attempt to return to municipal politics after time away in the halls of power of higher orders of government fizzled from the get-go. In the end, Duvall only managed 5.5% of the vote and could not break double digits in the raw vote count in two polls. Former trustee Agostino’s performance was similarly muted, with the candidate earning just a single vote in both the Mohawk College and St. Elizabeth’s Village polls.

Overall, it was a dismal night for all but the top four candidates. There were a host of names known to political watchers in Hamilton that contested who fell well behind relative electoral newcomers. Some candidates who had a visible sign presence and Spec ads, like Kevin Gonci, earned under 100 votes. Other candidates with fewer resources, but who relied on their connections in the community and extensive political experience, like Alex Ballagh, performed much better. But, with 26 candidates and a wide distribution in the vote total, few were able to make any sort of mark at all. It’s telling that the median result for candidates in the Ward 8 by-election was just 49 votes and just 0.83% support.

***

Seventeen years ago, I dreamt of winning Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister and using the profile generated from my success as a springboard to civic politics. I would run against Terry Whitehead, throwing my youth and passion into the race, and connecting with engaged residents who would admire my ideas and judge them based on their merit. I would convince people with well-argued points and a well-researched platform. At the doors of the west mountain, I would meet engaged citizens ready to hear my points with respect and enthusiasm. With some help from my friends, my political allies, and keen neighbours, I would come out on top and win a seat on Hamilton city council at the tender age of 20. I would finally have a chance to do some good.

Today, I can recognize how naïve I was. The recent by-election in Ward 8 featured a campaign where well-connected candidates talked about fighting rising crime, even though crime is falling. Where promises were made by many to lower taxes and increase services. Where former politicians with troubling pasts attempted comebacks and nearly prevailed. Where conservative activists and local media interpreted the results as a fortuitous sign of things to come despite upsettingly low turnout and a decidedly indecisive result.

It is possible that the Spec’s Scott Radley is right that, if by-election’s “result is any indication of the way people are thinking, we may just have seen the template for the citywide campaign next fall. And the issues that’ll drive it.”¹³ It might be that a groundswell of conservative activists will seek council seats across Hamilton, running on campaigns to lower crime, slash taxes, and improve services. And, with low voter turnout, low civic engagement, and a deeply flawed first-past-the-post electoral system, those candidates might eke out victories and guide our civic conversation until 2030.

I don’t know what will happen in 2026 or if the Ward 8 by-election means anything in the grand scheme of things. But what I do know is that none of this - not the by-election results or the issues raised or the campaign - is helping me rekindle the spark of enthusiasm I once carried for civic government. Indeed, sometimes I feel like I’m back there in that echoey McMaster stairwell, congested and confused, trying desperately to hold on to what I had worked toward, feeling like it’s all slipping away.

Then again, maybe I’ll be able to tap into that youthful enthusiasm again. Maybe the spark can be rekindled and grow again. Maybe some new development or policy change or issue will have it all come flooding back. Maybe. Hopefully.

In the mean time, I, like so many Hamiltonians, will just have to wait and see what council’s new dynamic is now that the Ward 8 seat has been filled. And, as we march ever closer to the 2026 municipal election, we’ll all have to give some serious thought to what kind of city we want. And how we’ll turn those thoughts into reality.

I told myself I wouldn’t write much until the investigation into my activities had concluded. The stress of the matter and the specific focus on my newsletter made me instinctively try to avoid anything that might further complicate my already delicate situation. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my very livelihood is on the line right now. The outcome of this investigation may jeopardize my home, my finances, and my overall wellbeing, so you can see why I might want to avoid stepping in anything further.

That said, the benefit of this probing inquiry is that I understand, with newfound depth and intensity, exactly what my rights are within the context of my employer’s code of conduct. Presenting opinions is fine, provided those opinions are made in one’s capacity as a citizen and are not directed toward the employer. Employees may comment generally on matters of public interest, so long as they do not purport to be speaking on behalf of the employer and do not disparage the employer themselves. So, in that respect:

Over the past few days, a “matter of public interest” has exploded in this city, conjuring up memories of “scandals” that are as old as I am. Once again, a highly coordinated and extremely well-funded campaign by right-wing aspiring councillors has made waves locally, reminding us that the nebulous grey area in our municipal elections laws can be exploited by those with enough bravado and enough money.

Home on the Rage

Photo by John Joumaa on Unsplash -Edited by author

Kerr’s Crusade

Since the 1960’s, there’s been a segment of the urban population that is always looking for a chance to, for lack of a better phrase, “fight city hall”. The post-war haze subsiding, the professionalization of the municipal bureaucracy expanding, and a worldwide realignment of political alliances meant that increased scrutiny began to fall on humble city halls across Canada. The Spec ran a humourous column in October of 1960 - weeks before that year’s municipal election - in which a columnist and his wife attempt to persuade a local tax assessor to assign a lower value their house because, in the columnists words, “the taxes on this place are murder.” The column was entitled “Trying To Fight City Hall.”¹

The initial sparks of animosity between everyday residents and municipal institutions had, by the mid-1970’s, grown into a raging inferno. Some politicians made fighting the very municipal institutions over which they had power the entirety of their political identity. In 1975, Vince Agro, then a member of Hamilton’s Board of Control, published a book entitled “You Can Fight City Hall”. The subtitle was “An insider looks at local government for those who foot the bill”. As more and more politicians and residents began to take up arms against city halls, municipal institutions continued a steady march toward professionalization and bureaucratization, seeming to validate the concerns of those itching to fight their local government. This professionalization was in response to growing cities, increased needs, and provincial downloading that made municipalities responsible for far more than they were intended.

Newspapermen of yore were often some of the most ferocious critics of local governments, sniffing out waste and corruption and cronyism at every corner. One of the most dedicated opponents of municipal waste was Toronto Star reporter Tom Kerr. The Star reporter’s fixation on fighting city hall was so intense that much of his 2009 obituary in the paper references it. One reporter said” "Tom hated corruption, he hated the idea that people were abusing power.” Another quipped that "He never gave up asking questions and demanding answers.” An editors observed that he was “"a thorn in the side of jumped up, conceited mandarins" at City Hall.²

In June of 1990, Kerr’s focus turned to an up-and-coming Toronto City Councillor named Jack Layton. An unapologetic progressive who was on the forefront of struggles for social justice and worker’s rights, Layton was widely seen as a contender for the office of Mayor of Toronto in the upcoming 1991 election.

On June 14, 1990, Kerr came out with a salacious front page piece about where Layton and his wife, then-school trustee Olivia Chow, lived. Layton and Chow believed strongly in housing cooperatives, a model of housing that gives regular people control over their homes by pooling resources and funds to guarantee affordability and ensure democratic decision-making over how their buildings are run. Many housing cooperatives were funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to both address affordability concerns in large urban centres and prevent the concentration of people with low incomes in “slum-like” areas. Kerr himself acknowledges this well into the article, with two lines that read: “There is nothing illegal about high-income families living in co-ops. Indeed, the legislation setting up co-ops was specifically aimed at getting a mix of incomes to avoid the development of slums, where everyone is at the same low level of income.”

That’s the point of co-ops. People pay in on a sliding scale dependent on their income and their family situation, as well as do volunteer work around the coop to ensure it is well-maintained. Everyone pitches in, everyone has an ownership stake, no matter if you’re on social assistance or a highly-paid neurosurgeon. Coops aren’t like social housing; they exist to bring people from many backgrounds together in a democratic, fair, optimistic community.

The rest of the article is a mix of out-and-out assault on Layton, the coop in which he lived, and the idea of coop housing altogether. It reveals details about Layton’s income (including some creative math on Kerr’s part, doing back-of-the-napkin calculations about what Layton’s income “actually” was based on his tax bracket and city hall salary), his custody agreement with his ex-wife, the rooms in his unit, and close to his exact address in the Hazelburn Co-Op at 178 Jarvis Street. It slammed the coop for not opening their books to the reporter and not disclosing the incomes and family compositions of private citizens residing in the building. It made the case that, once the coop’s mortgage had been paid back to the CMHC, and “after the taxpayer has poured something like $15 million into the venture, Layton and all the others living in the co-op at the time will be able to sell off the building if they want and walk away with the money,” (Hazelburn remains a coop to this day). Peppered throughout the article were references to how many Torontonians were on the affordable housing waitlist, contrasting this with how Layton “has been vocal in his support of social housing”. The article appears to purposefully muddy the public understanding of coops, all to score a political win.

The article ran under the headline: “Well-to-do Layton lives in ‘affordable’ co-op”.³

Over the following weeks, the scrutiny only intensified. Parkdale councillor Tony O'Donohue demanded a formal city inquiry into Layton’s living situation. Then-acting mayor Tom Jakobek (Mayor Art Eggleton was overseas at the time) quickly ordered city staff to launch a legal investigation into Layton and Chow, which involved the Toronto Police. Progressive Conservative MPPs called for Layton to move or resign and other NDPers living in coops were “exposed”. Federal Conservatives quickly opened an investigation into coop housing in Canada, which was followed in short order by a provincial inquiry.⁴

The circus around Layton grew and grew, with angry letter writers on both sides filling the Star’s Letters to the Editor section with their perspectives. Shortly after the inquiries were launched, the coop was targeted by a gang of protesters, enraged by Kerr’s continued reporting about purported taxpayer subsidies to an experimental housing community. The mob hurled abuse at Layton, his children, and other residents. On the steps of the coop, with the protesters chanting in the background, Layton told Star reporters that he would be moving out of Hazelburn once he could find a new home.⁵

A month after the controversy erupted, with Layton and Chow living in a rented home in Chinatown, both the Toronto Police and the Toronto City Solicitor cleared Layton and Chow of all wrongdoing. Coops were intended to be more democratic, egalitarian communities, populated by people of varying income levels and backgrounds. With his dogged reporting, Kerr forced Layton and Chow from their homes, upending their family lives and painting a target on all housing coops across Canada.⁶

Even though they were cleared of wrongdoing, the perception that Layton and Chow were somehow “cheating the system” persisted. Indeed, to this day, there are still factually-deficient accounts on social media that bring up this story whenever a politician’s housing situation is raised (a 2014 candidate for Dundas councillor here in Hamilton did just that mere days ago). The right-wing tabloid, the Toronto Sun, attempted to revive the story during Chow’s mayoral run in 2014, misleadingly running the claim that the controversy was “true”.

Shortly after, former Mayor John Sewell revealed that it was Tony O’Donohue and Thomas Jakobek, the councillors who initiated the inquiries into Layton, who leaked the story to Kerr. Globe and Mail columnist Loren Lind wrote that Layton had become “a sitting duck for a ploy by councillors [Tony] O'Donohue and Thomas Jakobek to expose him.”⁷

Kerr had been fed a story by Layton’s council opponents, who then used the story’s publication as justification to launch inquiries into him, forcing Layton to move out of his home and damaging his reputation just a year before his anticipated run for Mayor of Toronto. Rather than be a “fight against city hall”, Kerr’s reporting appeared to be a crusade against an outspoken member of city council that drew no distinction between his public service and his private life. And the words he wrote followed Layton around for the rest of his life, influencing how many saw the politician who attempted to live his values. Layton’s exoneration did not matter; the damage done by Kerr and Layton’s council enemies was done.

Hamilton is Home

Now, 35 years later, a story with strikingly similar characteristics has come to Hamilton.

This time, the focus is on Ward 4 councillor Tammy Hwang.

On or before August 18 (it is hard to tell, as the original tweet has been deleted), a local activist posted on X/Twitter about Hwang’s housing status. The specifics of the post are now lost, thanks to the author’s deleting it, but it appears to have raised the fact that Hwang is currently living in a unit managed by Victoria Park Community Homes, a housing provider that offers both subsidized and market rentals across Hamilton.

UPDATE: A friend of the newsletter who screenshotted the initial tweet was kind enough to send it along. The post includes a screenshot of Hwang’s conflict of interest declaration and asks: “Does it bother you that a sitting Councillor lives in taxpayer-subsidized housing while earning $130K a year? I spoke with an elderly neighbour who’s struggling to get by. An 85-year-old shouldn’t be footing the bill for a Councillor’s housing.”

Again, the specifics around the initial post are hard to glean, as tweets from that activist’s account have a persistent habit of going missing for unknown reasons (for reference, a tweet about me made by the same account has been deleted), but Hwang responded, noting that she does rent from Victoria Park Community Homes “but I am a full market tenant where I pay market rent. I have never been a subsidized tenant.”

Ten days later, a user of the r/Hamilton Reddit community posted a photo of a letter, which they said they “received in my mailbox yesterday”. The poster clarified in a comment that the letter arrived “as a simple piece of paper” without an envelope. Another commenter who also received the letter indicated they believed it was sent via Canada Post (through what those in political circles call a “postal walk” where political material is given to Canada Post who will, for a fee, deliver it along with other flyers). Other commenters speculated that it was dropped off by the sender or volunteers. While the specifics may not seem to matter, they have some relevance, as one option involves a considerably more significant amount of money than the other.

Using Canada Post’s website, it isn’t hard to figure out that the cost to deliver a piece of mail to every residential address in Ward 4 would be over $6,500. That’s in addition to printing enough flyers to reach the over 16,000 residential addresses (another $1,200 at least, based on available printing estimates) in the ward between Ottawa Street and the Red Hill Valley.

In big, bold type up at the top, the letter announces it is from “HAYDEN LAWRENCE CONCERNED CITIZEN”. It lists a contact email as hayden@votehayden.ca.

***

Residents might remember Hayden Lawrence as the Conservative Party of Canada’s candidate for MP in Hamilton Centre in 2025. Lawrence earned over 17,000 votes, beating out former MP Matthew Green by about 500 votes for the second place spot.

Lawrence has been politically involved for years. He was the MC for a 2018 Ontario PC leadership showcase in St. Catharines, which foreshadowed his own candidacy for the office of St. Catharines Ward 1 (Merritton) City Councillor later that year. Lawrence finished last with 123 votes.⁸

Early last year, Lawrence sought the Conservative nomination to run federally in the riding of St. Catharines. In an interview with the right-wing online outlet The Niagara Independent, Lawrence said he was “a corporate partnerships manager for Forge FC, as well as for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.” Focusing on cost-of-living issues and the need for better care for seniors, Lawrence said: “I absolutely love my city, and have dedicated my entire adult life to helping coach young people and facilitating community care. I want to take this passion to the House of Commons and advocate for my friends and neighbours, of all ages, who are barely getting by when they should be getting ahead.” At the time, the Elections Canada donor database indicated that Lawrence lived in downtown St. Catharines.⁹

The nomination eventually went to businessman Bas Sluijmers, who was unable to capture the seat amidst the wave of Carneydemonium that propelled incumbent Liberal Chris Bittle back into office for a fourth term. Lawrence was, instead, named Conservative candidate in Hamilton Centre. Like most Conservative candidates, he barely interacted with the media, skipping things like the Cable 14 debate to focus instead on a big money campaign that prioritized signs and advertisements.

***

The letter begins with a rather strange sentence. “It’s come to light that your Ward 4 City Councillor, Tammy Hwang, has declared a conflict of interest during a fall 2024 committee meeting regarding Victoria Park Community Housing.”

I have not been able to find this meeting anywhere in the city’s records. The letter does not clarify which committee meeting, the date, or any of the specifics. UPDATE: I’ve since been able to find the referenced meeting with the help of some friends of the newsletter. It is in reference to the September 18, 2024 General Issues Committee meeting, specifically relating to the fourth item referred to council: “Service Manager Consent for Victoria Park Community Homes Inc. (HSC24035) (Wards 5,6,7,14 and 15) (Item 10.1)” as well as delegations and discussions surrounding the motion. The motion - to allow a service manager with the city’s Healthy and Safe Communities division to authorize a mortgage for some Victoria Park Community Homes properties so they can qualify for a CMHC grant to conduct necessary capital repairs on their buildings - was only necessary because, as per the city report on the matter, “Service Manager consent is required to encumber housing projects transferred as social housing by the Province to municipalities.” The whole reason this was necessary was because the provincial government downloaded responsibilities for housing to municipalities, causing some of the mess we’re in now. Anyway, Hwang’s voluntary declaration of a conflict of interest is published on the City of Hamilton’s public Conflict of Interest Registry.

Regardless, the letter references a public declaration made by the councillor last year. It is curious as to why now, nearly a full calendar year later, it is being raised. The matter of it “coming to light” is hard to separate from the initial tweet regarding Hwang’s housing situation, as there has been absolutely nothing in local media about where Hwang lives. The only thing close to a reference to it on X/Twitter before the initial August 18 post is a post from a fringe troll account (that has 9 followers and an erratic posting style that is difficult to follow, at best) in February of this year that falsely claims Hwang lived in a CityHousing Hamilton unit.

The letter continues in much the same way Kerr’s reporting did. It references Hwang’s salary as a councillor, claims that she has “taken away a spot from someone who is in need of affordable housing,” and throws out info about what Hwang may pay in rent.

“In a time where Hamilton is visibly under duress, I find it completely unacceptable [emphasis his] for the highest paid Councillor, Tammy Hwang, to put her own self interests above the needs of the community,” the letter concludes.

It’s a short letter, but one intended to get residents angry. People are struggling, so referencing Hwang’s salary in comparison to what Lawrence assumes she pays in rent is in service of making it seem like Hwang is somehow only in it for herself. Lawrence says as much when he makes multiple references to Hwang’s living situation as being in “her own self interests”.

***

Later that day, Hwang put out her own statement on social media.

Hwang’s letter calls out Lawrence’s for implying she was occupying a subsidized unit when she, in fact, pays Victoria Park Community Homes’ market rent. She notes that her income is because she serves on 49 committees, 5 arms-length bodies, and as an Association of Municipalities of Ontario board member.

Importantly, Hwang says what many who read the letter must have been thinking: “The letter leads me to believe that the author, Hayden Lawrence, wants to get involved politically in Hamilton…As he’s now a political staffer, I can understand the interest in serving the residents of Ward 4.” The latter point is in reference to Lawrence’s now serving as Hamilton East-Stoney Creek Conservative MP Ned Kuruc’s Stakeholder Relations and Outreach Advisor.

Lawrence’s letter does strongly suggest that he intends to run for Ward 4 councillor against Hwang next year. While he positions himself as a “concerned citizen”, few other citizens of concern - certainly not the people he says are struggling under the current cost-of-living crisis - have the resources to print flyers and have them delivered to many residents in Ward 4, publicly discussing the living situation of their city councillor (though this is reminiscent of other “Concerned Hamiltonians” who had a seemingly endless supply of money and a desire to saddle the current council with blame for every ill in our society).

The letter, and the subsequent social media chatter around it has raised a lot of upsetting points. Other activists have gone wider with their critiques of Hwang, noting that she presently does not live in Ward 4 (she grew up in the ward, her parents live in the ward, and she owns the home in which they live, which she notes in her own response). Small accounts on X/Twitter (again, the overwhelming majority of the activity on that site is driven by bots, so there is no guarantee any of the people posting about this are real) accuse Hwang of “scamming” the system. A portion of the initial post went wide on some local Facebook groups, though the comments were mixed, with some people pointing out that Victoria Park Community Homes has market-rate units while others used the opportunity to blame it all on “that mayor horvath”, whomever that is.

But, ultimately, the letter seems to have not had the enraging impact Lawrence and other right-wing activists thought it would. The response on the r/Hamilton subreddit to Lawrence and the letter has been overwhelmingly negative. Comments include lines like “Hayden should be embarrassed”, “Lawrence definitely underestimated Hwang here”, and how Hwang’s response was “a much more measured and mature response than Lawrence deserved.” While the original posts on X/Twitter referencing Hwang’s housing situation have been deleted, her responses on Bluesky have elicited notable support (particularly for a social media site not known for robust engagement), indicating the community may see Lawrence’s letter for what it is: just another political game by an aspiring city councillor.

***

There are a few issues with this letter that need to be addressed.

The first is Hwang’s living situation itself. Hwang pays market rent in a housing community that is focused on providing units to people of diverse income levels. Were Hwang to have not moved into that unit, another member of the community would be paying market rent to live there. Hwang, or whomever were to occupy that unit, would not be, as Lawrence’s letter states, taking away “a unit that could otherwise shelter a senior on a fixed income or a family struggling to stay afloat”. Just the same as how you, living in your home, are not “taking that unit away” from somebody else. We all need a place to live, no matter whether we’re part of a family struggling to stay afloat or a member of city council. We should be pouring money into affordable housing - especially housing coops - but we aren’t. It was Conservative governments who pulled back from building affordable housing and it was Conservative governments that failed to invest in housing when they had the chance over the past 40 years.

It is a distraction tactic of the highest order to personalize this issue, focusing on one city councillor, when the party for which Lawrence ran has one of the worst records on providing affordable housing in recent Canadian history. The assumption is that people will be so ignorant of history and so fixated on the personal element of this scandal that they won’t stop to ask “hey, wait, shouldn’t everyone’s rent be lower?”

The hope is that this campaign won’t bully Hwang into moving, which can be a deeply disruptive and challenging thing to do, particularly while doing the amount of work Hwang does. Serving on as many committees and arms-length bodies as she does is evidence of her commitment, so needing to change living situations simply because of a campaign by political opponents to besmirch her reputation would be upsetting, to say the least. It worked after Kerr’s crusade against Layton; hopefully the same won’t happen here.

The second is Lawrence’s part in this affair. It isn’t a bad thing to want to run for public office. Many Hamiltonians sign up to do just that every election. What is concerning (putting a lot of weight on that word) is that Lawrence seems to be well-funded enough to spend a considerable amount of time and money delivering a political attack ad to the residents of Ward 4 over a year before the 2026 municipal election.

Lawrence is operating in the grey area that exists in our municipal elections laws. When someone isn’t officially a candidate, they can spend whatever they want on municipal political messages. That’s why the shadowy dark money group “Concerned Hamiltonians” was able to spend over $60,000 on print ads in The Spec in 2023 and 2024. This letter suggests Lawrence will be a candidate for Ward 4 councillor in 2026, meaning that this letter serves to both get his name out there and set the agenda before nominations even open.

There’s some level of irony in Lawrence so intently focusing on the affordability crisis through expensive political advertisements sent directly to residents of Ward 4. That irony continues when you contrast how Lawrence, in his letter, said “we must demand higher standards from our leadership” while knowing that he can spend with impunity because there’s no law governing what a prospective candidate can do before an election.

And there’s the question of political coordination. This all seems to have kicked off with social media posts, followed quickly by Lawrence’s letter, all supported by the usual accounts on social media. The messaging was similar among accounts and posts. The focus was intense and targeted. The whole thing gives the impression of a being the work of a highly-organized group of political actors keen to influence the 2026 municipal election.

Indeed, we seem to be looking at the work of a well-funded right-wing slate with ties to the local Conservative Party establishment and identifiable political figures in the community. The level of coordination between seemingly distinct accounts and the amount of money that this endeavour cost gives the impression that there is more organization happening behind the scenes than anyone is willing to publicly admit.

The activity of these aspiring politicians is often couched in deliberately obfuscating language. They’re not well-funded politicos; they’re just “concerned citizens”. They’re not actively organizing council campaigns; they’re everyday “engaged residents”. They’re not actively working to influence our politics; they’re “fed-up parents, homeowners, and taxpayers”.

Going after Hwang’s living situation was a very poor decision. Judging by the response online, the move was seen as more cynical political gamesmanship. It was designed to enrage people, but did so without offering anything of substance or any ideas on how Lawrence would actually make Ward 4 better. It was a personal attack that, in its focus on specifics about Hwang’s life, came across as mudslinging.

While this letter may have been intended to be Lawrence’s introduction to Ward 4 voters as a candidate for council, it seems to have missed the mark by a longshot. And you know what they say about first impressions…

The Incline's 107th Edition Spectacular!

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash - Edited by author

A lot has happened since last week’s edition! I entitled that one “The Heat”, reflecting on the extreme heat wave that had gripped Hamilton since the end of June and that, at the time, did not appear to be easing up.

Since then, Hurricane Erin has moved closer and closer to the eastern seaboard of the United States. This, combined with a persistent low in the north Atlantic, has jostled the jet stream, creating a “trough” over Ontario into which cold Arctic air has been pouring. This fascinating weather event means that our persistent heat wave now seems like a distant memory. Across the city, Hamiltonians are breaking out their fall jackets and cozy sweaters, as though it were late October.

The heat surrounding my own situation at city hall remains cranked, though. I’m still working through things and hope to have everything resolved eventually. I’m not going to lie; things have been tough because of this investigation. But I’m trying to keep my head held high and focus on doing what I can to stay active in the community.

While I will still avoid discussing matters of civic importance, there are a few things I wanted to write about. This newsletter is as much a project to help me work through my thoughts on issues of the day as much as it is a way for me to provide my unique insights into our politics, our history, and our community.

So here are some news stories I think deserve more attention, as well as links to some of my favourite Incline editions from the past few months. Think of it as part-clip show (for The Incline’s 107th edition, if you count all the editions written as “The Sewer Socialists”), part-nod in the direction of things that we should pay attention to over the next while.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference wrapped up yesterday in Ottawa. While the main focus of this year’s conference was intended to be about the brutal toxicity gripping our civic conversations and how municipal politics is becoming unbearable for even the most hardened of politicos, these conferences never end up going as planned. The annual AMO conference is a chance for provincial and federal leaders to take the stage in front of a captive audience of, not just civic politicians, but the national media.

Near the end of the conference, Education Minister Paul Calandra participated in a discussion regarding trustees, specifically in the context of his placing some of the province’s largest school boards - boards representing 44.8 percent of Ontarians - under “supervision”.

Calandra said that he is presently examining school board governance models and that he is “open to” the idea of eliminating the position of elected school trustee entirely. As a reminder, school trustees have been elected in Ontario since 1816, so Calandra is saying that the Ford government is toying with the idea of eliminating over 200 years of democratic governance of Ontario’s public schools. Calandra even stated that the government may abolish the office of trustee before next year’s municipal elections.

School trustees immediately sounded the alarm, reminding reporters that they’re often some of the first ones calling for increased funding and better policies. Trustees work to advance the interests of the local community - a community that pays into the public school system regardless of whether they have children.

Previous attempts to eliminate trustees have all failed miserably. In Nova Scotia, the school councils designed to replace trustees were unable to function and schools became, in the words of a UOttawa professor, “less responsive to parents and community members.”¹ The elimination of the office of trustee remains controversial, with the province’s NDP trying to force their governing PCs to bring elected trustees back.

In Quebec, the province eliminated trustees to create “school service centres”, but have been bogged down in a fight with English-language boards over their continued existence and the right for Anglophone Quebecers to elect their own representatives. There’s been little said about the matter in English-language media, but Quebec has a tendency to oscillate wildly when it comes to matters of local governance (see the saga of amalgamations and deamalgamations that has created enclaves within enclaves on the island of Montreal).

So it’s possible that, on your 2026 municipal ballot, there will be no line for school trustee, marking just one more way that Ford’s government is reshaping the entire province however they please.

Speaking of which: supervised consumption sites.

When the Ford government mandated the closure of supervised consumption sites (SCS - places where people could use drugs, supervised by trained staff who could reverse overdoses and get them help, including resources on how to overcome their addictions), they did so because of what seemed like shocking statistics.

In Ottawa, so the government claimed, crime was 250 percent higher around SCS locations than in the rest of the city. At last year’s AMO conference, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said that violent crime near one SCS location in Ottawa was up 146 percent.

Those numbers would be shocking, if they were true. But they aren’t.

Last year, the Ottawa Citizen found that, in the years the SCS that Jones focused on was active, crime in the surrounding ward actually dropped 6.2 percent. When asked, the Ottawa Police could not provide data proving the Health Minister’s claims, and a spokesperson for Jones, when asked to provide proof, simply said the number “speaks for itself”.² Questions around the actual statistics hung in the air for nearly a year, with the Ministry unable or unwilling to provide evidence for their claims.

CTV did a follow-up this year, providing us with some actual hard data. The investigation by CTV found that, no, crime was not 146 percent higher around the site Jones fixated on, but was, instead, 14 percent higher than the city average. This was mainly because of small crimes like drug offences, theft under $5,000, and disturbing the peace. It appears that the Minister took stats from 2018, when there was a 158 percent increase in the number of violent crimes around the SCS location, and ran with that. The 158 percent increase seems jarring, but it means that, in 2017, there were 12 reported violent crimes and, in 2018, there were 31.

And, now that it has closed, residents are noticing more crime than before. The closure of the SCS location hasn’t improved the situation and has, instead, forced people who use drugs out into the street where circumstances are less safe for everyone involved.

The Ministry of Health made the unilateral decision - without consulting addictions specialists, healthcare workers, or experts in the field - to close SCS sites and transition to abstinence-only Homeless and Addictions Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs in 2024 based on numbers that appear, at this point, to be almost entirely made up.

From trustees to SCS locations to provincial parks, the Ford government continues to reshape Ontario into the province that works best for them and their wealthy supporters. While it might seem like things can only get worse because we are years out from the provincial election, there are two events happening shortly that might offer some hope.

The first is the Ontario Liberal convention, happening from September 12 to 14 in Toronto. The province’s third party is riddled with internal dissent and, if leader Bonnie Crombie does not achieve a suitable level of support from party members in her leadership review vote, there may be change at the helm of the Liberals. It is hard to say if that will or will not happen, but the debate will be interesting regardless.

The very next weekend, the Ontario NDP meets for their convention in Niagara Falls. Leader Marit Stiles’ position looks far safer than that of Crombie. Stiles - who says she is “taking nothing for granted” heading into the convention - has been listening to party members, engaging in some critical self-reflection, and is working to rebuild the party to get it ready for the next provincial election.

Now, there’s obviously more to look forward to with the ONDP than the Ontario Liberals. Crombie’s tenure as leader has been disastrous and the party seems content to be the Tories with different branding. But with the federal NDP’s leadership race already energizing a new crop of young activists, the possibility for spillover that can revitalize the province’s opposition is positively exciting.

Okay, so that’s what I think folks should be considering over the next while. But, if you’re hankering for a more in-depth Incline experience, please check out some of these recent pieces with which I was very happy:

The Relocation - June 7, 2025: The story of Hamilton’s Alpha Neighbourhood at Burlington Street East and Sherman Avenue North. For decades, this diverse, working-class enclave was tucked away from view, thriving in the shadow of expanding industry. As the economy changed and the city’s policies shifted, the community began a slow march into oblivion. This was the written version of a talk I gave at my first Incline: LIVE! show back in June. I’d love to do another one of those, so stay tuned!

Victoria, Queen of the Gore - May 16, 2025: The story of Gore Park’s iconic statue of Queen Victoria and the civic boosters who campaigned hard for it at the turn of the century. With conversations abounding about the legacy of Hamilton’s statues, this piece looks at the one that stands guard over the core.

What force on earth is weaker - February 26, 2025: Right before the 2025 provincial election, I published this piece on the Hamilton Labour Schism of 1934 and how the parallels might be seen in the campaign for Hamilton Centre.

Alright, that’s the 107th Edition Spectacular! Well, 24th edition if you only count things published as The Incline.

I also want to take this time to thank everyone who has reached out to offer their support in their own way over the past two weeks. When this all kicked off, I felt extremely down. But the way in which people have shown their support has helped lift my spirits and keep my head above water. Thank you all, so much, for your kindness and support. It means the world to me.

But first, a word from The Incline.

Hello, dear reader. I hope you’ve been keeping cool during this latest, record-breaking extreme heat event (heat is also the main topic of the newsletter today!).

As summer winds down, I’ll be finally taking some time off from newslettering. This is for two reasons.

The first is that I have so many outstanding projects to get done. There’s a lot on my plate and I need a little time to focus so I can really address them.

The second is that the issue I covered in my last post has been escalating considerably. I can’t say too much about it at this point (because there is a lot I simply do not know right now), but I’ve been informed that formal complaints about The Incline and my general political activities in the community have been made to officials with the City of Hamilton. I need to take some time so I can step back, assess what my options are, and figure out what I can and cannot say while this matter is outstanding.

I have not dealt with a formal complaint like this before. I’m unsure what might come of it or what impact it might have on my current job and future employment prospects. And I don’t know what this means for my political activities in the community. What I can say is that I don’t want to aggravate an already tense situation by posting for the sake of posting. I am already seeking assistance in this matter and will do my part to ensure a speedy resolution.

I want to thank all the people in the community who have shown their support over the past week. The posts, messages, and new subscribers have reminded me of what a strong and caring community we have in this city. I truly appreciate the support and thank everyone who has stuck with me this long.

I am aiming to be back to regular posting in September, though will keep everyone updated as things progress. Until then, tell your friends about The Incline, get involved in your community, go meet neighbours and friends out in the real world, do in-depth reading on something you’re passionate about, watch a council meeting, make sure your voter registration is up-to-date, and learn one new fact about Hamilton. That way, we’ll have a lot to talk about when I get back.

See you very soon! Okay, on with the newsletter!

The Heat

Photo by author - edited by author

Fall is coming. The grasshoppers and cicadas are making themselves known, chirping and buzzing, ushering in the coming cool days. Sometimes, depending on which way the wind is blowing, you can smell it in the air. The smell is one of crispness, blended with decaying plant matter and muddied soil. Halloween candy is popping up at stores around the city and the return to school is nearly upon us.

But summer is putting up one hell of a fight, clinging ferociously to Hamilton and much of Ontario. Most representative of this persistence is the uncomfortable heat that we have all endured.

Seems like much of this summer has been positively sweltering. With little rain, blistering sun, and our only relief coming from the obfuscation of the sun thanks to excessive wildfire smoke in the air (that’s healthy, right?), it seems like the whole city has just been trying to survive, rather than thrive, since mid-June. The average summer temperature recorded up until yesterday at the NavCan weather station at the Hamilton International Airport has been 28.6 degrees Celsius.

Those kinds of temperatures bring with them a host of issues. The still, warm waters of Hamilton Harbour are the perfect conditions for the growth of dangerous blue-green algae toxins, which have once again bloomed at the much-beleaguered Pier 4 Park Beach. This bloom required Public Health to close the beach and notify Hamiltonians that coming into contact with the water there can be dangerous. The dry temperatures have also worried the Fire Department, which has issued an immediate fire ban in an effort to prevent an avoidable catastrophe. And, of course, sustained high temperatures has meant the return of

Our first heat warning of the year started on June 22, 2025. It was upgraded to an “extended heat warning” on June 24 before coming to an end a day later. Then there was a little two day warning from July 5 to 7, before we launched into a nearly week-long heat event from July 11 to July 17. Another two day event settled from July 24 to 26, quickly followed by another on July 27. That one lasted until July 31. Our latest kicked off on August 9, becoming an “extended” warning on August 11 before being cancelled today.

That brings the total number of heat warning days to 24 out of the 55 days there have been of summer so far. That means that we’ve been under heat-related warnings for 44% of the summer. A full 24 days of extreme heat beats the 2019 to 2023 average number of heat warning days, which was 14.

***

But what is a heat warning, anyway? Sometimes you see warnings from the City of Hamilton, other times from Environment Canada. Who’s in charge!?

Well, both groups have a role to play. Environment Canada provides the scientific data necessary to understand current temperatures and projected forecasts. This data helps to, as Environment Canada notes on their website, “support public health and emergency management officials across Canada.” Hamilton Public Health takes that data and makes a determination about our own local Heat Warning. If they issue a warning - assuming the data they get from Environment Canada indicates we’re looking at two or more consecutive days of daytime highs of at least 31 degrees Celsius or a humidex over 40 degrees Celsius - then a host of city policies kick in. Cooling locations are opened and advertised, open swims at public pools become free, and residents are encouraged to reduce their risk of heat-related illnesses by staying indoors or in a cool place.

Our own local heat warning system is actually quite new. Prior to 2007, Hamilton had no local heat protocols, which became a notable problem during the sweltering summer of 2005. The only option available to the city was the declaration of a State of Emergency if temperatures rose above 40 degrees Celsius, which was cool comfort to those enduring days of +30 degree weather that summer. After Toronto adopted a heat alert system, Hamilton piggybacked off theirs, but that policy was deemed to be ineffective, given the dramatically varying temperatures on either side of Lake Ontario.

Just after Victoria Day, 2007, a unique made-in-Hamilton heat alert system went into effect, featuring a multi-stage ramp up based mainly on humidity. Under that system, a “heat advisory” was triggered if the humidex climbed over 40 degrees Celsius for one day. That became a “heat warning” after two days, followed by a “heat alert” after three days of a humidex of +40 degrees or one day of a base temperature over 45 degrees Celsius.

There were critiques about the program from the beginning. People working to eliminate poverty asserted that the criteria for issuing an alert was too high and noted that there was almost nothing the city did after issuing advisories, warnings, and alerts, forcing Hamiltonians to fend for themselves in the heat.¹

For three years, the system lay dormant, with the city’s temperature never quite meeting the threshold for the alert system to be activated. In the interim, the city strengthened their policies around extreme heat, finally instituting some of the recommendations from anti-poverty activists, including the cooling centres and extended pool hours we know today. Then, in early July, 2010, Hamilton issued its first local heat warning after three consecutive days of +32 degree weather.²

The city’s next heat alert was issued over a year later, in late July, 2011. During that heat wave, The Spec did a bunch of vox pops across the city to figure out how Hamiltonians were dealing with the temperatures. Among the most enthusiastic about the heat was an employee at the Stoney Creek Dairy who was thrilled at the lines of customers “out the door”. Less thrilled was a visitor from the UK who remarked that “It’s not this hot in England…it’s like we’re competing with Dubai right now.”³

Hamilton experienced heat alerts almost yearly from that point on. In 2015, the system was revamped to ensure coordination from all levels of government, doing away with the city’s advisory/warning/alert system. The new Harmonized Heat Alert Response System (HHARS) created “levels”, with level one being triggered when the base temperature was 31 degrees Celsius or over, up to level three after three or more days. The following year, the Chief Medical Officer of Health issued nine heat alert days. The system was quietly adjusted to avoid reference to the “levels”, sticking with just a plain old “heat warning” for events spanning one or two days and “extended heat warnings” for those at three or more.⁴  

***

The spiciest day this summer came just a few days into the season. That old reliable NavCan weather station at the airport clocked a daytime high of 34.1 degrees Celsius on June 23, during that first heat warning of 2025. But how does that stack up against hot days from Hamilton’s past?

Well that question is actually quite hard to answer. Canada first began to collect reliable weather data in the 1870’s, with the quality of data collection and forecasting growing dramatically in the early 20th century to the point where, in 1935, Canadians could tune into the Trans-Canada Network (the early CBC) and get a fairly reliable weather forecast for their area.⁵

That’s why there’s some debate as to Hamilton’s hottest ever day.

Some will claim that July 14, 1868 was the hottest day ever in Hamilton’s history. The Evening Times had little to say about the heat, dedicating their front page to advertisements for a great hat sale held by John Egan at his “City Hat Store” at #8 King Street and a rather dull piece of serialized fiction told from the perspective of a dying man, reflecting on his mother. The only “heat” referenced by the paper that day was the ongoing investigation into accusations against the city’s Chief of Police for accepting bribes from prisoners. The Spec’s reporting on that day was also light on information about the heat, though the paper did note that the heat and drought “is visible in the stunted appearance of the raspberries brought into market.”

The following day, the Times reported - in their “Melange” section of short news briefs - some deaths around Ontario from the heat and one Mr. R. Osborne’s recording of a maximum temperature of 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41.1 Celsius) in the shade at Central Public School at 3:00 PM on July 14. But that issue wasn’t of primary importance to the editors of the Times, who focused instead on imploring the “City Fathers” to introduce “a by-law suppressing the intolerable nuisance of permitting the city to be turned into a goose pasture.” Some things never change.

The Spec, alternatively, dedicated a lengthy column to the heat, beginning with the line: “It is probably hardly necessary that we should inform our readers that the weather is exceedingly warm…”. The Spec’s tips for beating the heat? Staying out of the sun and avoiding alcohol, except in the case of those with a “feeble pulse”, who should take “iced whiskey or wine and water [which] will very generally afford relief.”⁶

Others will claim Monday, July 13, 1936 was Hamilton’s hottest day, with a recorded high of 41 degrees Celsius. Amidst a devastating drought in the western United States and Canada, Hamilton’s temperatures jumped, leaving few with a way to cool down. The Spec reported that, over the weekend, five residents died from heat stroke while a Toronto-area teenager drowned after loosing consciousness in the water, trying to stay cool at Hamilton Beach. Over the course of the heat wave, which lasted from July 8 to July 15, at least 80 people would die, leading The Spec to report that the city’s mortality rate had not been higher since the Flu Epidemic of 1918/1919.

Mass fainting events were reported after an Orange Order parade on the grounds of Dundurn and Saturday baseball games were postponed. Sales of beer and buttermilk skyrocketed, as did trips up the Mountain so overheated lower-city residents could take in the cool breezes atop the Escarpment.

The Hamilton Police even took the dramatic step of ignoring the Sabbath law and allowing the city’s ice dealers to deliver their frosty product to those fortunate enough to own refrigerators. Just as shocking to The Spec was the decision by Chedoke Golf Course mentor Alfie Sims to close his pro shop at 6:00 PM after few people braved the summer heat to get in a round.⁷

But the most recent date with extreme temperatures had to be July 7, 1988, when the base temp rose to 38.8 degrees Celsius. That summer, Hamilton was gripped by record heat, drought, and smog, which settled over the city and refused to budge. The Spec’s local section ran stories about the best kind of air conditioners to buy, printed pictures of what was supposed to be the city’s skyline from the Sydenham Hill (the photo showed nothing but a hazy blur), reassured local homeowners that their crispy grass was “just taking a rest”, and warned residents that the weather would stay hot for a long while.

Remarkably, The Spec was prescient, running an editorial that read, in part: “Some scientists opine it’s a foretaste of the greenhouse effect that will make the local climate hotter and drier as airborne pollution wraps the planet in an envelope of dirt, as deforestation thins down the oxygen trees feed into the atmosphere.” The editorial wasn’t about climate change specifically; it was lauding Hamilton’s steel manufacturers for their efforts to recycle water through the plants. The editorial did not mention the impact of the plants’ burning coal on the smog crisis that sent scores of Hamiltonians to hospital that year.⁸

***

We know that human-caused climate change is real, and poses an existential threat to humanity’s survival on this planet. It isn’t some abstraction or far-off problem that will never impact us. This summer should be a stark reminder that climate change is here and is impacting our day-to-day lives. We have endured a full 24 days of extreme heat and there are still 39 more days of summer to go.

Yes, there have been temperature spikes in the past, but back-to-back consistent days of emergency-levels of heat, breaking records year after year, should be enough to prove to even the most hardened of skeptics that it is time to act.

Big businesses need to be held accountable for their impact on the environment, we need to shift away from designing our cities around cars that are growing in size and consumption, and we need to get serious about real, renewable energy. In Hamilton especially, our local steel manufacturers need to work toward green steel and stop the persistent burning of fossil fuels that have contributed to days of poor air quality in the city.

If we don’t make changes, we will keep breaking heat records. And the day might come where the casualties of the Heat Wave of 1936 seem low in comparison. Even though every person is impacted by extreme heat, it is always the most vulnerable who suffer the most in these situations.

Sure, we’re dealing with persistent heat warnings. But those warnings should be telling us something - telling us to act before extreme heat becomes the norm.

Scandal! At The Disco

Photo by Randy Kay on Unsplash - Edited by author

Anything fun happen recently? I can’t think of anything interesting that’s occurred…

The plan was to take this week off writing the newsletter. It’s summer, after all, and I’ve been swamped with stuff.

I mean, I have a full schedule over here! Secret cabal meetings in the morning, nefarious socialist plotting in the afternoon, quick break to talk about feelings over a vegan snack, pursuing the homosexual agenda after dinner, and dancing nude around a bonfire lit with nothing but taxpayer money at midnight really takes it out of a guy!

But actually, I spend most of my days on job applications. Since wrapping up my postdoc at Toronto Metropolitan University a while back, I’ve bounced between research contracts that have, as of late, dried up. Indeed, for the past four months, I’ve been living on nothing but small honourariums while trying to do my own research. Even when you don’t have a permanent position in academia, it’s still “publish or perish”, with the latter option taking on entirely too much weight.

The rest of my days are spent at my other job. See, for the past year or so, I’ve served as a “communications advisor” to Ward 1 Councillor Maureen Wilson. After working together in a volunteer capacity during my stint as chair of the Strathcona Community Council, Maureen asked if I would take my skills (graphic design and the ability to write, seemingly forever, and without pause) and help her better engage the residents of Ward 1.

In our initial conversations, Maureen told me she didn’t want me to stop writing my newsletter and would never ask me to avoid critiquing her if I saw the need. My newsletter long predated my relationship with the Ward 1 office and I didn’t want my passion project that I did in my own time to suffer because of my need for employment.

I was upfront when I took on the role: I would still be searching for academic work, would simply help Maureen communicate her positions and the actions of council, wouldn’t “interface” with constituents, wouldn’t “write policy”, and wouldn’t get in the way of Maureen’s political positions.

That last point was important. While we are aligned on many things - the need for walkable communities, better cycling infrastructure, rapid and reliable transit, evidence-based policies, support for the arts, and a commitment to the environment - but we aren’t aligned on everything. But working together shouldn’t mean you agree with someone on 100% of issues. That kind of person would be damn near impossible to find. Even with my partner, my closest friends, and (especially) my family, we don’t align on every single thing.

I always come back to the great American feminist activist Loretta Ross’s conceptualization of “circles of influence”. Ross identifies people as “percenters” - 90, 75, 50, 25, and 0.

90 Percenters are your closest allies. They share your world view and they will work with you on almost everything. Even when you disagree, they usually won’t align themselves with the “other side” and try to undermine your work. There may be advocates for economic justice and advocates for climate change action who will almost always be on the same side, but there are just some things where the other activist takes charge because they’re more knowledgeable, more connected to an issue, or more skilled at breaking through with a particular community.

75 Percenters are, as Ross says, “people who probably share a good portion of our worldview, but not totally.” It’s key to “accept large islands of disagreement in a sea of assent.”¹  

Not to apply crass labels, but that’s a close enough description for Maureen and I. I’m always happy to work with people with whom I share many values, because there’s strength in numbers and, when you get enough people together, everyone’s unique skillsets can be used to make our world a better place. I likely wouldn’t have taken the role if we were more like 50 or 25 percenters, and certainly would not have done so were we at 0 percent.

I’ve never hidden my position. People know I work with Maureen, including community members, other members of council, other council staff, local MPPs, colleagues at TMU, and people with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

It isn’t some big secret. But I’ve also never advertised my role because it never seemed relevant to the newsletter or my general public presence in the community. I don’t get any special insights working for the Ward 1 office that I wouldn’t otherwise get through my usual work. I’ve never had unique access that any other resident would have, never seen “leaked” documents, never had my ears to the wall for confidential conversations that have allowed me to write anything special in this newsletter.

There’s a very strict firewall between the work I do for the Ward 1 office and any of my everyday political work, this newsletter included. Not that anything I do for the Ward 1 office would impact the newsletter in any way. See, my job for Ward 1 is graphic design and newsletter copy. I fire up Adobe Illustrator, make some graphics to explain the new developments in the ward, road closures, street festivals, etc. And, every other week, I write about the same issues for Maureen’s newsletter to residents. All that copy is then sent to the Ward 1 office where things are changed, edited, and packaged for residents. Then, I post on social media that the newsletter is out, and we’re done!

The constant critique of city hall is that it’s an inaccessible black box that never communicates things effectively. I have been hired to take my skills and use them to help inform the residents of Ward 1 as to what’s going on in their community and what city hall is up to on any given week. I think there’s value in that.

That’s very different than this newsletter project of mine. With this, I get to focus on things I care about or things that bother me. Sometimes, things happen in this city that need a little more scrutiny. I am (not to toot my own horn or anything) a pretty good researcher. I put pieces together, dig into things, and try to present them in a compelling way. You may not agree with my perspective or you may be here only for the history side of things, but that’s okay; in a vibrant and fully-formed democracy, people should have different opinions and should feel free to share them.

When former Ward 8 councillor JP Danko and Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls opposed the safe-supply Healthbox program on the mountain last November, I sat through hours of council recordings to transcribe what they said, put it in context, and offered my own commentary. When Ward 5 councillor Matt Francis and Ward 9 councillor Brad Clark tussled over the Red Hill Valley Expressway and the Joint Stewardship Board in April, I did the same thing. I went through all the candidates who have stood for local office since 1960 in the “Sage Council” edition, mapped every federal riding in Hamilton’s history before this year’s federal election, and went through the debate around online voting that failed earlier this summer (once again watching council recordings to ensure I got everyone’s phrasing right).

***

One of the main figures in that last one there was Ward 3’s Andrew Selman. I’ve written about him three times since March (first in the context of Danko’s posting about people experiencing homelessness, second in reference to his attempt to turn Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch’s participation in a softball league into a political scandal, and third, the above post discussing his delegation to council to oppose online voting).

He’s a very interesting figure in the community, having very quickly and skillfully built a political profile over the space of a few years, becoming one of the most recognizable non-elected political figures in Hamilton. He’s professionalizing his online presence, attending council meetings as a delegating participant, and is laying the groundwork for a very strong council campaign in Ward 3.

The story gets convoluted here, but the simplified version is that, after meeting some other councillors’ staff for the very first time on Wednesday (I work from home and as needed, so I don’t see many other staff members), Selman and other community activists were quickly made aware of my contract with Maureen Wilson.

Damn near close to exactly 24 hours after meeting those staffers, Selman posted a teaser to social media, claiming he had a “barn burner of a #HamOnt municipal political scandal story.”

I was alerted to this by…just so, so many people. Dozens of friends and colleagues texted, DMed, and called to tell me that it looked like Selman was talking about me. Even though I’m not a “journalist” and the characterization of my work as “hit pieces” is patently unfair, it was clear who he was talking about.

So I took to Bluesky to let the community know that the barn that was being burned was, indeed, mine. I was later informed that Selman also posted similar things to the rather extreme social media site Twitter/X, but my account on there hasn’t been active in years (you know, because of it becoming a safe haven for white supremacists, bigots, and far-right extremists of all kinds) and I didn’t see any value in posting a response there since current reporting indicates Twitter/X is now 75% bots.

Shortly after I published my thread, Selman responded, opening his post with “Appreciate that Chris”. Keen observers will note that, in the “Together in Electric Democracy” edition, I pointed out how, during his delegations, Selman says “Appreciate that” after the chair scolds him for talking over or debating members of council. Notes, it would seem, are being taken.

I had originally wanted to go through his response point-by-point, as it is equal parts spin and extrapolation due to a lack of knowledge on the situation. But that would be exhausting for everyone. There are some points deserving clarification, though.

He gets the former name of the newsletter wrong, seemingly to imply that I was the “Sewer Socialist”. I got tired of explaining that the sewer socialists were turn-of-the-century social democrats in Milwaukee and explained in “Therefore, be it resolved” that I needed a rebrand after a particularly dark time for me politically.

He claims Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch and I are teammates “on a taxpayer subsidized softball team”, once again seeking to drag the Steel City Inclusive Softball Association through the mud because the league earned two Ward 2 Community Grants since 2023 (grants that have also been awarded to, among others, Supercrawl, the Hammer City Roller Derby, Theatre Aquarius, local churches, downtown outreach groups, and Italian cultural festivals - and the North End Breezes, the lovely monthly community paper in the North End to which Selman has contributed). Cameron and I aren’t on the same team and, metaphorically speaking, not even in the same league (he’s a very good softball player and I am…not).

He tries to make a scandal of Terry Cooke’s promotion of my newsletter (though he calls him “former Councillor”; since Selman seems focused on American-style honourifics, it should be noted that the proper phrasing would be “former Regional Chair Terry Cooke”). But Terry is more than capable of holding his own and trying to make a scandal of two politically involved people knowing each other in Hamilton is like trying to make a scandal of it being sunny and hot in summer.

In his screenshotted post, Selman writes: “It’s worth nothing that when a political staffer is actively shaping public narratives-commenting on private citizens and elected officials alike-while drawing a City salary. Voters deserve transparency about who is driving the message and why.” Some of Selman’s associates on social media have also raised this, asking if I’m “writing my newsletter on city time”.

I, of course, don’t “draw a salary”. I’m an overeducated millennial; I have never once, in all my 35 years, ever earned a salary. I earn a wage for work done. When copy is needed or graphic design is requested, I do it, and log hours. I am paid based on the hours I work and no more. There are no perks, there are no extras, and, if there’s no work, there’s no paycheque. That’s how wage work goes. Just like when I worked at Fortinos, at the McMaster campus bookstore, and as a contract professor.

Without getting into the specifics, I would need to work without a break, nonstop, for around six years, to even come close to costing “taxpayers” one single Canadian dollar per household. I’m so far away from the Sunshine List, I may as well be in the Mines of Moria. I do my newsletter on my own time, in my own way, with my own skills. Any assertion to the contrary is not just false, but comes close to defamatory.

I get that people might want transparency. But I don’t hear calls for John Best’s Bay Observer to stop writing things critical of Cameron and council’s “left wing” because they host advertisements for Mike Spadafora and Esther Pauls.

And I certainly don’t hear anyone raising a stink around the fact that Hamilton’s single most notorious and pointed Twitter troll, who has spent years trying to “shape public narratives”, earned over $500,000 over the course of 5 years as a “special advisor” to a former mayor. For context, I’d need to work every day of every week without break or vacation until I was over 80 in this job to earn the same amount - an amount that troll earned after having worked for the city for decades.

***

I have been deeply, deeply critical of Selman in the past. Using the same “circles of influence” as before, I’d say we’re somewhere on the lower end of the scale between 25 and 0 percenters. Indeed, I’ll be the first to admit that my critiques of Selman have been excessively biting as of late. Trying to draw a local inclusive softball league into a political fight against an openly gay councillor during Pride Month was something with which I took issue. I was animated, I was hurt, and I was sticking up for my community - a community that has seen more than its fair share of attacks over the course of my entire lifetime. I did not like his behaviour at council, talking over and debating certain councillors and disparaging city staff because he’s already a declared candidate for council.

Citizens, in their own time, are free to express their opinions and involve themselves in the day-to-day life of a democracy. When a candidate for council expresses an opinion that I do not agree with, I will write about it. It doesn’t matter if that candidate is Andrew Selman or Maureen Wilson.

Because that’s what public participation in a democracy is all about. Sometimes, people will disagree with you. Sometimes, they’ll write about how they disagree with you. Sometimes, they’ll start a newsletter to talk about local politics and history and silly stuff because they want to make a difference with limited resources and excessive enthusiasm.

People will get involved in the way that makes the most sense for them. For Selman, it means running for city council in Ward 3, and that’s great; we need more serious candidates for public office with a variety of different views who can help increase voter turnout and engage new segments of the population.

But a key skill in a democracy is learning how to navigate disagreements.

***

There is a segment of Hamilton’s “political class” - former and current elected officials, strategists, editors, staffers from all major parties - who see alternative viewpoints as a threat. When someone has the audacity to question them, they strike back with varying levels of intensity. It appears, more and more, that this is merely about them not being shown the respect they believe they are entitled to by virtue of their connections and status. But deference to people in positions of authority isn’t democratic; it’s aristocratic. And I can’t abide by that. I will not be pushed around or silenced by people who believe it is their divine right to rule this city, either directly or through their outsized influence.

Evidently, my writing about them has ruffled some feathers. And so, when they saw an opportunity to both come after me and try to besmirch the reputation of Maureen Wilson, they jumped at the chance.

I’m not going to apologize for doing the work I do, either at city hall or in this newsletter. All I will do is ensure to you, dear reader, that the two things are distinct and that no one at city hall that I agree with or not influences what I write. I am my own man. Every time you see a graphic on Maureen’s website or the Ward 1 print newsletter, rest assured that those things, in no way, impacted The Incline.

I will continue to provide commentary and critique of what council does, as is my right in a free and open democracy. I will provide my insights and do so, free of charge, as I always do.

I look forward to more spirited debates over policy, the direction of the city, and politics in general with everyone, including Selman and his allies. That’s what democracy is about.

As I wrote on Bluesky a few days back, my final comment on this matter is simple:

I'm Chris Erl, I'm a communications advisor for Maureen Wilson, I write The Incline, and I love this city. You can quote me on it.