The Verdict

From best to worst, the year in reverse – and a few of our picks and pans of city living
Nobody’s  more aware of the richness of contrasts of this region than Hamilton Magazine. We’ve seen Hamilton and Burlington slowly busting past clichés to become places too large and varied to be understood as a caricature. That’s not to say that we’ve lost our sense of humour about ourselves; which is where this by-no-means-comprehensive list of picks and pans comes in. 

Best Community Builders
Dave and Teresa Kuruc, proprietors of art supply store Mixed Media, recently bought a 19th century building at the corner of James and Cannon (154 James St. N. at Cannon, Hamilton). Kitty-corner to the new Hamilton Artists Inc., they’ve been catalysts for the rejuvenation and gentrification of the neighbourhood.  Dave is the more visible of the two; the Tony Robbins of downtown Hamilton’s grassroots arts community, he’s behind such events as the James North Art Crawl and Maker’s Market, helping fire up enthusiasm for the James North gallery district, the Beasley neighbourhood and the lower city. You could practically light a neon sign with his apple-cheeked optimism.

Best Reason to Change That Slogan to “Our Product is Steel, Our Strength is Robots”
Steel rollbacks. In mid-October, U.S. Steel Canada announced plans to idle its Hamilton blast furnace for up to two months beginning in November, in response to plunging global demand in the face of the credit crisis. The month prior, ArcelorMittal Dofasco revealed that it would scale back production in the second half of the year, slashing production by 40 percent in reaction to the decline of the North American manufacturing sector. Spokespeople for the former Dofasco say the company’s steelmaking will be reduced by about 60 percent capacity by Christmas. (In September, ArcelorMittal revealed plans to slash production by 15 percent across its global operations but by early November had cut production globally by a third as business evaporated.)  Company spokespeople hint that further cuts might be averted if local children ask Santa to bring them skids of cold rolled steel.

Most Hurting Community Profile
Sure, Stelco and Dofasco lost their hometown ownership and dusted the north end in soot, but Tim Hortons has outdone them for alienating their rootsy base. For example: the belated realization that they should start recycling their cups. The off-putting experiments with craptacular menu items in an apparent attempt to outshine McDonald’s, not exactly a lofty culinary aspiration. The firing, in May, of a single mom for giving a free Timbit to the baby of a store regular. The red-faced rehiring of the same employee the day after the bad news scored headlines across the country – at another store. The farce of the “Always Fresh” branding since the chain switched to an off-site supply chain involving frozen doughnuts and a related lawsuit from  a pair of Burlington franchisees seeking nearly $2 billion in damages from the company – the claimants argue that outsourcing production has doubled the fixed cost of a doughnut. The latter could become a class-action lawsuit potentially involving 500 Canadian franchisees. To put that in perspective, the chain enjoyed roughly $1.25 billion in sales last year. That number will drop this year, even without a lawsuit – Q3 sales growth for the chain’s Canadian stores was half what it was in the same quarter last year. On the plus side, at least they’re not Starbucks.

Least Efficient Way to Dismantle an Ivory Tower
Fight to keep your financials buried. A Freedom of Information request is needed to shed light on the contracts of McMaster’s leaders. The university moves to classify president Peter George’s upcoming $1.4-million exit package as money for administrative research leave and structuring the payout as 14 annual payments of $99,999 in order to avoid disclosing the payout under Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act. (George bagged a cool $504,792 in combined salary and benefits last year, more than any other Ontario university president.) Another future winner is Mac VP and Health Sciences Dean John Kelton, who’ll be eligible to receive a $1.44-million payout, similarly structured — more than for any other Ontario university prez — when his contract expires in 2011.

Best Part of Our Foreign- Owned Steel Industry
The prospect of unfettered environmental enforcement. Regulators and watchdogs no longer have to factor in the hamstrings of  “hometown pride” when objecting to the poisonous plumes and soot spewed by the north end Goliaths. In early November, Stelco (aka U.S. Steel Canada Inc.) was charged with releasing illegal levels of toxic dioxins and furans into the city’s air late last winter, as well as discharging toxic cooling water into the harbour around the same time. On the bright side, the winter air hasn’t been so crisp and fresh in a long, long time.

Funniest Mental Image of a Visiting Celebrity
Poetic horndog-turned-Zen monk Leonard Cohen, noshing quietly at a deli counter in Jackson Square. Dance me to the end of lunch.

Finest Mental Image of a Visiting Celebrity
A pre-senatorial Barack Obama searching the horizon during a visit to Spencer Smith Park in August 2004. Or, later, minding his ass while crossing the Skyway en route to see the Falls. Obama was in town for a dinner celebrating the marriage of his half-sister Maya Soetoro and Burlington’s Konrad Ng. 

Most Pathetic Excuse for Serving the Will of the People
October’s federal vote. After celebrating a global market meltdown with the only rational response – a $300 million vanity election – the Harper Tories changed almost nothing in the political makeup of the country and absolutely nothing locally, where incumbents stayed in their seats. Voters grow nostalgic for the Liberals’ nepotism and wanton spending. But not overly nostalgic: Despite chummy supporting cameos from Stéphane Dion, Michael Ignatieff and Sheila Copps, Liberal candidate and former Hamilton mayor Larry Di Ianni is sidelined by incumbent NDPer Wayne Marston in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek. Di Ianni makes a less-than-confidential e-mail remark about the NDP running a dirty campaign. New Dems object to the allegations of uncleanliness, citing Jack Layton’s push-broom moustache as key evidence.

Press Release of the Year
“Nationally Known Wisconsin Cheese Marketer Buys Tennessee ‘Cannabis Cave’ to Create Agri-Tourism Opportunities.” Spam filter be damned – we can learn from the sustainability initiatives of other cities.

Best Counterpoints to Hamilton Rock Mythology
Burlington’s Silverstein, whose ceaseless international touring has driven combined sales of their two albums Discovering The Waterfront and Arrivals & Departures past the half-million mark. (For the sake of comparison, Celine Dion moved 568,000 units domestically last year.)

Most Poignant Movie Shoot
The Incredible Hulk may as well have cued up the weepy “walking away” piano theme from the TV show. Elaborate hocus pocus transformed Main Street between John and Catharine into a slummy stretch of Harlem, with incredibly realistic three-storey tenements erected over the course of weeks leading up to the shoot. More than a few locals wish that the unorthodox infill project had been left behind when the shoot wrapped. Seems we’ll have to invest in our own ghetto.
 
Best Downtown Spiral
The hapless Brant Street Pier project at the eastern end of Burlington’s Spencer Smith Park, intended to be in service for June’s Sound of Music Festival. From poor concrete pours and misaligned beams to crane collapses, the S-shaped project has become a money pit and an eyesore,
two things Burlingtonians really relish. 

Strangest Course Correction
The proposed DeGroote School of Business Centre for Advanced Management Studies on South Service Road in Burlington, which moved closer to reality after a false start in the city’s downtown. A Deloitte economic impact study concludes that the campus, which will house a six-storey LEED-certified building, has the potential to generate significant industry partnerships and attract new, synergistic businesses. Given the convenient highway access, the school’s biggest obstacle may be the nickname of “Drive-Thru U.”

Best Argument for Greenbelt Legislation
The revelation that Hamilton lost 20 percent of its agricultural land between 1991 and 2006.  Suburban developers look for critical immunity: gorging on farmland makes them consummate locavores.

Biggest Mis-estimation of the Dynamics of Graffiti
Local media gloating over the arrests of vandals and then publicizing the arrests of taggers by using their graffiti names as well as their given ones. Impossible as it is to believe, a punk who spray-paints his name in head-high letters on the sides of buildings may be looking for fame and ego gratification.

Biggest Scourge on Public Space
Stucco, which threatens to engulf our region in an ocean of sand, taupe, tan and beige.
Worst Reason to Shell Out for a New Stadium. The Ticats, who this season seemed to turn in the worst performance of their franchise history, wrapping things with a dismal 3-15 record for the second year running. Hey, at least they’re consistent. After decades of sporting glory, a Hamilton fixture shows signs of being on its last legs. And Ivor Wynne Stadium is getting a little rickety as well.

Best Sisyphean Farce in International  Sports
Hamilton’s done-before-they-done-got-started ABA franchise, the semi-pro Hamilton Rockstars? Rank newbies. Tradition dictates that this award goes to the city’s dreams of netting an NHL franchise, recently tied to Blackberry billionaire Jim Balsillie, a high roller who himself is being treated like he ran over Gary Bettman’s dog. The city has been kicked in the groin by league commissioners so many times that we should  really learn to wear a cup. 

Best Exit Interview
Toronto’s ERA Architects, formerly the heritage consultants for Hamilton’s City Hall renovation, publicly announce their resignation from the project – the result, they say, of Council’s vote to replace the marble cladding on the City Hall building with precast concrete panels: “The pride of the citizens of Hamilton in their City Hall has been let down by the Council decision and by just how much will emerge as the precast concrete weathers and soils without the dignity of natural stone.” But it’s possible to love a city while despairing of its leadership, and within two weeks ERA associate Scott Weir goes on to pen a thousand-word love letter to Hamilton in the National Post, one that sees the big picture: “This is the challenge and the opportunity of Hamilton -- the city is one of sharp contrasts, with a legacy of beautiful neighbourhoods; refined architecture; spectacular settings and grounded, friendly people; combined with brownfields, the misguided demolition of architectural wonders and urban decay.” Beyond the standard cheap housing meme, the author takes care to salute our neighbourly warmth, “an Upper Canadian graciousness and hospitality that is very evident in the city.”

Best Proof that You Can’t Take The Country Out of the Councillor
Glanbrook councillor David Mitchell had a good year. In February, he was censured by council for attempting to obtain a land severance for his farm, in violation of Greenbelt legislation – and trying to get a fellow councillor to play sock puppet for an OMB appeal. (Mitchell was censured once before, in 2005, when he tried to use his celebrity profile as a municipal official to wriggle out of a speeding ticket.) After months of sober reflection, he set out to prove that he was still very much on his game in October, when he floated the suggestion that council should look into hocking City Hall’s marble cladding to locals as a crafting material – in the creation of countertops, doorstops, ashtrays and the like. “The options are endless and can be the centre of conversations for years,” he noted, ever helpful.  He doesn’t know the half of it.

Best Example of Looking Much Smaller in Real Life
The 100-storey Connaught Tower proposed by former Toronto developer Harry Stinson, which garnered no end of effusive ink from the local daily (hometown developers were wicked jealous) but wound up scaled back to the napkin it arrived on. Stinson himself is also less imposing than you’d imagine from those late-night infomercials: seemingly possessed of a turbocharged thyroid, he’s a blinking ball of energy that’s as wiry as Harry Potter’s house-elf, Dobby.

Best Double-Edged Sword
After deriding the City of Hamilton for not understanding business models, LIUNA veep Joe Mancinelli realizes that might be a good thing, and so the city signs on for a multi-million dollar lease scheme and the Lister Block is spared the wrecking ball. For now, anyway. To release pent-up tension amassed during the negotiations, LIUNA knocks down two neighbouring buildings instead.

Best Reason for Brian Melo to Hang on to His Construction Boots
Advance scout Kalan Porter, who offers a study in the career arc of a Canadian Idol. Porter sold out Hamilton Place’s Great Hall, almost 2,200 seats, in 2005. He got three Juno nods in 2006, including Artist and Album of the Year. Flash forward to 2008, when “building on the success of his sold-out 65-performance cross-country tour in 2005,” the performer plays The Studio at Hamilton Place. Which caps out at 350 bodies.

Best Sequel to a Second Act
The rumour that oddball developer Harry Stinson, whose $9.5-million offer on the Connaught deflated in the fall, might consider developing the former Stinson Street School, a century building. (It’s not rampant egomania when the name is already engraved. ) In August, Stinson – fresh from the collapse of the Connaught deal – pledged to soldier on in an email to curious investors.  “During the months that we have been working on this project we have become even more convinced of the potential for not just the redevelopment of the Royal Connaught, but the potential for downtown Hamilton,” he wrote. “There is an enormous pent-up market for well-designed, multi-use development in the centre core. We very much hope that the Royal Connaught itself will be part of such a development, given its heritage and architecture. However, I am committed to creating a similar scale and flavour of project, even if on an alternate site.” Critics suggest that the flavour to which he’s referring might be “mothballs,” while supporters hold out for “smoky bacon.”

HM