There and Back Again

Boy-oh-boy! It's nice to go somewhere but it's good to be back home again. Home. I never thought I would use that word in association with old Hamil-tone. Most people drive by on their way south from Toronto; you climb the majestic Skyway bridge and come down on the other side in the midst of some kind of Blade Runner fantasy gone awry. The steel mills and factories are sprawled out beside the grey waters of Lake Ontario, the smokestacks spewing fumes and plumes into the atmosphere, and the city proper lies almost concealed in a hazy cloud beyond the sci-fi badlands of lights and steel. I would pass through this scenery on my way to university in St. Catharines and think to myself how amazing it was that people actually live in the midst of all the industrial carnage. Now, as fate would have it, I'm one of the citizens of this fair berg...and I actaually like it! I've got my homies down at the Bease park who accept my oldschool ways, and my friend Maryna and her little boy with his crazy dreadlocks with whom I share a living space. You have your ups and downs everywhere you go, but Hamilton has turned out to be a pretty fine backdrop for life's little dramas. Who would have thunk it?