The ANDY magazine 2014

Hamilton the

Jessy Lanza

John Terpstra

magazine

Dr Disc

Christina Sealey

ART Crawl

This magazine is a product of The Silhouette, an editorially autonomous newspaper published by the McMaster Students Union. Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial board, the publishers, the McMaster Students Union or the University. The Silhouette Board of Publications acts as an intermediary between the editorial board, the McMaster community and the McMaster Students Union. Grievances regarding The Silhouette may be forwarded in writing to: McMaster Students Union, McMaster University Student Centre, Room 201, L8S 4S4, Attn: The Silhouette Board of Publications. The Board will consider all submissions and make recommendations accordingly.

INSIDE HAMILTON 6 8 10 12 14 20 22 24 26 28

Christina Sealey DAVID COLLIER DR DISC JESSY LANZA James St. N. JOHN TERPSTRA Art Forms/Recreate EVENINGS & WEEKENDS

SIMON ORPANA TINGS CHAK

Contributors:

Bahar Orang, jemma wolfe, James Allen, Tomi Milos, cooper Long, kacper niburski, anqi shen, david laing, karen wang, amanda watkins

Editors:

bahar orang & Cooper Long

Layouts:

bahar orang, cooper long, andrew terefenko, JEMMA WOLFE

PHOTOGRAPHY: bahar orang

Falling for We internalize physical maps so profoundly that they often become inextricably tied to our identites. They become embedded in our skin and remind us of love, loss, home, and change. Each street is made of story and every intersection tells something of our shared histories. Place matters, and sometimes we forget that.

place

I have long discounted the power of place. Growing up, I couldn’t quite understand my father’s deep love for his home country, Iran. Some days it was even a nuisance. In the middle of July, he left the car windows rolled up and the air conditioning off – insisting that the heat reminded him of home. I could not relate to my mother’s insatiable desire to get on a plane and fly back to Tehran. When I was six years old, she took me out of senior kindergarten several months early because she simply could not wait to be back to the place where she had been born. Iran was nice enough, but I had no intense love affairs with that country.

And rarely did I meet people who professed their love for Canada. In fact, most frequently I made friendships with people like myself – people who had ties to other countries. Ties that they didn’t always recognize or understand. As I got older, it was even difficult to appreciate the politics of place – why were some people fighting so hard for land? Surely cultural identities were mobile. Just do as we did, I thought, and take it somewhere else. This, of course, was profoundly ignorant of me.

The question of, “where are you from?” only became harder to answer when I came to McMaster.

Well, I suppose I’m from Toronto. Though I’ve only ever lived on the periphery – somewhere between Richmond Hill, Thornhill, and Markham. And I’m also from Iran, though I’ve never actually stayed there for longer than a few months. And I’m Canadian too. All of this was relevant and all of it mattered, but each response felt incomplete. I belonged to all of these places, but also none of them.

Then, slowly but surely, I started tying little knots between myself and the city of Hamilton. I haven’t lived here for long and neither has anyone I know too well, but it was only in this location where I began to understand that place matters. I realized that I might be genuinely attached to a location that was once completely strange to me. This self-awareness made me notice other implications. My personal memories that I traced upon all the physical surfaces - the sidewalks, the ancient floors, the hiking paths - they somehow illuminated other memories forged upon those grounds. Memories of strangers.

Those moments don’t belong to me, and neither does the ground, but to realize that other people have walked here, lived here, and loved here - this was almost life-changing. I was connected to people I had never known, people I would never meet.

Places create communities; they help us care for other people. Places allow us to fall in love with physical geography; they make us care for the greenness of the environment. Place is a method of listening to histories both small and large, it is a means of connecting to lived experiences near and far. I don’t believe that Hamilton is my home. I don’t know that my home is Toronto, Richmond Hill, Iran, or Turkey. But I do know all these worlds are as delicately complex and as infinitely valuable as any breathing person, and that understanding each of them will make me more inspired, connected, and empathetic. I certainly have no plans to remain in one place for too long, but I hope that wherever I go, I will carry an internal, endless map that has an excellent memory.

I can’t say for sure why Hamilton was, for me, the place that inspired a relization about place. Maybe it was because of the moment in time - because it was during four years that my identity was constantly shifting, growing, and becoming more complete. But I do know that it was at least partly because of the city’s incredibly lively arts community. I became connected through art crawl, through talkative gallery owners, through funny exhibitions, through messy live music, through long hours at little coffee shops, through poetry written in the pavement. The art was what inspired me to touch, to explore, to wonder about place – to inhale and then exhale a city.

My words won’t do any of those things justice, so turn these pages for art that captures the power of place and expresses some of the diverse identities of Hamilton.

- Bahar Orang

4 THE ANDY MAG - EDITORIAL

PORTRAITS of A CITY Christina Sealey lives a Hamilton-centred life. She grew up here, attended McMaster for a degree in fine arts, and has now laid down her own family’s roots in the town that also inspires her art. Although this talented painter left for a short time to complete her Masters of Fine Arts in Scotland, it didn’t take long for her to realize that Hamilton was the right choice for the long term.

“When I came back from Scotland, I’d intended to move to Toronto – I thought that’s where I needed to be. But of course, it was too expensive,” she explained.

“I was on a few waiting lists for co-ops in Toronto and in the mean time settled back into Hamilton.

By the time the co-op came up available of course I didn’t want to move. I’d realized that everything I needed was here.”

In a series that Sealey worked on from 2008-09, Hamilton takes a starring role. Paintings titled with Hamilton monikers like Beasley Park, Ferguson Bridge and James and Cannon – Teresa beautifully capture the city – and its people – in a myriad of moods.

“What I find most interesting about Hamilton is the diversity of the geography… Of the city and the people in the city as well,” Sealey said.

In order to feel most engaged with her subject, Sealey interviewed a variety of Hamiltonians and made sketches. Many of these preliminary encounters became portraits over the many months it takes to complete a painting.

For this magazine, Sealey shared detailed stories behind two of her most intriguing Hamilton-inspired paintings: James and Cannon – Teresa and The Iroquois Bar – John.

- Jemma Wolfe James and Cannon - Teresa (2008)

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“At the time when I was just getting my studio [on James St N], Dave Kuruc, who owns Mixed Media, had just purchased a space on the corner where he was putting his new shop. He and his wife, Teresa [the woman in the mirror], were in the process of renovating the space and they had a back room that they were going to tear apart and clean out. But it had all that history depicted in the painting: that sink, the layers of wallpaper and paint, and things that had started peeling off. I liked the atmosphere of the space, and the history of it, and how it related to different histories in Hamilton, too.”

The Iroquois Bar - John (2008)

“That’s John Terpstra. He wrote a book called Falling into Place which was about Hamilton and specifically the geography of the city and is, in part, what inspired my works for this series. I did an interview with him and sat with him and talked about his writing and his ideas about this city. Where he did his writing is along the High Level Bridge. He would stop and sit in his car and look out at the city from the bridge and do his writing from there. I liked the idea of the contained space: the car and him in his own world, the city around him as a separate space.”

Christina Sealey paintings, bottom from left: The Market (2009), Beasley Park (2009), Ferguson Bridge (2008), From the High Level Bridge (2008), The Alleyway (2008)

HAMILTON

I llustrated Artist David Collier speaks about discovering, exploring, and illustrating Hamilton.

Not every studio has the character and depth that David Collier’s does.

Its high ceilings and narrow walls are adorned with collections of sketchbooks and drawings, comics and canvases, scattered alongside relics of the artist’s travels and experiences from days working with the Armed Forces, winters competing in biathlon, and years of creating a home with his family in Hamilton.

“I’ve just been lucky to live in Canada and have different experiences,” explained Collier as he sat on the floor of his in-house studio, intermittently looking up from his undisclosed sketch.

The Steel City-based illustrator − who is well known for his ink-spun comics Portraits of Life and Hamilton Sketchbook − has had a long running career, much of which he credits to the cities he has modeled as muse.

Having jumped between several cities before settling down in Hamilton, his work has a geographical span that captures the essence of the people he has met and places he has lived.

Collier’s early illustrating career began when he enlisted in the Canadian army and was stationed in Saskatoon.

A friend and fellow illustrator had ambitions of continuing his art while joining the military, and Collier followed his example.

“He saw that you couldn’t make a living as an artist, and he really wanted to join the army,” added Collier.

“We were drawing comics together…and he ended up passing away when we were in our twenties. I ended up being the guy who joined the army, sort of as a tribute to him.”

Collier is still a part-time reservist with the military after having redone his basic training in 2005.

“It’s a really big country, and I don’t think I would have seen as much of it had I not had that opportunity,” he said. “I still draw a lot of strength from Saskatoon.”

Prior to moving to Saskatoon, where he spent several years getting to know the city and documenting its people and places with his illustrations, Collier called Toronto his home

8 THE ANDY MAGE SILHOUETTE

base for a number of years.

As a teenager living in Toronto, he was often drawn to Hamilton and would travel to the city for inspiration.

“I used to take the GO bus here and take my sketchbook and draw because it was a really interesting place. But it used to freak me out at the same time.”

The oddity of the city was not due to its atmosphere or setting; rather Hamilton provided a unique and challenging approach to the arts that differed from that of Toronto and other large cities.

“In Toronto you could get a job associated with the arts, the economy was big enough that you could have an artsy kind of job. But in Hamilton, you had to be a full time working man. I don’t think you could be a slacker here, like you could in Toronto.”

As a platform for artists, Hamilton provided something unique that drew him in and kept him coming back. During those same years, Collier spent some time working for a nightclub in Toronto that showcased a number of well-known bands, but it was always the music that came from across the QEW that made a mark.

“The Hamilton bands were the best.

There was a real electricity to them,” explains Collier. “I wondered, compared to a city like Oshawa, which was of the same size, why was it Hamilton that had these particular artists?”

Years after his days bussing into the city, the opportunity came to permanently relocate to Hamilton with his family, and Collier jumped at the chance. Along with his wife − a fellow artist − and their teenage son, Collier has been living in the city for the past 15 years.

“It’s more of a nurturing place than I initially thought. People look out for each other. There’s a certain solidarity between people that you don’t see everywhere,” he explained.

Collier used to spend his teenage trips venturing along Barton capturing its gritty and old setting that accounts for so much of the city’s history. But now, as time has passed

and Collier has grown as an artist, he is more drawn to the nature that surrounds the city.

“To do the kind of art that I do, I find I really have to be out there drawing from life a lot,” he explains.

“What really works for me is drawing where nature and man meet… like the 403 around Cootes Paradise, or when the snow is coming down on it and you can see the big lights. I just like where man and nature meet, and Hamilton has that.”

After spending so many years in the city and being able to document its life and growth for 15 years, Collier has grown to know and appreciate the setting and the people that surround him.

“It’s a fascinating place to people watch…you feel like you might jinx it by talking about it.”

Living in a diverse range of cities, some of which have undergone changes from the touch of gentrification, Collier understands the importance of valuing where you live and collecting and documenting the experiences you’ve had, the places you’ve lived, and the time that you have.

Although the elaborate collections that fill David Collier’s studio may be the most obvious of relics from cities lived and let go, it is his ability to capture and immortalize these places in his work that emphasize the importance of drawing on the cities and people you encounter. Although one city may not be the only place known as “home”, there’s a value in making the most of each place you live and capturing its essence when you have the chance.

“It’s like when you’re on death row, your mind is completely focused. And for me it’s like, how much time do I have? I better get some work done, it’s so great here. I better get it done while I can.”

- Amanda Watkins

"It's a fascinating place to people watch.you feel like you might jinx it by talking about it."

THE ANDY MAG 9

IS IN Dr. Disc has been a cornerstone of Hamilton culture since its doors opened in 1991. Manager Mark Furukawa explains how the venue gained its place in the city.

I don’t know anything about music. I mean, I listen to it. That’s as far as it goes. But if you asked me about synthesizing ratios (do those exist?) or fret counts (what?!) you would be able to watch me in slow motion as my selfconfidence implodes. I’ve never been in a band much less known how to play an instrument. In the sixth grade, my teacher wouldn’t let me play the trombone because my - and I quote - “arms were too short”. The trauma made me give up my dreams of being an indie trombone star and abandon music all together. But just because I don’t know anything about music doesn’t mean I’m not afraid to learn. So you can imagine my glee when I interviewed Mark Furukawa, the manager at Hamilton’s very own Dr. Disc music store.

Inside the store, vinyl records abound. It was quite the sight to behold on my first visit. Having no knowledge of music, I immediately felt like a stranger in a strange land. Without realizing it I found myself looking at the small DVD section the store had. Of course I would flock to the only thing that would make me comfortable.

Meeting Mark, he guided me up a flight of stairs. At the top there was paper, music equipment and supplies sitting scattered about. Mark apologized telling me it was spring cleaning time. Leaving that room, we sat down and broke the ice about mutual acquaintances. His office matched the room outside. It had an eclectic atmosphere and I loved it.

“I was never interested in being in a band as a kid,” explained Mark reminiscing about his childhood. I took that as an affirmation that there was still hope for me. His entry point was being a DJ. He came to Dr. Disc to get hold of all the music he could get his hands on.

“I didn’t know Dr. Disc was a chain… I thought it was like your underground rap name or something,” I joked nervously. I prayed to God Mark didn’t see the beads of sweat forming along my brow out of embarrassment.

“No no, the chain started by an old guy - Sid Atlin - for his children who were really into music,” explained Mark. Mark pointed to a photo of Sid behind him. “They were importing new music from Europe which nobody was doing at the time in London” said Mark. Because of this unique brand of music that people could get from Sid, their business grew. The rest is history.

10 THE ANDY MAG

"this place has an adventurous spirit right now. all the musicians help each other here.."

THE DOCTOR

-James Allen

C/O TIGER IN SUIT PRODUCTIONS

In 1991, Dr. Disc opened in Hamilton.

Mark was going to school at Western for English and was working at another Dr. Disc in London when they asked him to manage the new location at James St & York Boulevard in Hamilton.

Since then, Dr. Disc has been building a strong relationship with the community and local bands. Like most businesses today they have embraced social media to get the news out to their customers. Sometimes the shows being promoted on their website happen right in the basement of the store. “It creates a synergistic relationship with bands and the store,” explained Mark. “It’s this big circular thing that creates customer awareness. It gets people out to the store and seeing the shows which helps local bands afford to make the next record.” For Mark, this synergy helps keep local bands alive.

In the summer months Dr. Disc continues this relationship with the community by putting on a roof-top concert series called “Raise the Roof ” at every Art Crawl. The roof-top shows attract everyone below to the music above. “We want people to get turned on to Hamilton bands,” Mark said. Indie bands find an audience by having the audience find them.

In this way Mark is still a DJ, helping to create a synthesis between bands and audiences.

Stores like Dr. Disc do more than just bring in new audiences for bands. Mark explained, “Having small venues gives a young band experience and exposure that they wouldn’t have if we didn’t exist. It’s one thing playing a house party for all your friends, it’s another playing in a gallery, street, or public venue with an audience. We bridge the gap for young bands moving from basements to public spaces.”

I asked Mark about how he felt about the current state of art and culture in Hamilton.

“There is a cultural and artistic renaissance occurring in Hamilton right now,” he said. “This place has an adventurous spirit right now.”

Some of this is attributed to the inclusive nature of the community. “The collaborative spirit here… no one has an attitude about music… all the musicians help each other here. Everyone is appreciative of everyone’s work.”

This renaissance is bringing a Music Strategy Office to Hamilton next year. Mark is part of a committee that has developed a music strategy that has been passed by City Council to open an office to answer any and all questions about music. Mark explained that Ontario has earmarked “45 million dollars for live music and Hamilton wants to be a part of that.”

In the short time I spent with Mark he was able to open my eyes to the inclusive music and artistic culture that exists within Hamilton. Dr. Disc and other small businesses are supporting local musicians by giving them the chance to find their audience. I thought about how Mark talked about musicians appreciating the talent of other musicians. As I left Mark and made my way back down the stairs into the main part of the store I thought about Sid creating a business to support his children’s interests. Leaving, I promised myself that I’d never tell my children their arms were too short for any instrument.

Singer-producer

JESSY

"I didn't really want to be in the video and I wanted it to really feature Hamilton, but not in a cheesy cityscape kind of way."

12 THE ANDY MAG

LANZA may have discovered R&B on American music channels, but her debut album Pull My Hair Back has local origins.

Born and raised in Hamilton, Jessy Lanza has been able to witness the city’s much-chronicled descent from a booming manufacturing hub to post-industrial wasteland of broken dreams.

The 28 year-old musician has drifted around throughout her life but has since returned to her roots in Hamilton where she recently recorded her absolutely stunning debut record, Pull My Hair Back.

Lanza’s album was released to critical claim late last year with Pitchfork hailing it for its assuredness, but Lanza wasn’t always so sure about her future.

The daughter of two musicians, Lanza enjoyed a comfortable four years at Westdale high school where she was free to experiment with creative endeavours like playing the clarinet in the school band.

Otherwise, Lanza said over the phone while on tour with Australian heavyweights Cut Copy, she had a fairly typical adolescence. This entailed religiously watching American TV channels like BET to catch videos by artists like Missy Elliot and Alyiah that otherwise wouldn’t get played by Much Music. For the most part, Lanza said that this behaviour was the norm amongst her peers.

“R&B and hip-hop were super mainstream, as I’m sure they were for your generation…I still really like artists like Jeremih, Ciara, and Kelly Rowland along with The-Dream who became really popular after I was done high school.”

Lanza began her post-secondary studies at Montreal’s Concordia University where she majored in jazz and piano. Having concluded her undergrad degree for the most part, Lanza returned to Hamilton where she spent a year in McMaster’s music program finishing off the remainder of her credits.

“It was pretty sad. The music program at McMaster was kind of neglected when I was there. I don’t think there was much funding available.”

After her brief stint at Mac, Lanza returned to Montreal to begin her Masters in Musicology at McGill. She pursued the degree for some time before deciding her heart wasn’t in the work and dropping out.

“I just didn’t have any time to be creative while I was working on my thesis. I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing with my time.”

After abandoning her studies, Lanza drifted between Montreal and Toronto for a couple of years

before deciding to settle back in her hometown.

The move was prompted by the relatively cheap standard of living in comparison to expensive money-pits like Toronto, as well as a full-time piano teaching position that Lanza had been offered in a nearby Oakville school.

Lanza had always enjoyed experimenting with computer programs like Logic, which she had taken to fiddling around with when she couldn’t find a job right out of school.

“I had a lot of time on my hands, and that’s when I started messing around software on my computer and doing music that was solely software based on my own…just really basic recording stuff.”

An opening slot for Diamond Rings’ This Ain’t Hollywood show in 2012 followed soon after, and Lanza credits the packed show for generating hype.

Shortly after Lanza took up her job, she was introduced to Jeremey Greenspan through Matt Didemus, who played in Junior Boys with the artist and whose sister Lanza had been best friends with growing up.

Lanza and Greenspan immediately bonded in the studio where Greenspan was putting the finishing touches on the latest Junior Boys record and developed an organic relationship out of their similar taste.

“We realized we shared a lot of the same musical interests and we started making tracks together as a result,” said Lanza.

After completing work on Greenspan’s project, the two decided to make an album that combined their love of R&B and electronic music together.

Once they had laid down a few tracks, Greenspan played a few tracks for Steve Goodman the London-based owner of Hyperdub Records whose lineup boasts acts like Burial, Flying Lotus, and Mark Pritchard.

Goodman expressed interest but needed more evidence that the songs warranted a record deal.

Lanza said that this initial encouragement prompted Greenspan and her to hole up in their respective studios and crank out 15 songs.

“It was a pretty nerve-racking time wondering if we were going to have enough that he liked, but it all worked out.”

Nine of those songs became Pull My Hair Back, Lanza’s and Greenspan’s co-produced marvel of a record. Starkly minimalistic at times, while sonically dense at others, Lanza’s debut album reveals

why Hyperdub was so willing to welcome her with open arms. Tracks like “5785021” and “Giddy” are laden with synths, but never in a way that threatens to overpower Lanza’s sensually breathy vocals.

“Keep Moving” is a groovy wonder whose bassline renders it the most dance-worthy number on the entire album. Likewise, “Against The Wall”, encourages listeners to be anything but that.

Lanza said that Hamilton’s relative isolation from Toronto’s massive, glitzy arts scene made it easier for her to stay focussed on the task at hand.

“Shows do happen, so if you want to go out there are options. But it’s pretty easy to detach yourself from social life.”

While trying to brainstorm ideas for a music video for ‘Kathy Lee’, Lanza felt it right to showcase her hometown by featuring Jed the Dancing Guy, a Hamilton fixture.

“I didn’t really want to be in the video and I wanted it to really feature Hamilton, but not in a cheesy cityscape kind of way.”

Jed’s gleeful dancing across Hamilton was artfully shot by Lee Skinner last May, and goes perfectly with the sparse production on the track. True to her word, Lanza’s face is never fully visible during the 4-minute video, but her dancing in places like the Gage Park bandshell is mesmerizing.

As for possible collaborations with other Canadian artists, Lanza had high praises for 2014 Juno Award-winner and Halifax export Ryan Hemsworth, as well as Vancouver’s Grimes, dubbing them both awesome.

Shoving aside the Canadian prerequisite, Lanza also expressed her love for The-Dream and gushed about DJ Mustard. She included the latter’s song with Ty Dolla $ign “Paranoid” in a mix for Modular People, and rather brilliantly increased its sedentary 96 bpm clip for a more club-ready version.

Lanza has her fingers crossed that she will be able to play this year’s edition of Supercrawl, but hopes that things fall into place as she’s never played it before.

t

- omi Milos

THE ANDY MAG 13

Hamilton History

A Spectator on James Street North 2 1

May 11, 1927

James Street North Property Sold to Local Merchant The sale of four stores at the southwest corner of James Street North and Cannon Street provided “evidence of the confidence local real estate developers have in James Street North property.” The buildings, which are now occupied by Mixed Media and other businesses, were sold to Moe Levy, who called the property “the keystone corner to James Street North.” The purchase price was $55,000. Today, it is doubtful that sum would even cover the cost of all the furniture for sale at the Art Gallery of Hamilton Design Annex. A new office building planned for the nearby corner of James Street North and Vine Street is projected to cost four million dollars.

- Cooper Long

Nov 26, 1949

James Street North Cleanup is Started Between the 1800s and the 1960s, James Street was an epicentre of industry, commerce, transportation, and entertainment in Hamilton. In 1949, however, there were concerns that the north end of the street was also becoming a locus of criminal activity. Police launched a drive to clean up the neighbourhood, after numerous complaints about “wine hounds, panhandlers and loose women who have been molesting citizens on the street and who also contributed to sordid conditions said to exist in several beverage rooms.” It is unclear whether the “wine hounds” were sent to jail, or to the city pound.

3

SEP 19, 1952

Sidewalk Sale Causes DOWNTOWN Stir The Women’s Art Association of Hamilton organized a fundraising initiative that could almost be seen as a precursor to Art Crawl.

The group acquired paintings from artists nationwide, and marketed them in the windows of merchants surrounding Gore Park and on James Street North. The resulting streetscape was referred to as the Mile of Pictures, and it allowed pedestrians to combine art spectatorship with the acts of walking and shopping in the city centre. Some of these passersby remarked, “‘I love that…Do you call that art…Isn’t that lovely…Artists must be crazy nowadays…Can you tell me where the mile goes from here?” If Art Crawl ever wanted to change its name, the Mile of Pictures might be a fitting alternative.

4

These nine articles from the Hamilton Spectator archives offer an incomplete, yet informative, glimpse of James Street North’s history and place in the public imagination. Direct quotes from the Spec are italicized.

June 17, 1982

Neighbourhood Criticism Annoys some residents It would seem that the 1949 police dragnet was not entirely successful at improving conditions on James Street North. In 1982, Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament Eric Cunningham caused a minor controversy when he commented that the area around the CN station was “not the nicest part of the world, especially for women.” Local supermarket owner Ron Corsini countered that, “many people have the idea that the area is rough…but it’s an image James Street does not deserve.” Deserved or not, this reputation has evidently proven difficult to shake.

7

Sep 16, 2005

Artists drawn to James Street North by rob Faulkner James Street North has remained consistently attractive to new Canadians over the past century, with waves of Italian, Portuguese, Asian, and African immigrants settling in the area since the end of the Second World War. In the early 2000s, the neighbourhood experienced an influx of individuals from another distinctive group: artists. In 2005, the opening of new galleries, studio spaces, and an art supply store contributed to “growing momentum on the classic strip.” Colina Maxwell, founding director of the Print Studio (now Centre3 for Print and Media Arts), voiced her hope to “keep this momentum going, and make this area artistically inclined.”

5

Nov 13, 1984

The Other Side of James Street North By LARRY MOKO During the early 1980s, concerns over crime and physical deterioration on James Street North were coupled with belief in the possibility for rejuvenation. In 1984, Hamilton received $14,000 from the Ontario Heritage Foundation to study classifying James Street North as a Heritage District. An advisory committee formed and commissioned an architect-planner. This consultant praised the street’s “pedestrian feeling” and declared it a “street for people.” But he also cautioned that James Street North “doesn’t know what it is or where it is going.”

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6

Aug 18, 1998

Road to Ruin By Mark McNeil James Street North was not ultimately designated as a Heritage District, and the street did not necessarily answer the questions of “what it is or where it is going” either. In 1998, the street was said to be “going through profound changes as it searche[d] for a modern identity.” One such change was the decay of several neighbourhood landmarks. In particular, the Lister Block was a “disgrace of particle board and aggressive musings in bold paint,” and the CN station was “closed and crumbling.” Today, the refurbished Lister Block and LIUNA Station can be seen as symbols of James Street North’s revitalization, but less than 20 years ago they conveyed the opposite message.

JUNE 11, 2010

IS JAMES STREET NORTH BEING GENTRIFIED? BY PAUL MORSE The coalescence of artists and creative entrepreneurs around James Street North brought about new set of challenges. In 2010, Ancaster artist Tony Cabral was seeking a location for a 25-member arts co-operative. He eventually chose a site on Ottawa Street rather than James Street North, deeming the latter “priced out of the marketplace” and a “property speculator’s area.” This decision was linked to the “spectre of a double-edged sword known as gentrification - where higher-income people begin to buy up properties and displace poorer people.”

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Sep 14, 2013

SUPERCRAWL SPREADS WORD OF OUR RESURGENCE By pAUL BERTON While rising real estate prices may have kept some people from settling on James Street North permanently, in 2013, the fifth annual Supercrawl was lauded for bringing thousands of people into the neighbourhood, at least for one weekend. The festival, directed by Sonic Unyon Records co-owner Tim Potocic, began in 2009 as an expansion of the monthly Art Crawl. It was credited with allowing “Hamiltonians [to] finally feel a new energy.” In 2013, over 100,000 people attended Supercrawl and experienced this energy firsthand. It seems unavoidable that such a turnout will give local investors precisely the same confidence in James Street North property that prevailed in 1927.

THE ANDY MAG 15

learning to crawl

Images, clockwise from top left: an outdoor exhibition across from Vine Street, looking beyond James at the corner of King William, Salinger and others for sale just past Christ’s Church Cathedral, vinyl continues its comback outside the Tim Francis Gallery, a harpist serenading the city at James and Vine, descending the staircase at Hawk and Sparrow, fresh pineapples at the Green Smoothie Bar

16 THE ANDY MAG

It’s hard to put the James Street North Art Crawl into words. So, instead, explore downtown Hamilton for yourself on the second Friday of every month.

THE ANDY MAG 17

18 THE ANDY MAG

Band playing Frankie Valli’s “Can’t take my eyes off you” in front of Christ Church Cathedral

THE ANDY MAG 19

C/O JEFF TESSIER

FALLING INTO PLACE Author and poet John Terpstra discusses how he fell into place and fell for Hamilton.

The pizza crumbles from his lips. “What is Hamilton?” He chews on the words like he does the toasted pepperoni – slowly, carefully, weighing each one and tasting the syllables before saying anything at all. He swallows.

Looking at John Terpstra camped in a brown leather chair at Johnny’s café on Locke Street, one wouldn’t think too much of him. His appearance is ruffled like a bristled broom: the worn jacket, calloused hands, and soft eyes suggest a man who has known hard work for far too long. His baritone voice scratches against the sounds of coffee beans grinding and frappuccinos steaming. Some words are lost in the static of his beard. As he eats, a sympathetic smile flickers for all those who care to look.

He is a man who has lived in Hamilton, a place of paradox with its decay and life, its production and its stagnation, for the majority of his life. In 30 years, he has seen it all – the boom, the rest, and the resurgence, and he has chronicled every little bit from the land to the people to himself – a person, as he describes, who is “attached to a piece of geography.”

He grins. ”I don’t know if I can answer that.” He then stops, looks to the window at a gray sky, takes another bite, and laughs, a laugh that suggests a life 20 THE ANDY MAGE SILHOUETTE

of both fascination and disappointment with the world.

Falling Into Place, published in 2002 and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2004, is his self-defense against these self-discovered contradictions. Written over a span of some 20 years, Terpstra recounts tales from the ever-growing, ever-shifting backdrop of Hamilton. Poems like “So Pleased with this Place” or “Selective Memory” present unique aspects of the city. Combining cultural history with scientific exploration and lyrical anecdotes, Terpstra sketches the landscape of a city cradled somewhere in between a climate that is neither too hot nor too cold, neither too arid nor too moist and whose alert, jagged landscape was carved by the slow violence of a glacier.

The style of the work is both coarse and refined. At times, the words read almost clunky, perhaps in an attempt to match the music of a city where molten steel hissed and the mechanical clattering of an anvil and hammer banged around like a clumsy symphony. Other moments are brisk and flawless. They possess a knowing poetic intuition, and they describe the world as nothing short of serene.

The two mash together – a celebration of the natural cliffs, bays, and glacially

"THERE IS A TENSION OF NATURE AND WHAT HUMAN BEINGS DO TO IT." scrawled land against the jarring human artificial world domineering overtop of it all – to produce a work that says: Looky here. This land is both beautiful and ugly, and we are both beautiful and ugly, and both of us can choose to beautiful together if we want to be. It is much nicer that way. Just look. Really look, and you’ll find out.

“There is a tension of nature and what human beings do to it,” Terpstra says after finishing his slice. A coffee is slowly drained. “That’s what I wanted to do with this book… I wanted to write something that is expressing and investigating what I feel about a place and how it ramifies. It is a conflicted place.”

Much of the conflict bleeds into the narration. “When I was writing, you didn’t hear much positive about the city. Downtown was cleaning out… But I still maintained attentiveness with a seeming futility. Sometimes I asked why the heck I was doing this.”

“A friend said, ‘You are really milking it for what it’s worth, and I thought, ‘Boy, isn’t that mean.’ It was sorta’ true but it was also unsympathetic, and that kind of unsympatheticness was what I was working against. That kind of unsympatheticness would allow you to destroy things.”

In response, Terpstra began to draft, “a love song to this location. The geographical is easy to love. When you get into human history, it gets more complicated and it is not always a good story.”

But the book – the voice of Terpstra within it – is hardly a complaint. It is testament of being conscious of where we live, what that means, and maintaining the integrity of all the individual working elements that click into the here and now, including ourselves. Perhaps especially ourselves.

“There are people that are givers and people that are takers. There are people that contribute and people that just enjoy. You want to contribute and add what is there. You want people to help themselves and then in doing so, being able to help others. Understanding the land and one’s relation to it helps that process.”

- Kacper Niburski THE ANDY MAG

21

art as instinct Youth are playing a vital role in Hamilton's emergent arts scene with the help of programs like Art Forms and ReCreate In a studio on James Street, young people are making art on their own terms. 126 James North is an unassuming space, wedged between a vintage clothing boutique and a flower shop. There’s a low hum of activity in the studio on evenings like this, but the energy in the room is brimming with anticipation for the new things being created.

Maddi Bailey, 19, takes a line from one of her favourite songs and writes the words on cardboard signs. She asks her friends from ReCreate to hold them up with her against a wall near the studio and gets another friend to take their photograph. The photo is one of a larger project titled Beautiful Things Hamilton that she will show at the Freeway Coffee House starting April 24.

“I find beauty in some of the most broken places,” Bailey told me as we looked through the photos that were just taken. The song that inspired Bailey’s collaborative photography project is Gungor’s “Beautiful Things.”

“There’s a line here, ‘Could all that is lost ever be found?’ And pretty much, yeah, I want to portray that something like an alleyway isn’t ugly—I guess what 22 THE ANDY MAGE SILHOUETTE

I’m trying to say is that there’s beauty in this alleyway and in this city. It’s because this is where I live and where I’ve grown up.”

Bailey’s most recent art project seeks to locate lyrics that are meaningful to her in various places in the downtown core that might otherwise be seen as tragic or ignored. The added frame of photography dislocates the lyrics and the spaces she selects, turning them inward toward her own experience with the city and outward at the same time, as a diatribe would.

“I feel like I’m called to do work here now,” she said.

“I feel like this will be my city when I have a family or something, but I feel called to go overseas. I definitely want to get my name out there, but as for a project like this, getting a message across, I think I want to do more projects like that. Something meaningful.”

Bailey is one of several youth who attend the ReCreate program, which shares the studio space at 126 James St. N with Art Forms. The programs, in collaboration with local artists and social service providers, offer homeless, street-involved and marginalized youth a space to make art on a drop-in basis. ReCreate is run by the Shalem Mental Health Network,

Images, clockwise from top left: members of the ReCreate program, digital art by Tanner Ward, Art Forms program coordinator Amber Aasman

PHOTOS C/O ANQI SHEN

which provides faith-based support, while Art Forms is a community arts organization.

“I guess James Street is being brought up by artists but if you were to walk down, like, King Street or even in Beasley, you’d find places that people think are broken,” Bailey said. “I know personally when I grew up in Stoney Creek, my friends and I would talk about downtown like it’s such a dirty place, it’s so broken. I guess downtown is the most underestimated place.”

James Street is one of several lifelines running through Hamilton’s art scene, attracting a number of creative professionals from the GTA, including a recent exodus of artists from Toronto. Of the many galleries that have sprung up on James Street, several are dedicated to fostering a culture of art and community engagement among youth. Youth who use the Art Forms studio show their work every second Friday of the month, as part of Art Crawl. ReCreate will often open the studio for Art Crawl, and sometimes the youth will show their art on the street.

Tanner Ward, 23, who also attends ReCreate’s program, takes a special interest in digital art and is completely self-taught. He’s been drawing for 14 years, of which many hours were spent adding detail with a computer mouse until he discovered tablet drawing. His sketches on deviantArt.com, under the name sharkstew, are of characters he’s developed over the years.

“A lot of the time I get, ‘Is that a dog? Or a dinosaur?’ Not everyone can see what I see,” he said.

Ward and Bailey both attended Nu Deal, an alternative education program run by the Centre3 for Print and Media Arts on James North. They found the ReCreate Program through the Notre Dame House School and Notre Dame House Youth Shelter, and now regularly drop by the studio three days a week. Sometimes guest artists come in to talk about techniques for mixed media, printmaking, abstract, and other forms of art. The materials, studio space and guest talks are all free of charge thanks to various sponsorships and support from the community.

Amber Aasman, program coordinator for the Art Forms program and one of two part-time staff, is an artist who shows regularly on James Street. Art Forms doesn’t screen at the door, but their programs give priority to homeless, marginalized and street-involved youth.

“We do want to be inclusive, of course, but we do want to use our limited budget, limited hours really carefully so we get at the kids that need this the most,” Aasman said. “How we do that is we intentionally partner with the shelters that are around here, the different youth-serving agencies.

We work really hard to get word to those folks. And then it kind of happens that the word trickles out, on social media, whoever sees it sees it.”

“We’re also aware that youth who are at risk of homelessness and are on the edge that way, they aren’t necessarily making art their number one survival instinct.”

But what role does art play in a city defined by its industrial roots, and whose past and present are being repurposed? Can art be instinct—raw, affective but also an agent for social change—in the scope of a neighbourhood or a city? Having studied Fine Arts and Peace Studies at McMaster and lived in Hamilton

for seven years, Aasman appreciates the close-knit arts community in Hamilton, which regularly fosters collaboration and is less about competition.

“I don’t think I’ve had enough time really jumping into the city, but I know of the really beautiful transformation of places like James Street, where art is used as that vehicle for community transformation,” Aasman said. “But it’s not all perfect and shiny, thinking about issues that come along with gentrification and further marginalizing folks that are already marginalized,” she said. “So in that way Art Forms is positioned in a really interesting way because we want to be inclusive of those folks that are not typically included in sort of fancy, even hipster arts scenes.”

In the time since the James Street Art Crawl has become popularized, Centre3’s “art is the new steel” slogan has caught on, even with students and passersby who don’t intimately know the downtown core. In that phrase, there’s an implicit connection between art and capital—a recognition of the vital role cultural production has in Hamilton’s identity—but it runs the risk of being a blanket statement that doesn’t cover those who have the least capital, whether monetary, social or political.

Last year, the Hamilton Economic Development Office released a video, “Hamilton, Ontario Canada – The Ambitious City,” giving a snapshot of the city’s economic growth through a steel worker’s perspective. About four months earlier, youth in the Urban Arts Initiative, now Art Forms, produced a media arts project called “Hamilton Hometown Love.” The video has gotten less than a tenth of Ambitious City’s views on YouTube but has more grit and gives a platform to a multitude of voices.

The youths’ video, with a voice-over narration and rap interlude, maintains a narrative pulse that makes a compelling argument without being commercial.

The rap begins with an open-hearted embrace of the city: “My city full of love, my city full of art / My city full of people who take you for who you are.” In much the same way as Bailey’s “Beautiful Things Hamilton” project, the video makes the case that Hamilton’s image needs reworking, and that onlookers play a vital role: “What do you know about this city? What do you expect from the people referred to as sketchy, depicted as dirty, depicted as druggies? What do you know about our streets, about our buildings? About this place that we call home, about this place that we claim as our own what have you told about this so-called suburb of Toronto where there are no jobs and no talent, unfriendly bandits scavenging and lost souls only travelling? Don’t be afraid to come here, don’t be offended.”

The rap, in its honesty and push for inclusiveness, is also critical of gentrification of the downtown core: “She says don’t give up on me just yet. Soon these galleries will all reflect the beauty that is within me, stadiums will be filled, schools will be built, and education will be what we’re known for, not a brand new casino or a brand new hotel.”

Hamilton’s repositioning and grassroots rebranding as a hotbed for artistic activity in recent years has fostered a serious discussion around art as a means of revitalizing the city. The economic rise of the city is often seen as equally, if not more, symbolic of the city’s potential. But culture and capital are not mutually exclusive. If we are to credit the city’s success to a boom in arts and culture production by an influx of artists, then we also have a duty to listen to marginalized voices that have been shaped by experiences on the streets. There’s something to be said for programs like ReCreate and Art Forms that carve out a creative space for youth who have some of the highest stakes in the city’s arts scene.

- Anqi Shen THE ANDY MAG 23

EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS The span of years between 2006 and 2011 was a good time for music in Hamilton. So good, in fact, that McMaster alumnus and employee Andrew Baulcomb is writing an entire book about the period. Evenings and Weekends doesn’t have a firm publication date yet, but it does have a firm vision: to chronicle the people that brought the Hamilton music scene to life during those five exciting years.

For Baulcomb, the idea came from years spent immersed in the scene.

“I had worked as a journalist for a number of years, both at McMaster and following graduation, and I had always covered a lot of local music,” he said. “I became infatuated with the idea of telling these stories for bands that didn’t get the coverage they deserved. The idea, I guess, originally came from there.”

On top of being personally immersed in what was happening, however, Baulcomb objectively identifies the time period in focus as being a critical turning point in Hamilton music.

“By 2006, you start to see the emergence of Charlemagne (who became Arkells), Pomps (who became San Sebastian), Young Rival, Dirty Nil, Cities in Dust, Sailboats Are White, Huron,

[and] Monster Truck,” Baulcomb said.

“Beyond that, too, it was a really fun time to be going to clubs in Hamilton: Motown night took off; the Rockstars for Hire No Standards nights at Che took off; I Say Disco! You Say Punk!, which was run by [members of] Cities in Dust, took off… All of this stuff happened in a four to five year window and I just wanted to tap into it and tell some of those stories.”

He describes his project as a “nonlinear contemporary history” in which any of the nine chapters could be a point of entry into what was happening in the hip hop, punk, hardcore, electronic and club scenes in the Steel City.

While much of Hamilton’s music history has already been extensively written about, the years that fascinate Baulcomb remain largely undocumented. And for this Hamiltonian, the project is as much about the place as it is the people.

“Having grown up in Hamilton and being a teenager in the early 2000s, Hamilton always had an image problem.

People outside of the city would always criticize it for being an industrial town, and that there was nothing to do, no nightlife and that it wasn’t vibrant,” he said.

McMaster alumnus and Hamiltonian Andrew Baulcomb is hard at work on a book detailing the history of the local music scene from 2006 to 2011.

24 THE ANDY MAG

“You hear all of these things but I think actually living here you scratch your head a little bit. I always thought there were lots of things to do and at some point, I think the collective youth movement in Hamilton turned inward and said ‘we don’t need external validation for what is cool, or what makes Hamilton unique, or what makes the city fun.’ People just focused on having a good time, making good art and opening cool stores, starting cool bands and just keeping it all in-house.”

His extensive list of interviews with musicians that embody that Hamilton spirit include Arkells, Junior Boys, Monster Truck, Young Rival, Motem, Terra Lightfoot, Huron, The Reason, San Sebastian, The Dirty Nil, Cursed, TV Freaks, Arcane, and Lee Reed.

Baulcomb has been working on the book since the summer of 2011 when he conducted his first interview (with Noah Fralick of Young Rival). Since then, he has been chipping away at it, rather fittingly, on evenings and weekends.

- Jemma Wolfe

Writer Andrew Baulcomb on a down town Hamilton street

"Hamilton always had an image problem... but I think actually living here you scratch your head a little bit."

C/O JONATHON FAIRCLOUGH

"It'S not just a desolate collection of brownfields. there's a thriving, diverse, and historical culture there. it's not just the skateboarders; many generations of workers and immigrants and all kinds of people have contributed to make the Beasley neighbourhood a really special place that has its own culture and identity.

It's also a very fragile thing. in the midst of these large visions for regenerating a city, I want people to know that not only the skateboard community, but all of the communities that make up the neighbourhood need to be acknowledged, protected, and preserved."

26 THE ANDY MAG

Simon ORPANA

tells a story about the Beaz Steaz skate park - about the place and about the whole culture it created.

When I was 12 years old, after weeks of begging, I finally convinced my mother to take me to Canadian Tire so I could pick out a skateboard. Over the following months, I worked hard to learn the sport’s most basic trick: the ollie. This was the high point in my career. Too clumsy to learn anything more advanced, and too afraid of injury, I stopped while the going was good. So last week, when I watched footage of a four-year-old boy doing a pop-shove-it (a trick I’d only ever mastered in the virtual world of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3), I was impressed. The clip came from a short documentary about downtown Hamilton’s Beasley Park, one of the oldest skateparks on the eastern seaboard. The documentary is called Beaz Steez, and it is the brainchild of Simon Orpana, a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University.

“I chose Beasley,” Simon told me when I interviewed him about the project, “because basically I’d been skating there for about a decade. It’s where I met my first friends in Hamilton.”

Prior to my viewing of the documentary, I had thought of skateboard parks as places where only young people go.

“Most of the newer skateparks,” Simon explained, “are in suburban or out-ofthe-way areas. They cater generally to a younger crowd. But Beasley, being downtown and having this thirty-year history, has gained a reputation – a kind of cachet – that most skateparks don’t have. Three generations of people have grown up using it.”

The goal of Simon’s project is to capture the vibrant culture of the park and catalogue some of the changes that have been taking place there over the past half-decade. “There’s a process of gentrification happening, and Beasley has this sort of authentic street-culture that’s very much celebrated in this new model of urban development that seeks to attract artists and young professionals. As the process developed, I wanted to capture it on video, because my worry was that the skateboard culture that I love at Beasley – this inclusive, multigenerational environment – would be altered by the changes in the neighbourhood and maybe forgotten and not

recognized for what it was.”

I asked Simon how the other Beasley regulars feel about this process of gentrification. “I think there’s definitely an understanding that things have changed, and are changing. Now that there are companies who want to profit from Beasley’s authentic image, it’s an issue of the legacy of the park. If the neighbourhood gets gentrified, skaters might not have the same type of agency and freedom that they experienced when no one really cared about that neighbourhood. But the process has given skaters an opportunity to come together and get involved in civil politics, which is amazing. They’ve been invited to the negotiation table for the redevelopment of the park, and they were invited to sign the Beasley Neighbourhood Charter, which is the first of its kind in Canada. There’s been a real effort on the part of the city and the neighbourhood organization to recognize skateboarders.”

One of the things I was most interested in learning from Simon was what he thought it is about skateboarding that allows for such an incredible community to develop. “Our current society,” he told me in the confident tone of one who’d thought about this question before, “has moved away from kinds of socialized risk, where collectively we try to take care of each other and limit the amount of risk that people are exposed to. Starting in the ‘70s and ‘80s, these types of social protections – welfare programs, social assistance, all these kinds of supports – have been systematically attacked and dismantled. What you have left is an individualization of risk. So skateboarding, in a way, is the perfect sport for the neoliberal era. In this new kind of fluid, precarious society that is also very individualized and consumeroriented, there’s a way in which skateboarding helps people deal with some of the anxieties that go along with that precariousness, even while it reinforces those same values of individualization and consumption. It’s a curious thing.”

Precarious indeed – the primary emotion that skateboarding used to evoke in me is utter fear. There’s something about the sport that just seems to defy the laws of physics. I asked Simon whether part of the reason why skateboarding can

be so formative, so crucial to a person’s identity, is that it requires so much courage. “Yes, and it’s not just skateboarding.

There’s the whole extreme sports franchise that takes what were previously kind of like carnival side-shows and puts them into the limelight. Something like skateboarding allows you to individually tackle your fears head-on. The danger there is that it never really addresses the underlying circumstances that produce the fear. It just deals with the symptoms.

But skateboarding is also a way of feeling alive and human.”

I ended the interview by asking Simon what he wants the people of Hamilton to know about Beasley Park. “I want them to know that it’s not just a desolate collection of brownfields, and that there’s actually a thriving, diverse, and historical culture there. And it’s not just the skateboarders; many generations of workers and immigrants and all kinds of people have contributed to make the Beasley neighbourhood a really special place that has its own culture and identity. It’s also, though, a very fragile thing, and in the midst of these large visions for regenerating a city, I want people to know that these cultures need to be acknowledged, protected, and preserved.”

More information about Beasley Park can be found at skatebeaz.blogspot.ca, and Beaz Steez can be viewed on Simon’s YouTube Channel: “Sk8Hamilton”. Simon Orpana is also the author of several illustrated ‘zines, including one called The Art of Gentrification: A Zine about Art, Urban Space, and Politics, which is used as course material in various cultural studies classes at McMaster.

- David Laing

THE ANDY MAG

27

There is a love story with every place in which we grow up Graphic Novelist Tings Chak tells stories of belonging and owning, and engages newcomers to the city in quiet but powerful ways.

Between the forgotten alleyways and the crevices of our own minds, in our favourite sanctuaries and our own skin, we find a narrative that parallels the identities of both our place and our self.

And like every good love story, my tale with Hamilton had an unexpected beginning. On that cool autumn evening when I stepped off of 5E at Hughson and James for the very first time, I was met by the forlorn streets of a dark, eerie, mysterious stranger. I felt utterly powerless, lost in the sense of abandonment of closed stores and unsmiling people.

As a brooding eighteen year old who thought she already knew everything, it was impossible not to judge, not to pity.

Why does this city feel so sad? I shook my head, and hurried along.

Over the years, during Art Crawls, and on coffee dates at Mulberry’s, my confusion only grew. I found beautiful paintings, soulful voices, heart-warming spaces, and limitless creativity. I began to suspect that, perhaps, not everything was what it seemed.

A twist, as fate would have it, began my journal in the unravelling of Hamilton. Two years ago, I came across Tings Chak’s graphic novella Where the Concrete Desert Blooms. I found my mirror image in the narrator, embarking on a similar journey such as my own. I found a connection with her sense of disjointed cultural heritage; I tried on her narrative, walked in her shoes, and saw her stories encapsulated in black contours and white spaces as a beginning of my personal relationship with this city. “I drew”, Tings writes, “only to know…”

So I sat down next to Tings, to hear strangers’ stories of “how their love for Hamilton was sparked”; “I walked alongside some of them [in Tings’ shoes] to their most sacred places”.

Through those recreated memories, I learned to see the city, and myself, in a way that I wasn’t able to before. I found in this city sadness and shipwrecks, only because I was looking for success stories and preexisting labels. Through the myriad of energetic voices, I learned what the city used to be, and through their eyes, what it could be. I realize that this is isn’t a city of waterfalls, of artcrawls, or even of grassroots movements. In the same way, I am not the girl with the skrillet haircut, who is good at math, who might be a doctor someday. A city should not be defined by a single definition any more than I be defined by any single attribute.

“Hamilton could be so many things...” In time, I opened my eyes, and

learned to find that multiplicity. To say that I fell in love with this city is simplistic. In many ways, I also learned to fall in love with myself.

When I was hurt, Cootes was my paradise. When I was restless, the railway teased out my thoughts. When I was uninspired, ReBranding the city with OPIRG shuffled my marbles. I listened to Randy’s impassioned rant about our destructions of the wetlands, watched the sunrise (unsuccessfully) at the Dundas Peak, relived people’s tales about mental health and art, and rejoiced in the many efforts and energies – however small individually – that collectively envision a brighter future.

I am no longer a girl who was jarred by the scars but learned to look for the source of indifference, in search for possibilities of revitalization.

I am no longer fazed by the concrete desert, but started to imagine the ways it can bloom.

“Can I lay claim to this place and can I tell its stories, the leftovers of history that I am not a part of?”, asks Tings.

Standing on the edge of her pages, and seeing her memories come to life, I ask, “Can I lay claim to her story, envisioning the events that brought ink to paper, and continue her journey that I was not a part of?”

Because, I am Tings: observing, interacting, and feeling; standing at the very street-corners, speaking to the very same people, and wondering her thoughts that now plague my mind. I wondered whether she had any idea that years after her journey in the uncovering of hidden stories, someone else might come along and find hers, touch the same surfaces, feel the same contours, and share the same epiphanies. I wondered about all the other people that might some day stand in my shoes, see what I see, and wonder my thoughts.

With every love story, there is a beginning, there is development, but hopefully there is never an ending to our falling in love with this particular city. We may be passing ships, but the footprints we leave behind, through carefully chosen words and heartfelt illustrations, the spirit to explore will pass on.

Perhaps starting with you.

- - Karen Wang

THE ANDY MAG 29

fragments & figures

30 THE ANDY MAGE SILHOUETTE

Images, clockwise from top left: Bowls of buttons at Handknit Yarn Studio on Cannon, vegetables for sale in Dundas, a pedestrian seen from the roof of Jackson Square, watching the match at Ola Bakery, enjoying a date square at Democracy Cafe on Locke Street, the owner of Mixed Media cracks a smile, and a musician in front of Jackson Square.

H The

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