Saturday Photo: GritLit in Hamilton or Two Sorts of Plants

This afternoon I'm talking about cities and greenspaces and whatnot at Hamilton's GritLit festival. The event's title is provocative: Hamilton is, after all, Canada's Steeltown. But it's more than that.

The pictures are ones I took a few years ago when I was working on Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places. Hamilton was one of the 11 cities I examined, much to the surprise of some. Windfall tax revenue from the construction of all that industry was used at the beginning of the 20th century to buy park and nature areas. In addition the folks who worked in the factories were frequently extremely proud of the small gardens they nurtured next to the industrial sites. Hamilton is a city of two different kinds of plants, you might say, one green, the other grey.And as you can see from the upper photo, nature has a way of insinuating itself even amid rusting facilities.