Hamilton Harbour: Creatures from the Black Lagoon

1. Hamilton Harbour: Creatures from the Black Lagoon

2. Historical contamination Landscape change Influence of politics and power Hamilton Waterfront

3. 10 Million sq feet of new industrial/commercial space 183 acres of new parkland Housing for 68,000 Begin soil cleanup, bury Gardiner, new transit lines and streets Proposed for Toronto Waterfront

4. Toronto Dominated by Middle class Waterfront for recreation, middle-class residence Hamilton Dominated by Big Steel Industrial waterfront Toronto & Hamilton

5. Our culture seems to have a high regard for the imperatives of market forces but seems much less interested in the claims of locality and place … Sharon Zukin Landscapes of Power

7. Hamilton waterfront

9. Changes in Waterfront

11. Dofasco

13. STELCO

15. Burlington Beach Strip

16. Shipping Channels

17. Windermere Basin

21. The Lax Landfill

24. Dramatis Personae, 1970

25. Wreck of the Irving Whale 1970 4200 tonnes Bunker C crude oil Rigged salvage contracts Meanwhile, off PEI

26. Big Steel drawing criticism c.1970 Air & water pollution Lake filling More Lake Filling (Nov 1971) STELCO & DOFASCO get 328 acres more Conservation Authority Opposes MOE overrules Conservation Authority Events in Hamilton

27. Summer 1972 Barfnecht allegations Spring 1973 RCMP investigation begins in Hamilton May 1974 RCMP arrests Elliott & 4 others Elliot Ousted

28. Dredging companies bid rigging Harbour Commissioners accepting kickbacks falsifying records creating unnecessary work RCMP Finds

30. RCMP Found Elliott laundering kickback money through offshore bank accounts paying kickbacks to politicians John Munro MP George Kerr MPP Minister of Environment Bill Davis, Ontario Premier jailed for 6 years

31. Other RCMP Findings: Kickbacks paid to Elliott being laundered by Scrap dealers Morris Lax launders $2 M, via 15 separate companies 1977 convicted on 5 counts of creating false accounts Lax launders money on Railway St

32. Laidlaw and Waste, 1970s Laidlaw’s Interflow treating hazardous liquids on waterfront 1970s Thermal treatment Transfer station Licensed to send region’s wastes to dump

33. Upper Ottawa St Dump Wastes hauled to Upper Ottawa St Landfill operated by another Laidlaw company: KD Disposals Upper Ottawa St Landfill leaks Red Hill Creek contaminated Region recently fined $500,000 for this

35. Frank Levy’s USARCO Ken Elliot’s old employer Gross contamination Bankruptcy 1989 Levy retains property Fire destroys company records Mercury vials left lying around Plastimet Fire

36. On old USARCO site Frank Levy is Landlord Multiple fires, fire code violations Big Fire, July 9 1997 Levy & Lieberman fined balance of fire insurance policy sentenced to 50 hours of community service Plastimet

40. Murder of Morris Lax Beaten to death with a 2 by 4, December 1992 Ruth Lax denies it was murder Assassination of Johnny “Pops” Papalia Mafia execution January 1997 Catholic church refuses burial at Basilica Chedoke-McMaster Hospital accepts memorial donation Murder

41. Board of Directors included Sheila Copps’s mother Stuart Smith Secured contract to operate Hamilton’s water supply, sewage disposal Secured approval for Taro landfill, Stoney Creek Philip Services

42. Taro Landfill accepts illegal plating wastes from US Philip forcing city to allow Taro leachate in city sewers Philip’s spills sewage into Harbour Philip abandons Hamilton’s blue-box collection programme May 2001 Leaves City to pick up the pieces Philip Services

43. Political & economic power shapes environmental history of Hamilton waterfront Enduring texture of corrupt politics, shady deals and industrial power Behind relatively ordinary episodes of lake filling and landscape change lie pretty complex human stories Landscape & Power