The Hamilton Spectator
Arizona university's report assigns no blame in collapse of Stoney Creek hockey player
An Arizona State University report into a workout that left a 21yearold Stoney Creek hockey player in desperate condition in hospital for more than a month now has assigned no blame for the incident. Instead, it suggests creating a blueribbon task...
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Mayoral hopefuls square off at debate
On a blustery first morning of fall, election season kicked into gear with an often spicy debate between three highprofile Hamilton mayoral candidates. And while it was open season for challengers eager to poke holes in her record, incumbent Andrea...
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Players brim with optimism as PWHL season nears
Expansion teams in any sport typically struggle. Yes, we're aware the Vegas Golden Knights went to the finals in their first year in the NHL but for every unicorn like that, there are more than a few Vancouver Grizzlies (1567), Washington Mystics...
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Four years into $10/day program, some Ontario waitlists growing
When Angela Zhu was newly pregnant, she knew that finding a daycare spot in Toronto would be challenging so she and her husband joined 40 different waitlists, thinking surely that would be sufficient. It wasn't. “My friend joked to me, `As soon as...
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Bluecollar and proud of it
Kayla Vespa says she grew up going on school field trips to Dundurn Castle and the Royal Botanical Gardens. Now, the agile PWHL Hamilton forward is visiting the same sites as a professional hockey player, proudly representing her new club as a bit of...
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Just like Hollywood wrote it
When the Hamilton Cardinals take to the field on Friday to play in Game 1 of their first championship series since 2002 — seeking their first title in nearly five decades — Kirk Gibson will be in uniform for them. No joke. OK, not the Kirk Gibson,...
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A SPELL OF MODERN MAGIC
The scene was set for a beautiful wedding. But weather didn't appear to be on the couple's side. “I know about this Etsy witch …” the wedding photographer offered. Of the 15 years Karen Benwell has been photographing weddings, this year is the first...
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Province pitches Steelport at Carney investment summit
The Steelport waterfront development that has drawn the ire of AI data centre opponents is one of the major projects the province is pitching at Prime Minister Mark Carney's investment summit this week. The firstofitskind summit kicked off Sunday...
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ENCHANTING ESCARPMENT VIEW
People stroll through Sam Lawrence Park atop the Niagara Escarpment, overlooking the lower city, the industrial waterfront and Lake Ontario, with the Toronto skyline visible across the water. For a primer on the weather for the rest of this week,
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A PICTUREPERFECT SUPERCRAWL
Nuala Stanley, 4, works to get just the right shot of the Steel City Slither fashion show Friday night at Supercrawl. The threeday celebration of culture, art and music drew huge crowds to the downtown core under mainly clear skies. For the story and...
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A small city's fix for homelessness
Not too long ago, Greg Jamieson had no home. He couchsurfed, slept in a shelter, or hunkered down outside. “I was a tarp kind of person,” says Jamieson, explaining how he'd set up leantos around St. Thomas, his hometown in Elgin County near London,...
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9/11 changed our world, and mine
Paper rains through dust and smoke at the World Trade Center. It is an image we've seen many times before. As the twin towers crumble on that glorious Tuesday morning 25 years ago, and everything changes for everybody everywhere, the paperwork of...
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Hamilton woman recounts dog attack
A Hamilton woman and her dog are recovering at home after they were attacked by a largebreed dog while out on a walk in the city's Gibson neighbourhood over the long weekend. Hamilton Animal Services is investigating the Saturday night incident,...
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ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
Every day, principal Mike Goffredo walks a loop of his singlestorey elementary school, visiting each classroom. He occasionally pulls a struggling student out to talk goals, and gives others a quick thumbsup, silently asking, “Are we good?” After...
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CROWD ROARS, 'CATS FIZZLE
In future years, the Hamilton TigerCats might want to wait until after the Labour Day game before deciding whether to call it a classic. Because this was not that. In a game the Ticats desperately needed, they spent much of the afternoon delivering...
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Waiting for justice
The fingerprints of Felicia Lynn Floriani are kept in a box tucked in the garage. Decades ago, when she was seven, her hands were inked and pressed on a card so, should she ever go missing, her father and stepmother would be able to find her. It was...
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PICKING UP THE PIECES
Crews clear a tree that fell on a vehicle on Fairmount Avenue near Glenfern Avenue in Hamilton during Wednesday's storm. The system, which swept across much of the province, cut power to more than 7,300 homes and businesses around Ancaster and drew...
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Not rock bottom — a crossroads
It's a mild autumn evening, and Kim Ritchie is in a hurry. She and her friend Jimmy have just picked up crack and opiates from a dealer. “The game was to go back to my house to get high,” Kim says. They take a shortcut across railway tracks on...
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The challenge of kindergarten
In her homebased childcare centre in Hamilton's east end, Heather Lee is helping new kindergarteners practise putting on their shoes, opening lunch bags, going to the bathroom independently and tracing their names. One of them is her own kid, who...
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A THEATRE'S FINAL CURTAIN
For years, the crumbling former theatre with the battered marquee sat on the north side of King Street West, a boardedup relic of faded memories and stalled restoration plans. It was once the CHCHTV Telecentre, where countless programs were shot...
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Former St. Joe's psychiatric patient is bringing healing through art
When April Mansilla swipes her key card across multiple units of a Hamilton hospital, the doors swing open. It's a strange thing, she said, because her previous key card at St. Joseph's Healthcare only granted her access to one space: her own hospital...
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The outlaw gets her name back
In a little cemetery on the Mountain, a dignified patch of heaven framed by old maples and cedars, the commonlaw wife of mobster Rocco Perri has had her name reclaimed. Bessie Starkman, Rocco's partner in love and crime, was gunned down in the garage...
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ALL ABOARD
Does the idea of living on the water float your boat? A “floating cottage” docked at a Port Dover marina needs a new skipper. Owner Hollie Dunkley has listed her unique 650squarefoot vacation home on Facebook Marketplace for $39,000. “It's a fully...
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THE SWEET SPOT
Farmhands ride out to the orchard rows at Puddicombe Estate Farm in Winona, where peachpicking is in full swing as summer winds down. The Stoney Creek family has worked this land for more than two centuries — and has had a hand in the Winona Peach...
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HOLD YOUR HEARSES
Port Dover hosted a classic car show to die for on Saturday when nine antique hearses pulled into Powell Park for “Hearses, Hotrods and Hotdogs,” organized by the Black Widow Hearse Club. Story and more photos,
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`That's the cost of war'
A8 EXPERTS WARN OF LAYOFFS, SLOWDOWNS Hamilton was ground zero in the ongoing tariff battle between Canada and the United States — and the escalating war of words between Ontario's premier and U.S. President Donald Trump. Talks between the U.S. and...
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ACROSS THE CITY IN BLOOM
Hamilton grows more than 100,000 flowers a year at its Gage Park greenhouse to fill over 1,500 garden beds across the city — from showpiece plantings of vinca, coleus and blue salvia to the begonia standards and elephant ears that dress up traffic...
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SHE'S ONE OF CROSSFIT'S BEST
The World CrossFit Games weren't actually created by a cabal of sadistic gym owners who gathered in a dungeon somewhere and created a competition so nasty it would punish even the bestconditioned athletes in the world. Though they may as well have...
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Your back to school guide
Hamilton students head back to school on Sept. 8 after a late Labour Day and a bonus week of summer. A packed fall is ahead, with changes to how high school students are graded, potential labour strife as education unions negotiate expiring contracts...
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Tribunal orders Hamilton to grow urban boundary
Hamilton's urban area must expand by 1,600 hectares to handle expected residential growth over the next three decades, a provincial tribunal has ruled — all but overriding the city's strategy to freeze its boundary. The Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT)...
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`IT JUST OOZES COOL'
Find a quiet corner of the Coppley Building, and the walls will start whispering stories. They've been collecting them for roughly 170 years. To put things in perspective, when construction began on the original portion of the property around 1856,...
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Police ready plan ahead of Dominion Society's `DomCon' event
Hamilton police say they are developing an operational plan to respond to any risks, disruptions or criminal activity associated with an upcoming contentious event called DomCon — a Canadian nationalist conference. DomCon, a ticketed event hosted by...
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A SUMMER FOR FLOWERS
Along with a sunflower maze, the Hanes farm on Highway 5 in Dundas has lots of animals to visit and a vast collection of zinnias of various colours attracting all kinds of pollinators as well as hummingbirds. For a list of fabulous flower spots in the...
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It was the perfect pitch for these parents
It's 90 minutes before first pitch and the Hamilton Cardinals' most committed fans are already set up on their folding chairs just beyond the outfield fence at Bernie Arbour Stadium. They're exactly 300 feet from home plate. And 4,200 kilometres from...
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`SCIENCE IS FOR EVERYONE'
Inside McMaster University's engineering building, campers cheered as they raced cardboard cars down ramps, crushed bits of chalk in a syringepowered hydraulic press and inspected a pile of patterned backpacks with digital microscopes. It's a flurry...
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Dream homes destroyed by flooding
Leann Dick opened the window in her living room, ripped out the screen and started screaming for help. The water filling the lower level of her sidesplit house along Mud Street East had reached chest height and she was panicking. “It's happening...
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Dundas turned into championship party
As he looked at the line of folks that snaked all the way across Dundas Driving Park and then hung a left so it ran the length of the baseball diamond — hundreds and hundreds of people who were waiting to get a photo with his son — tears formed in Len...
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SUMMER SWIRLS IN THE CITY
For Max Francis, the founder of True Hamiltonian, the reason for setting up a booth at the Festival of Friends wasn't complicated. “Everybody shows up here,” said Francis. “Hamilton loves this festival.” Francis has participated in the free August...
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AT WRITE TACKLE
Hamilton TigerCats defensive tackle Miles Fox is a 300pound behemoth on the field, but he is a published children's author off of it. His book, “Joyful Jamal,” is inspired by his brother's experience with autism. Find the story inside in Sports,
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VLAD TO BE HERE
Hordes of children and families flocked to a Hamilton youth baseball camp on Thursday, eager to meet Toronto Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The first baseman ran ground ball drills, signed autographs and took pictures with young camp attendees,...
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Two teens killed in Stoney Creek shooting
Hamilton police are investigating an earlymorning shooting at an Upper Stoney Creek townhouse complex that left two teens dead. Det. Sgt. Mike Ebert told reporters that the victims were among a group that travelled to the Tabby Town Housing Coop on...
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Hen ban ruffles feathers in Jerseyville
Heather Stoepker moved to rural Hamilton in 2023 with dreams of starting a family homestead. Now, faced with an order to get rid of her backyard hens, she's contemplating a move to greener pastures. Stoepker is one of a handful of Jerseyville...
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Mustang `stampede' unites muscle car lovers
Odds are just one of the Mustang lovers at the polishedchrome and hoodpopping gathering in Flamborough ordered their car during a medical procedure. Then again, everyone who made the pilgrimage Sunday to the car communion that is the Golden...
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Glass house in need of saving from ravine
For nearly 70 years, a unique house in Westdale has perched close to the edge of a ravine — maybe too close. On the short culdesac of Mayfair Place, the tall glass walls and prominent white steel frame suggest “art gallery” more than threebedroom...
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Bad blood
Tension hung in the air as Tammy Allin stood behind the boards of a Burlington arena last summer, coaching her teenage daughter's lacrosse team. Just a few feet away stood a woman who sold Allin and other parents fake tickets for Taylor Swift shows in...
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Special Olympics take the court
Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky's aunt Ellen couldn't read or tell the time — but she knew what time to tune into the radio each day to hear how Wayne's team did. Ellen Gretzky had Down syndrome, and the Gretzky family's love for her is in part what...
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FROM N.Y.C. TO HAMILTON
It's a census year in Canada, so let the record show that our population is the richer by at least one Crash Test Dummy, Hamilton having reclaimed him from New York City. We find Brad Roberts deposited here, in the bank of our creative human capital,...
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SWAMPED AND WASHED OUT
A brief but powerful deluge prompted Hamilton police to close roads and help drivers in Upper Stoney Creek and Glanbrook due to flooding Tuesday afternoon. Environment Canada warned of stormy conditions throughout the day that could bring 110 km/h...
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Apartments, commercial space planned for the Gore Park gap
Developers are pursuing a new plan to fill a gap in the Gore Park streetscape where heritage buildings crumbled to the ground nearly two years ago. The Hughson Business Space Corporation aims to make its pitch for a 12storey rental building with...
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Burlington woman scammed of roughly $360,000, family says
Krystal Battistel had never known her mother to be so erratic, especially not with money. But according to Battistel, her 75yearold mother, Karen Wales, spent months unknowingly liaising with people Battistel flatly refers to as “scammers.” Over...
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Lifeline on front lines of women's homelessness
Elizabeth Schaub sits on the steps of YWCA Hamilton and waits with a clutch of other women for beds at an overnight dropin program on a muggy summer's day. Carole Anne's Place, a lifeline on MacNab Street South for women and genderdiverse people...
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They drive 1,400 kilometres for Ticats games
To find the quaint town of North East, Md. (population 4,000 or so), start in Baltimore and then head the direction the place suggests. Once the map says you've reached the topright corner of Maryland — just minutes before crossing into Delaware —...
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HAZE AND SMOKE ON THE WATER
Smoke from forest fires burning through northwestern Ontario blanketed Hamilton, causing some of the city's worst air quality conditions in the past decade. Wafting over Steeltown by early Wednesday, the thick smoke shuttered the city's pools, large...
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180 YEARS OF The Spectator
SINCE 1846, this newspaper has told the stories of our city. Stories, big and small, that inform, delight, inspire and shock. Stories that hold those in power to account. Stories that make a difference. Today, 180 years later, we continue to bring you...
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Where's the perch?
Where have all the perch gone? It's a pressing question in Port Dover, where the sweettasting Lake Erie fish is harder to find than a free patch of beach sand on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The Beach House and two other restaurants run by F.W....
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Embracing Simcoe's seasonal farm workers
Taj Coley could not hide his smile. For a few hours in a park west of Simcoe, the seasonal farm worker channelled his days as a Jamaica Premier League soccer player, scoring eight goals to lead his team from Sandy Shore Farms to the semifinals of a...
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Goalie making hockey history
Thwack. Thump. Thwack. Thump. It's Monday afternoon and 27 C outside. But in this Etobicoke arena, where an emptied bucket of pucks litters the ice, it could be any time, any season. But this netminder — who blocks one shot after another with...
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Business owner `beyond frustrated'
It may be tough to see through the scaffolding spanning the entrance, but Lorena Bachetti Rallis wants everyone to know Steve's Open Kitchen is most certainly open for business. For the better part of a year, a web of metal bars has crisscrossed the...
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A WILD SUMMER AWAITS
Alpacas, rabbits and goats … oh my! Those are just some of the many animals on display at Ancaster's Triple C Farm. The familyrun farm filled with rescue animals sits on a quiet, rural street at 500 Carluke Rd. W. and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5...
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`I think Hamilton will be a regular stop'
There's no question that Shai GilgeousAlexander was the star of the show over the past few days in Hamilton. Two international basketball games featuring our national men's team — with him at the centre of that — gave local fans a chance to see their...
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LTC bed crisis separates couple for years
It took four “cruel” years for David WaltonBall to be reunited with his wife after they ended up living in homes across the Mountain from one another. When the couple — who have been married for more than six decades — moved into retirement living at...
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HEARTBREAKING END
Canadian fans look on in dejection during secondhalf FIFA World Cup round of 16 soccer action as their team loses, 30, to Morocco, in Houston, Saturday. It was Canada's first time making it to the round of 16.
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Art Crawl at a crossroads
It's a beautiful latespring evening on James Street North — the kind of weather that feels like fresh citrus tastes. Sunlight dapples the busy sidewalks. Tree branches sway lazily in the breeze. Colourful bunting and strings of lights hang from...
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Mural honours Hamilton's NBA MVP
His baby daughter was just a month old when he got the call asking if he'd be interested in painting a giant mural of Shai GilgeousAlexander at TD Coliseum. Little Etta still hadn't figured out her sleeping schedule, so Kareem-Anthony Ferreira was...
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IT'S GOING TO BE A SUPIE SUMMER
Hamilton's Supie program returns to Hamilton's parks this summer at “full operations” for the first time since the COVID19 pandemic. From June 29 until Aug. 28, the cityrun Supie recreational pro gram offers free, staffsupervised dropin...
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GEARING UP FOR CANADA DAY
Top left, a furry friend looks out at a display of Canadian flags on Hamilton Mountain's Chesley Street. Top right, a Canadian flag hangs on Chesley Street. Could there be a more Canadian scene than a flag mounted on a hockey street drilled into a...
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Lewis Mallard is back, with big plans
The quack is back. Lewis Mallard, the psychedelic folk artist known for wandering the city in his giant, iconic duck suit, has landed back in Hamilton after a few years away from the city. But Mallard will be doing more than painting murals and...
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Pickleball bounced from Ancaster courts after noise complaints
Passersby wouldn't notice walking by, but a tennis — and formerly pickleball — court at an Ancaster park has lost some paint. The city removed the pickleball lines from the James Smith Park tennis court near Garner Road this week, following a notice...
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`This has been going on for a long time'
A rural Flamborough resort community has reportedly been operating without the benefit of clean, safe tap water for nearly a month. For fulltime Fernbrook Resort resident Mary Kovacs, who said she's been buying cases of water to keep up with...
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WATCHING THE BEAUTIFUL GAME
Hundreds of soccer fans take in the CanadaSwitzerland World Cup match on the videoboard at Hamilton Stadium Wednesday afternoon. Andy Lama with his sevenyearold son Drinchen and daughter Rigel, 3, wrapped themselves in a Canadian flag. Switzerland...
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`It was a magical place'
Elliott Raphael had never even heard of a stocking stuffer until a customer at his Concession Street discount store pointed out that his shop was full of them. SoLow Sales, once housed inside the building that now hosts the Hamilton Mountain Zarky's,...
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