Green and Pleasant Land?

[pyat]

A common claim for Hamilton is that it has more trees per hectare than any other city in Canada, or possibly North America. I'm not sure of the truth of that, but, in any case here are a series of photos from the web, depicting my home town... none were taken by me.



Click to enlarge:

The green space in the middle of this photo is a fairly dense urban residential area. velvetpage's grandparents live in here, somewhere, and we lived in one of those apartment buildings near the middle of the scene.


Looking across the ice to the steel factories. Sometimes, especially in winter, Hamilton presents some very alien scenery. Look the other way on a cold winter morning, and you'll see a plain of ice extending to the horizon, and a swollen orange sun rising amidst dervishes of frozen dust.










A perhaps more honest photo...

Comments

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

Considering the amount of Hamilton City Limits that is Harbour, lake, and industry, that is a bold claim.

But honestly, the city does have an alarming number of trees in it. I just never noticed so much before.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

We have the advantage of the escarpment running straight through the city. Now, Toronto, for example, has the Don Valley and Humber, but in terms of total number of trees to total acreage, I suspect Hamilton has more.

But, in any case, the claim is highly suspect. :) I am content to know there is a lot of greenspace.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Lots of places in Toronto look like that from high up as well.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Certainly!

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

A lot of southern ontario towns are pretty damn green.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yup. As noted above in comments, though, I suspect the claim to "most trees" is made on a # of trees per hectare average, and Hamilton has that huge greenspace strip running through it that likely skews the ratio. Remove the Niagara Escarpment, and we'd more like London or Barrie or something.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that's just the geographic jumbledness south ontario has.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It did strike me when we were there that London had fewer, but I'm not sure of the accuracy of that assessment, as we were in the downtown.

[paka.livejournal.com]

You know you've watched possibly too much British television when you can sing "Jerusalem" word for word, and you're not even Christian, let alone C of E.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ah, you haven't heard it until you've heard it while driving over the Skyway Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_Bay_James_N._Allan_Skyway) on a dark winter night, only to have the choir thunder out "...amongst these Dark Satanic Mills" just as you crest the peak of the bridge and see a dozen steel mills belching flame.

Or something.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Are they still belching flame? I assumed that Hamilton was as deindustrialized as most NAFTAn "industrial" cities. Please say I'm wrong. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Still happily billowing smoke and Christmas-light-coloured flames, sir! Though, for our own good, the smoke is now infused with Vitamin C.

[hannahmorgan.livejournal.com]

It's not smoke....it's steam!

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Wow, awesome! I had no idea. Give it up for Canadian industrial might!

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

That strikes me as very good urban planning. It probably helps reduce the pollution from the steel factories.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Accidental planning, more like!

[etherlad.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard the "trees per hectare" claim before, but I heard that Hamilton had the highest amount of parkspace per capita. We have a lot of fairly large parks, trees or not.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I first heard it in the 90s. No idea if it's true.