The People and the Bay

This engaging history brings to life the personalities and power struggles that shaped how Hamiltonians used their harbour and, in the process, raises broader questions about the relationship between people and nature.

This engaging history brings to life the personalities and power struggles that shaped how Hamiltonians used their harbour and, in the process, invites readers to consider how moral and political choices being made about the natural world today will shape the cities of tomorrow.

Nancy B. Bouchier is an active member of the North American Society for Sport History and the author of For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838–1895. An associate professor of history and an associate member of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University, she teaches courses in Canadian, sport, and exercise history.

Ken Cruikshank is an active member of the Network in Canadian History and Environment, a past editor of the Canadian Historical Review, and author of Close Ties: Railways, Government, and the Board of Railway Commissioners, 1851–1933. A professor of history and the dean of humanities at McMaster University, he teaches courses in Canadian, environmental, and business history.

Dale Barbour:
Working in Hamilton, Bouchier and Cruikshank are able to draw on a powerful collection of sources—oral, textual, and photographic—that track the efforts of different civic, government or industrial bodies as they tried to control, study, transform or remediate the places and people of the bay. But the authors also humanize the ideologies that were in play by seeing how they coalesced within individual actors … The work is unabashedly focused on the Hamilton environment and will be a joy to people looking for an intimate understanding of their own community. It also plays a critical role in expanding the repertoire of environmental and urban histories in Canada.

Sean Kheraj, author of Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History:
This book is a significant addition to the still thin literature on the environmental history of Canadian cities ... The People and the Bay offers important perspectives on the challenges involved in trying to grasp and mark the significance of environmental and social change in Canada and beyond.

from the foreword by Graeme Wynn:
This book is a significant addition to the still thin literature on the environmental history of Canadian cities ... The People and the Bay offers important perspectives on the challenges involved in trying to grasp and mark the significance of environmental and social change in Canada and beyond.