The Barons of Barton Street

Stephen Dale’s Shift Change takes me back to when I was an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario, in the late 1980s, and spending my summers working in St. Catharines. Each fall, as I would make my way back to school across southern Ontario, a meandering and at times almost Homeric ride from St. Catharines would bring me to the Hamilton bus depot, which was downtown on Rebecca Street. Arriving there — at this way ­station in Canada’s best-known industrial city, still home to many major firms, most notably Stelco and Dofasco — was always a bit like time travelling. The smell of old-school foundries ­literally permeated the air.

Hamilton occupies a unique place in our national economic development because of its association with heavy industry. It is also unique among cities of similar size in receiving a disproportionate amount of attention from a wide variety of writers. Scholars, especially those who were part of the wave of labour and...