Originally published by Mayday Magazine, May 2009.
The sky is filled with clouds stretched out like cotton balls dipped in watery grey paint. They track my movement as I walk past Gore Park with its pigeons, crack heads, beautiful architecture and impressive fountain. I eye them with the wary fascination of a mouse eyeing an owl, recognizing their beauty but dreading the inevitable attack. After an uncomfortable wait a blast of exhaust fumes blows my wavy-wild hair back off my face like something out of a warped shampoo commercial, and I board my bus: the 2 Barton. I am followed by the strangest of the strange, the poorest of the poor, the sketchest of the sketch, the oldest of the old and the youngest of the young.
The Barton bus is one of the busiest in the city. It smells the worst, looks the worst, and rides the worst, but I have a soft spot for it ever since I noticed how engaging its passengers can be. Women who look like and probably are prostitutes will jump up to offer their seats to an elderly schizophrenic, punk kids who look like plausible gang material drop their macho posturing to help a smelly old lady get her walker off the bus, and although the mullet-happy middle aged beer bellies do leer at me in a most uncomfortable way, they rarely bother me and are always polite if the bus is crowded. Many a rough looking man has muttered a bashful “Pardon me” when the choppy motions of the bus make them stumble. You can’t help but be charmed by the utter humanity of the Barton.
But today I am noticing something about the Barton’s route, where ancient Canadian land is fighting against the ghetto. Boarded up buildings on every corner hang their heads in shame while weeds adorned with triumphant purple flowers shoot up to the sky like clenched fists. Moss and plants ooze up out of long plugged eaves troughs, grinning down like goblins enjoying a tasty roof snack. Battered old asphalt cracks open all the way down the street, forced open by a partnership between extreme weather patterns and the ground’s hungry jaws.
As the bus moves, getting more and more crowded and more and more stuffy with the breath of the impoverished, I become aware of the battle between Hamilton and the earth itself.
It serves us right, really. We come in here, set up camp alongside one of the world’s largest and most beautiful lakes, then proceed to erect smog spewing factories and one of the least people friendly cities I’ve ever seen, let alone nature friendly. We had a responsibility to care for the space God gave us, and we neglected it completely in favour of get rich quick schemes that floundered and left us poor in an ugly city. We definitely deserve the fight, that doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is how mercifully beautiful the struggle is if you look at it in the right light. Recently I picked up a few books on street art, books full of the world’s most colourful and inspiring paintings sprawled magnificently across rundown brick walls and broken down machinery. The artists of the world fight back against the ugliness we’ve made.
And that is exactly what God is doing in Hamilton, where beauty perseveres despite our attempts to massacre it. What would happen if we took the cue? What if we started taking all these ugly places and infusing them with bits of scheming, mischievous, wild, marvelous beauty? Just imagine if we started planting roses where the weed-flowers thrive? What if we took these run-down buildings and plastered them with inspiring murals? What if we built upon the foundation of startling altruism demonstrated on the Barton bus and loved these neglected areas into quirky, beautiful communities? My heart pounds and aches with all the potential around me.
Nature wins. Those sly clouds that follow finally manage to assemble themselves directly above me as I get off the bus. Down comes the rain, pounding and sharp like bullets, howling with glee as the wind shoots it straight into my face, going up under my umbrella. The wilderness used to love to play these games with me, and I’d foolishly thought my dalliance with nature and beauty over now that I was stationed in the Steel Town.
Not so, the clouds taunt, and after my revelations on the Barton bus, I’m glad.
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