MIP in the News

The 1,500 production workers at Camco were a few weeks into a bitter strike and a couple of dozen of them were trying to stop a locomotive from leaving the Longwood Road plant. They weren't having a lot of success.

There was yelling and jostling, and for a young reporter it was the first up-close look at a nasty labour dispute. There is a picture in The Spectator files taken that day: June 9, 1987.

I was thinking about all this just this week as I drove by the old plant site, now the emerging home to high-tech hopes for this city. Two large white EllisDon cranes tower over the site of what used to be the plant; a few hundred yards away, the rejuvenated former office building is now headquarters for McMaster Innovation Park.

It seems a million miles from that day in June.

That plant, which once made a wide range of appliances including refrigerators and ranges, is now producing ideas.

After a retrofit of more than $13 million, the knowledge workers have replaced the factory workers -- a fitting touch for the next generation.

"We are looking at this as a symbol of the new city of Hamilton," McMaster University president Peter George said when unveiling the university's plans for the research park back in January 2005.

Today, that is a reality.

Work on converting the former Westinghouse, then Camco, office building is now complete and tenants -- including Trivaris, a company founded by Hamilton's Mark Chamberlain that develops entrepreneurial ideas -- have moved in.

Construction is now under way for the new CANMET laboratory and according to Mo Elbestawi, Mac's vice-president of research, plans for at least two more buildings are in the works.

In the end, McMaster is transforming part of Hamilton's industrial heritage -- a place where generations of Hamilton people worked from 1913 to 2004 -- into a workplace for the future. It shows the value and importance of a high-tech, high-quality university and how important it is to our continued economic development.

It was pitched as a world tour, in a time not unlike now, when things were tough and budgets thin.

Our StreetBeat columnist Paul Wilson pitched then-managing editor John Gibson on travelling to Moscow, Copenhagen, Zurich and Washington -- a kind of world tour for the column that Hamiltonians have loved to read for more than two decades.

How could he get away with it?

Well, it turns out Paul would write about all those places and never leave Ontario.

Now, in what many are calling the Great Recession, StreetBeat is on the road again.

"This time the concept is to go to places we all can visit that are within an hour of here," Wilson says while stopping by my office to grab an ice cream and ask me about the state of the union.

"Where you going?" I ask, then wonder if I can give that information away in this column.

Paul tells me it is a surprise; he will simply get into the "clownmobile" -- a Spectator car decorated with all things Spectator -- and roam. One hour in any direction. Nothing set up in advance. See what he finds, talk to people, and write about it all "in real time."

This is reporting of the old school -- getting out of the office, finding stories where you can -- and no one at the Spec is better at it than Paul.

The series, which begins Monday, is pitched as An Hour From Home.

Exclusively in your newspaper. You won't want to miss it.

And by the way, the first stop (I am told) is Ayr.

David Estok is The Hamilton Spectator's editor-in-chief.

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