I moved to downtown Hamilton, Ontario, in 2005. We bought our three-storey Victorian home near Copps Coliseum at a price that would have been unheard of in Toronto. The corner we lived on had been labelled “the most dangerous corner in Hamilton.” But my shaved head and tattoos stood out less here than in the […] More »

The National Hockey League playoffs open this week and the abundance of emotion-laden storylines are sure to captivate a significant portion of the the Canadian sporting public’s hearts. But while three Canadian squads—the Vancouver Canucks, the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators—vie for Lord Stanley’s coveted Cup, there’s another, less exciting, story unfolding that probably […] More »

With shoe-polish smeared across his eyes, and a duct-taped “D” insignia across his chest, the simple minded Arthur Poppington(played by Woody Harrelson) transforms himself into an unconventional, but heroic vigilante: Defendor. The film takes place in the seedy underbelly of an unnamed industrial town—in reality, a not-at-all-diguised Hamilton, Ont.—an unlikely setting for the unlikeliest of super-heroes.  […] More »