Hamilton Immigration Narrative

Hamilton

Hometown, ugly then; I got out as fast as I could.

Immigrant parents: freedom for my brothers, strict rules for me;
Meant to protect but instead, near clipped my fledgling wings.

I’m a Hamilton girl, an East-ender. My lungs drew in iron filings,
Thanks to Stelco, Defasco, and their steel firings.

My smile hides my metal core, which got developed then, and more.
You should not mess with me.

And now, the new Hamilton immigrants
(The Toronto house-price refugees) are calling
Hamilton Mountain “The Escarpment,”
The ridge that I defended throughout my youth.

That, there, is a mountain.
I’m a steel-town girl. Don’t mess with me.

You cannot call it “The Escarpment,”
Changing the tune, reworking the name
Like old snails that become escargot
With the addition of garlic butter, just so.
That mountain was built on the bodies
Of thousands of dead fish that washed up
From Lake Ontario onto Burlington Beach,

Where we swam and played, before we ever heard the word pollution.

My brothers and I flung those smelly dead darts at one another,
Prior to the invention of Frisbees.
Fish scales were embedded in our fingers.
Our feet were cut by those dead silver razors as we ran across the hot sand, before we heard the word pollution,

Before we saw the stats on cancer in our town—
No absolution forthcoming, no reprieve from steel filings.

We earned its name of Hamilton Mountain; that, there, is no escarpment.
You ought not to call it by any other name. It is Our
Mountain.