Norm Schleehahn was raised in a one-stoplight Ontario town bordered by farm country before he headed off to McMaster University in Hamilton in the late 1980s. To describe him as a wide-eyed kid in those days would be a fair assessment, and his eyes grew a whole lot wider when his landlady Joan, who was big-hearted and kind, instructed her new tenant to pile into her bright red Fiero so she could show him around town.

Their tour arced around the city’s harbour, steel mills, smokestacks and coal heaps, showing off the hustle and industrial churn at the core of Hamilton’s identity. It was a scene Joan described as “romantic,” while her small-town passenger blurted out, “Wow, would you look at this?” — the only words he could find at the time.

“It was my first impression of Hamilton,” Schlee

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