Visit to Hamilton

Yesterday we made a quick trip out to Hamilton.  I had been planning on going the previous weekend but got scared off by potential thunderstorms, which never materialized.  However, I think in the end this was a better day to visit, as it wasn't so hot and sticky.  In addition, there was more activity at McMaster, which I'll get to shortly.

We got to the GO Bus station in time and got in line.  There are always quite a few people on the bus, and with it only running once an hour, there were barely enough seats!  In the end, some people had to sit next to people not in their pod, which I'm sure they didn't appreciate.  We even saw a few people miss the bus unfortunately.

Traffic was heavy but improved after the 427 split, then we got snarled again.  I thought it was just cottage country traffic, but then it became clear there had been some accident and basically all the lanes were closed.  The driver was monitoring the situation and was encouraged to get off and take a bypass.  The traffic was still pretty bad, but we eventually made it (and roughly only 20 minutes late, though it felt longer).  I was reading John Williams's Stoner and my son was wrapping up Crime and Punishment from our last jaunt.  Unfortunately, my iPod died only 15 minutes into the trip, so I didn't really have anything to listen to.

We started out looking around downtown Hamilton a bit.  There are some gentrifying bits, but it still feels like a bit of a cross between Buffalo and Cleveland.  We wandered through Jackson Square.  I was looking for the Farmer's Market.  Apparently it is still right there, but I didn't see any signs for it and gave up looking, assuming that it had closed.  (In the second photo, if you look closely, you can see a shopper wearing her mask incorrectly.  There was a fair bit of that in Jackson Square, so I didn't really feel like lingering...)

Then we crossed the street and went to the Art Gallery of Hamilton.  One nice surprise was they extended the free admission for one more weekend, though we did leave them a donation on the way out.  The main floor was a mix of paintings from the main collection and poets commenting on the pieces.  There were even a bunch of Warhol soup cans!  In addition, there was sports-based art by Esmaa Mohamoud, much of which we had seen a few years back at the AGO.

 

The upstairs is a deeper dive into the permanent collection with a healthy number of Canadian artists on view.  I don't drop by the AGH that often, but it is usually worth it, especially when they have a solid show on the first floor.

After this, we jumped on a bus and went to visit McMaster.  Apparently, they were welcoming students back, as well as showing new freshman the ropes.  

I hadn't seen some parts of the campus before and swore that one of the buildings was a clone of Hart House!  Anyway, it was good to ask a few students about living on residence and their experiences at McMaster.  I'm not sure my son will choose a university just based on its campus, but I think McMaster may have moved up the list a bit.  At any rate, I'm glad we had a chance to visit.

We walked over to Main St. to catch a bus back downtown.  We had a bit of time to kill, so we went all the way in to GO Centre, which I think was the right decision, as we boarded an empty GO bus.  By the time the bus hit King and Dundurn, it was quite full and we wouldn't have been able to sit next to each other.  The trip back was considerably smoother, though somewhat surprisingly the driver took the 407 pretty much the whole way.  Maybe the issues on the QEW hadn't cleared up after all.