Remembering the Struggle for the Environment: Hamilton's Lax Lands/Bayfront Park, 1950s-2008.

This essay considers changes and controversies in the waterfront development in Hamilton, Ontario, since the 1960s. It discusses the controversy that led to the creation of the Lax Lands/Bayfront Park as a key turning point in what one observer in the early 1970s called the battle to unchain Hamilton Bay from a post-World War II trajectory of industrial and commercial development. It notes that the controversy parallels wider developments in the history of North American waterfronts and environmental activism.