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From Man Vs. Nature To Environment Vs. Budget - The Shifting Battles In The History Of Pollution And Toxicity In Hamilton Harbour, Sara N. Giglia

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

Hamilton Harbour is the principle port serving South Western Ontario and the Niagara Peninsula region with two of Canada’s largest steel manufacturers occupying the waterfront. As early as the 1860s fishery inspectors in Hamilton noted the fish tasted of coal, that there were dead ducks and small animals that were coated in oil from refineries. In the 1950s the Hamilton Harbour was deemed unfit for recreational use and although the state of the harbour may be slowly improving, it is far from being delisted from the International Joint Commission’s Area of Concerns designations list. This paper will first look at …