Raise the Hammer
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Shawn Selway is a Stelco trained millwright who runs a consultancy in the interpretation and conservation of historic machinery. He lives in the North End with his family.
Email: selway@nas.net
Urban Renewal, Then and Now: LRT and the Rental Housing Crisis, Part 2 - Almost nobody but tenants in rental housing and the homeless in their camps actually feels the need for their right to housing to be met - affordable, secure, adequately sized and located housing, that is. Published March 06, 2020 in Commentary
Time to Turn? LRT and the Rental Housing Crisis, Part 1 - Municipal strategies which exacerbate the housing affordability problem today look less like indifference and more like active hostility, as pointless as it is cruel. Published March 05, 2020 in Commentary
Remembering the Legacy of Hate as Council Considers Partnering With a Homophobic Political Action Committee - This is a day to call to account those councillors who are pretending to forget the existence of the harm and hatefulness which the rest of us are trying to put well and truly and finally behind us. Published September 25, 2019 in Commentary
Selling Sunset: Quick Fix in Broken Housing Market - If affordability is truly the goal for Strachan/Bay, then it cannot be achieved by putting the land on the market, but rather by making it available on favourable terms to a co-operative or other non-profit housing developer. Published April 07, 2017 in Special Report: West Harbour
Getting to Turnover in Renaissance City, Part 3 - Tn the case of securitized cash flow from Hamilton high-rises, the combination of market forces and regulations seems to work against the upkeep of buildings. Published August 17, 2016 in Commentary
Getting to Turnover in Renaissance City, Part 2 - Round two at the Landloard and Tenant Board unfolded much as the morning session had, except that everything was a touch sharper, a little more intense. Published August 16, 2016 in Commentary
Getting to Turnover in Renaissance City, Part 1 - Multi-residential ownership in the metropolitan south can be a hedge against losses consequent on the ebb of work from the northern resource centres. Published August 15, 2016 in Commentary
Deficit of Ideas in Hamilton's Civic Governance - In the case of our crumbling public housing, budgeting has become a matter of choosing which deficit to grow. This is a political choice. Published March 02, 2016 in Commentary
Review of Toronto: Transformations In A City And Its Region (Part 2) - Can we achieve additive, not subtractive, reurbanization, and retain the mass, variety, and cohesion of a 'real city'? Published September 29, 2015 in Reviews
Review of Toronto: Transformations In A City And Its Region (Part 1) - Edward Relph is a genial, open-hearted observer who takes pride in Toronto's transformation from the inward-looking second city of Canada to the polyglot world city that provides something for everybody. Published September 28, 2015 in Reviews
Three Solitudes: Canada and Macdonald's Legacy - Far from being the country that Sir John A. Macdonald founded, Canada is in many ways just the country he explicitly did not want. Published February 04, 2015 in Commentary
June Construction Roundup - A summary of the ups and downs of building activity in the downtown and north end. Published June 20, 2014 in Downtown Bureau
Return to Barton-Tiffany - Barton-Tiffany is a good place to start practising some of these things which do not preclude or foreclose development but prepare for it. Published December 11, 2013 in Special Report: Pan Am
Working Hard at Nothing All Day: A Sanatorium Scrapbook - The San was the work of the whole city, the collective effort of Hamiltonians of all classes. Surely this place is worthy of designation as a national historic site. Published May 04, 2013 in Special Report: Heritage
Development and Degradation: Making Adaptive Re-Use the Default Option, Part 3 - Our buildings are not garbage. 'Development' which leaves us poorer than before, culturally or financially, is not development. It is degradation. Published February 10, 2013 in Special Report: Heritage
Development and Degradation: Making Adaptive Re-Use the Default Option, Part 2 - As a citizen and member of the larger community, the meddlesome pundit does have a legitimate interest in the fate of heritage buildings. Published February 07, 2013 in Special Report: Heritage
Development and Degradation: Making Adaptive Re-Use the Default Option, Part 1 - I am not arguing against public expenditure but against environmentally and culturally damaging expenditure which further impoverishes the lives of those who are paying for it. Published February 04, 2013 in Special Report: Heritage
Colonel FG Ward Pumping Station, Buffalo - The principal difficulty in putting an industrial artifact into preservation (not into suspension, but into preservation) is not the cost of conservation work, but the provision of an interpretive program. Published October 26, 2012 in Architecture
What Went Right? - Given the dissatisfaction with the folks at the Hall so frequently expressed on this site (yes, by this writer also), it may be useful to look at a case whose outcome was much happier all around. Published September 23, 2012 in Commentary
Shoulder to the Wheel - As Labour Day draws near, I propose some post-summer reading to ease the transition, three books about, naturally, work - but work in the ever-green fields of utopian speculation. Published August 30, 2012 in Reviews
Mohawk Redeems Wallace Experiment, Mac Saves Braley Parking Lot - Mohawk College has restored the sculpture Educational Experiment by George Wallace. Meanwhile, McMaster has protected a parking lot from development. Published August 07, 2012 in Arts and Music
Dirty Water and Hot Metal: Shaking the Skyway Syndrome - Because so much has been forced on us so rapidly in the last three decades, we seem have become averse to choosing change, especially in the public realm. For all the talk of innovation, there is much resistance to real change here. Published June 29, 2012 in Special Report: Creative City
Safe Streets in Hamilton's North End up to Ontario Municipal Board - Urban neighbourhoods cannot go on allowing themselves to be terrorized by large volumes of traffic moving at high speeds on streets not meant to act as extensions of provincial highways. Published May 07, 2012 in Special Report: Walkable Streets
Fringe 2015 Review: Paperweight, Published July 24, 2015 in Reviews - Fringe 2015
Fringe 2015 Review: KNEEL! DIAMOND DOGS, Published July 24, 2015 in Reviews - Fringe 2015
The Bees, Published October 11, 2013 in Arts
Happy Birthday, Dear Opinionators , Published April 12, 2013 in Media
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