Hamilton: Hospitals and Steel Mills

Many of you know that I lost my Mom about six months ago; and that two months ago, we discovered my Dad needed a triple bypass. That was Tuesday, at Hamilton General, and all went very well. And is still going well. My brother and I drove down together and also had a great opportunity to catch up with each other.

Since my brother acted as chauffeur, he was kind enough to take a quick runabout the steel mills and whatever else was in the neighbourhood. I learned quite a bit - he's a metallurgist and quite knowledgeable about the varied questions I had - "Why is there rifling up smokestacks?" "How do you extract oxygen from the air?" "What's the difference between Stelco and Dofasco?" (Seems Dofasco's the place to be).

They have a vibrant and vocal arts community with a new gallery. Sudbury was similar in character - a working town that snorts "We've got culture too!" And boy, do they ever.

You're going to be seeing a few renderings from my "drive by shootings" - lots of rotten shots, but tonnes of great material. This plant intrigued me because:
a) it looked hard to draw, but would render well in Sharpie and shoe polish
b) should I play with it, it would work very well in blues and yellow
c) it's a puzzle how parts interconnect - and this feels like a 1,000 piece jigsaw

I still don't know what the place is; or it's function. And brother HAD said "Don't ask what these plants are because I don't know".