By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 26, 2015
Local boosters have been successful in getting the eastern section of Burlington Street dubbed the Tesla Expressway, for the Serbian inventor of the AC current. The stretch will be an “expressway” in name only since the speed limit won’t be raised. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 27, 2008
Councillors have voted to continue a controversial lawsuit against Ottawa involving the building of the Red Hill Valley Parkway.
It has also removed a cap on legal costs plus decided to keep the costs from public view until the suit’s end.
Councillors voted 8-6 yesterday to support a staff recommendation to keep the lawsuit going after a two-hour closed door meeting. The decision must be ratified by council tonight.
Hamilton launched a $75-million lawsuit against Ottawa and 70 bureaucrats in September 2004, alleging they conspired to delay building the $225-million expressway by using the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to block it. Ottawa filed a defence in 2006 denying the allegations. The highway opened last November.
Council also backed recommendations to lift the $450,000 cap for the legal costs; cease public reporting of ongoing costs by citing solicitor-client privilege until the action is over; renew efforts to mediate a settlement with the federal government; and reject Ottawa’s Jan. 30 offer to end the lawsuit and have both sides pay their own costs.
Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who came into office promising to kill the lawsuit because he did not believe it was in Hamilton’s best interests, was disappointed. He had a motion to end the lawsuit, but it never made it to the floor. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 19, 2003
Graeme’s Gallery 2003
The Six Nations’ claim to the Red Hill valley is a piece of flim-flammery worthy of some of the fast ones white settlers on either side of the Canadian-American border tried to pull on the natives’ ancestors.
The elected band council claims the Red Hill valley is part of the Six Nations’ traditional hunting and fishing grounds.
Meanwhile, some members of the traditional Confederacy — the band council’s political rivals on the Grand River reserve — are claiming the valley is Six Nations territory and have been issuing permits to non-native expressway protesters, who were happily accepting them with either a bumpkin-like simplicity born of historical ignorance or gleeful expediency.
The band council has at best a shaky legal leg to stand on. The traditionalists are plain out to lunch.
It is basing its eleventh-hour entry into the Red Hill rehash on the Nanfan treaty of 1701, in which the Iroquois Confederacy, which was comprised of five tribes until the Tuscarora joined later that century, ceded all its territory in southwestern Ontario to the British in exchange for a guarantee of free hunting rights over the land forever.
The fact the Iroquois had been driven out of the area a decade or so earlier by the Ojibwa, known in southern Ontario as the Mississaugas, probably doesn’t matter legally because British negotiators didn’t make the treaty dependent on possession or re-conquest. (Hamilton Spectator)
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday October 30, 2001
There have been 80 accidents where Highway 407 meets Highway 403 in Burlington since the end of July.Ontario Provincial Police say only 10 of the accidents resulted in injuries, but all caused major traffic tieups and added to drivers’ frustration.
The 407 was supposed to move traffic through this area faster, not create more gridlock.
The issue is the design of the 407 ETR (express toll route) access.
The left lane on the non-toll Highway 403 flows directly on to the toll-charging 407.
Drivers who aren’t paying attention could find themselves either driving on the toll road or having to make a quick lane change to avoid it.
These changes have been blamed for several minor collisions.
The situation caused a public outcry when the 407 opened at the Freeman interchange in Burlington in August.
The Ontario Transportation Ministry and 407 officials put up more signs that provide more advanced notice of the left lane becoming part of the 407 and this seemed to ease the situation. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday October 30, 2001
There have been 80 accidents where Highway 407 meets Highway 403 in Burlington since the end of July.Ontario Provincial Police say only 10 of the accidents resulted in injuries, but all caused major traffic tieups and added to drivers’ frustration.
The 407 was supposed to move traffic through this area faster, not create more gridlock.
The issue is the design of the 407 ETR (express toll route) access.
The left lane on the non-toll Highway 403 flows directly on to the toll-charging 407.
Drivers who aren’t paying attention could find themselves either driving on the toll road or having to make a quick lane change to avoid it.
These changes have been blamed for several minor collisions.
The situation caused a public outcry when the 407 opened at the Freeman interchange in Burlington in August.
The Ontario Transportation Ministry and 407 officials put up more signs that provide more advanced notice of the left lane becoming part of the 407 and this seemed to ease the situation. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)
The cartoon above is the colourized version published in the book, “You Might be From Hamilton If.” It is posted online and its original URL may be accessed here.