Daylighting Chedoke: Exploring Hamilton's Hidden Creek (Register here!)
Read the book, then join Maureen in conversation with the Ward 1 author, John Terpstra. After Maureen and John's initial discussion, you will have an opportunity to ask John your questions.
Chedoke Creek is one of six creeks that weave their way through Hamilton, but it is the most hidden, lost to culverts and concrete. Its waters are seen only in a couple of waterfalls as it flows over the edge of the Niagara Escarpment and in a short canal where it runs alongside Highway 403.
In elegant, seamless prose award-winning author John Terpstra traces Chedoke Creek back to its source, searching through historical archives and city documents, and even walking up the great storm drains that collect the water that spills from the escarpment. He weaves the history of the creek with the lyrical observations of nature and humankind’s connections to nature that he is celebrated for, while also examining the reality of our contaminated waterways. Daylighting Chedoke is a meditation on how urbanization and industrialization have literally buried our natural environment and what it would be like to free our creeks and perhaps, while doing so, free our society.
Where is Chedoke Creek? Daylighting Chedoke Walking Map (pdf)
The Hamilton Public Library has several copies of the book, however, their curbside pick-up option begins June 23rd.. If you're able, we encourage you to support your local independent booksellers by ordering your own copy through King West Books or Epic Books. Daylighting Chedoke is published by Hamilton's Wolsak & Wynn.
Registration in advance is required for this meeting. Register here!
About the author
John Terpstra is the author of ten books of poetry and four books of non-fiction. He often plays in that zone where human beings interact with nature – nature in the city, not the country. The nature he gravitates toward is one that has some experience of us, has had to live with us and our demands, and is no longer pure or whole or perfect, but still somehow manages to be itself – maybe even more than when it was "wild." He is interested in how the natural geography and built geography integrate and relate to each other, in how history is simultaneous with now. Daylighting Chedoke is a companion book to the two earlier books about Hamilton as a living, breathing geographical location, Falling into Place and The House with the Parapet Wall. He lives in Ward 1.