I was born and raised in Hamilton.
Unless you grew up there, you don't know shit. None of you.
I grew up in what would today be described as a lower middle class environment. My father worked in a factory and he busted his ass there to make a living. I remember he worked all the overtime he could get. He'd work 7 days a week for months straight. And he worked shifts. One week days, next week afternoons, next week nights. One year he took me on a tour of the plant - I guess it was some sort of family day or something. All I remember was how loud it was in there. Deafening from the machinery. Everyone had ear plugs that they wore as necklaces. There was no AC in that plant either. Not even windows. It was fucking hot. Not just hot - fucking hot. Those guys were tough in that plant. They were the micks, the wops, the pollacks, the hunkies, the working class Canadian guys. Guys who never asked for anything and would walk a mile out in the forest to scream if they dropped an anvil on their foot rather than show pain. I never thought much of the old man working nonstop when I was a kid, but I sure do now. He never complained. Don't think he took a single sick day in 40 years.
As kids, we didn't have everything by any means, but we didn't want for anything. Maybe we had a family walk at Cheery Hill Gate when we were kids on a Sunday (the old man would load us up along with our friends in his old Ford and if it started, off we'd go), or if we were really lucky, tickets to the TiCat game in Section 23 at Ivor Wynne and a bad hotdog that somehow I can still taste. We used to play soccer in the park, and we rode our bikes everywhere because it was free.
I grew up in the shadow of the steel mills and I knew what it meant. (Something I doubt most of you will ever know.) It taught me a bit of respect for the working man that persists to this day. (Also something I doubt that you would understand.)
It's interesting if you look at my old man and what he came from and where his kids and the kids of his buddies ended up. We're your accountants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers now. All of them from the Hammer. So fuck you.
You candy-asses from Toronto would die if you had to do what my old man had to do for a living. Seriously.