Daylighting Chedoke ― Exploring Hamilton's Hidden Creek

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. 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 has literally buried our natural environment, and what it would be like to free our creeks and perhaps, while doing so, free our society.

John Terpstra is the author of ten books of poetry and four books of non-fiction. He is interested in how natural geography and built geography integrate and relate to each other and in how history is simultaneous with now. Daylighting Chedoke is a companion book to his two earlier books about Hamilton as a living, breathing geographical location, Falling into Place and The House with the Parapet Wall.