Text by Sarah Sheehan
Woodlands Park is haunted by absence. Located in Hamilton’s emerging Barton Village neighbourhood, near the city’s heavy industry, today’s Woodlands is a windswept open space: the City levelled it after the ’46 Stelco strike. When a commemorative placemaking installation came to Woodlands this spring, the old park and its stories had been largely forgotten. The multimedia installation Woodlands Park: Ghost Landscape commemorates the lost park, exploring the meanings of public space and who controls it.
Woodlands Park, Hamilton, Ghost Landscapes exhibit. IMAGE/ Sarah Sheehan
Hamiltonians knew the old Woodlands as “the People’s Park” for its labour gatherings, but it started life as a treed, Victorian park, with a cast-iron fountain at its heart. Later, an Edwardian bandstand hosted eminent speakers, and crowds gathered there to celebrate VE-Day. Workers organized and assembled here. It was the site of a brutal crackdown on people gathered for International Workers’ Day festivities on May Day of 1932— a day which lives on as a notorious instance of violence against the labour movement. And it was an important gathering place for workers during the landmark 81-day Stelco strike.
Woodlands Park, Hamilton. IMAGE/ Jeff Tessier
When the Parks Board removed the trees, fountain, and bandstand, contemporaries used photography to document the destruction. Ghost Landscape incorporates these and other haunting archival images on signs and banners, with text from the period. Oral histories— sampled in the sound installation, together with music and ambient nature sounds—recall the rich life of the old Woodlands, and what was lost just before May Day, 1947. (Listen, or find descriptions of sound and visuals, at GhostLandscape.ca.)
Ghost Landscape speaks to themes of change, renewal, and the mutability of our public spaces over time. One hopeful example: the planned Woodlands Spray Pad would mean the return of a central water feature, seventy-five years later
Woodlands Park, Hamilton, Ghost Landscapes exhibit. IMAGE/ Sarah Sheehan
Woodlands Park, Hamilton, Ghost Landscapes exhibit. IMAGE/ Sarah Sheehan
BIO/ Sarah Sheehan is a writer, heritage advocate, and the project lead on Woodlands Park: Ghost Landscape, a temporary project made possible by the City of Hamilton’s Placemaking Grant Pilot Program with support from the Patrick J. McNally Charitable Foundation. Additional financial support generously provided by the Ward 3 Hamilton office and USW Local 1005.
Woodlands Park, Hamilton, Ghost Landscapes exhibit. IMAGE/ Sarah Sheehan