Save the Centre Mall

For decades residents of the East End have always known where to go to get a snack: Jim's Nut Shack. A long standing staple of the Centre Mall, its charming simplicity and tasty snacks has been attracting customers for years on end. No longer, though. Today, Jim's Nut Shack stands empty. It is only one of the many victims of the Centre Mall's current "reconstruction project."

A piece of Canada's history is about to be destroyed. The Centre Mall was the first mall built in Canada, back in 1955. It has been a part of the daily lives of Hamilton residents for 53 years now. If the reconstruction project is stopped now, it can continue to be.

Not only is it a part of Canada's history, it is a part of Hamilton's home, Hamilton's community, Hamiltonians' personal history. Hamiltonians up with the Centre. Hamiltonians went there as children, ran up the fountain walls. Hamiltonians went there as teenagers to hang out. Hamiltonians shopped there as adults to find the best deals. The monstrosity that is to replace the Centre will never be a place of community, it will never be a part of the community, the benefit to the community that the Centre is.

It will be a gigantic parking lot surrounded by stores, where to get from one store to the next you will have to get in your car and drive, because it is just too far to walk, especially in the cold of winter. How will that be with mothers and their children in strollers, having to gather everyone up into the car, again, to drive across the parking lot? No more walking from store to store anymore, no more food court where everyone in the family can get what they want. The "New" Centre promises to be a cold, desolate place, not a place for the people of this city to gather together, to be together.

Yet even as it marches into oblivion, the Centre Mall continues to be a common stop for Hamilton shoppers. Where will they go a month from now, when the Centre is gone forever? Where will the elderly be able to take their walks while escaping the cold? Where will Santa be next winter for Christmas time? Where will residents go for book sales, for one stop shopping trips?

Nowhere. For all their promises, the Centre Mall will never be the same again, and Hamilton will have lost a part of its home unless something is done now, in the final hour, to put a stop to it.