Are you ready? After several months of planning, navigating increasingly interesting border issues, and reworking things, we are!
This is your CHESS 2025 event information page. Below, you’ll find the program for the event, including links to the readings and additional information about accommodation and transportation. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Jessica van Horssen (vanhorsj [@] mcmaster.ca).
Getting to McMaster
From Aldershot’s VIA/GO rail station
Take the #1 GO bus to McMaster University. The entire journey should take 15 minutes and there are no transfers required.
Please consult GO Transit’s Plan Your Trip page to see when your bus will be departing.
From YYZ Pearson Airport
The simplest way to get to McMaster from Pearson is the GO bus. While there is no direct bus, these buses run regularly and the one connection you will need to make is fairly easy to navigate. The entire journey should take 1.5 hours.
You will need to get to Terminal 1 at Pearson to catch either the #1 or #3 GO bus. Please consult GO Transit’s Plan Your Trip page to determine the right bus for you.
For all GO Transit options, consider downloading the Presto card app on your phone if you do not have a Presto card, as this will give you a discount on your journey.
Driving
If you plan to drive to McMaster, please see this site for more information, or consult whichever map app you’re most comfortable with.
Parking
McMaster University uses HonkMobile’s 24-Hour Parking for summer accommodation reservations.
The HonkMobile app can be downloaded on the Google Play or Apple App Store. New users can register for an account from the app or HonkMobile’s web site.
24-Hour Parking (May 1 to August 12, 2025)
- Park on campus in Lot G, or H.
- Scan QR code at entry gate, text 75498 with your zone number of 4922, or click here.
- Enter your license plate number.
- Select daily rate of $12 per day on weekdays or $8 per day on weekends.
- Select your payment option and make a payment to officially register your vehicle.
Unregistered vehicles on campus will be ticketed and the owner’s expense.
Your parking permit is active for 24 hours from the time your vehicle is registered. Each additional day can be conveniently added through the HonkMobile app, clicking here, or texting 75498 with your zone # of 4922. The app will send notifications when your time is nearing expiry.
All routes to McMaster should end at The Commons Building, Woodstock Hall, where those staying on campus will check-in.
For all events on campus, please consult McMaster’s Interactive Campus Map (or a map app of your choice) for directions.
Program
Friday, 30 May
From 12pm: if you would like to arrange a tour of McMaster’s Thode nuclear reactor, please send Jessica an email by Thursday, May 22nd and we can arrange this in small groups. This is a fascinating, if controversial, space that produces medical isotopes for use around the world. Radiation contamination at this site is measured in bananas and you’re at risk of around 10 bananas for the tour (which is low). J. Robert Oppenheimer was once a guest at the reactor, and it has changed very little since then.
From 3pm: Check in at The Commons Building, Woodstock Hall for those staying on campus. Your residence will be Les Prince Hall, which is not far from Woodstock Hall. If you would like to check-in early, please email reserve [@] mcmaster.ca to see about availability from 12pm that day. You are also able to store your luggage in Jessica’s office if you arrive without an early check-in option, and if that’s of interest to you, just send an email to let her know when and where to meet you.
4-4:30pm: Welcome to CHESS 2025, Alumni Memorial Hall Great Hall.
4:30-6pm: Keynote Address by Dr. Siobhan Angus (Concordia), “Shadow Geologies: Photography in the Aftermath of Mining,” Alumni Memorial Hall Great Hall.
In preparation for the keynote, please read Siobhan Angus and Warren Cariou, Tar Remedies: Methods of Return and Re-vision on Colonized/Contaminated Land, Environmental Humanities 16:2 (July 2024). (below)
You can read Angus and Cariou’s introduction to this article, which provides more context, in “Collaboration and Hope in ‘Tar Remedies’.”
6-8pm: Dinner on campus at The Phoenix grad student pub. Alcohol is not covered by CHESS, and participants are expected to make their own way back to Les Prince Hall.
Saturday, 31 May
We will be spending the day exploring the history of contamination and remediation at Hamilton Harbour. To prepare for the day, please read “Blighted Areas and Obnoxious Industries: Constructing Environmental Inequality on an Industrial Waterfront, Hamilton, Ontario, 1890-1960, Environmental History 9 July 2004. (below)
8-8:45am: Continental breakfast, Chester New Hall 607B. We will then walk to the bus departure point as a group.
9am: Bus departs from the McMaster University Student Centre (MUSC) on Stearn Drive.
9:30-11:30am: We will begin our day in the field with a tour of Hamilton Harbour led by Andrea Smith from the City of Hamilton to learn about plans for the area, brownfield development challenges, algal blooms, and engaging Indigenous communities in planning waterfront projects.
12-1:30pm: Lunch and Learn at the Cotton Factory with Dr. Jennifer Bonnell (York), “Architects of Bloom: Beekeeper Relationships with Changing Urban Environments in the Great Lakes Region.” Hamilton’s Industrial past goes well beyond steel, and this location is a gorgeous reminder of this.
Please read Jennifer Bonnell, “Early Insecticide Controversies and Beekeeper Advocacy in the Great Lakes Region,” Environmental History 26:1 (January 2021) in preparation for this talk. (below)
2-3:30pm: Exploring Bayfront Park with Jessica van Horssen (McMaster) and Riley Crocker (McMaster), a success story in Hamilton’s ongoing remediation history? We will explore a success story in Hamilton’s remediation history of remediation efforts at Bayfront, connecting contamination, remediation, and the city’s working-class history.
Please read Nancy B. Bouchier and Ken Cruikshank, “Remembering the Struggle for the Environment: Hamilton’s Lax Lands/Bayfront Park, 1950s-2008.” Left History 13, no. 1 (2008): 106-28 in preparation for this activity. (below)
4-5pm: Humble Bee tour/talk to explore the challenges and advantages of urban beekeeping next to a major steelworks and port. Get ready for an observation hive and honey tasting session!
5:30-9pm: Dinner and drinks at Grain and Grit brewery with Red Door Cucina’s pizza food truck (GF options available). This brewery is located within walking distance of McMaster’s main campus in its very own industrial/post-industrial region of the city. It’s just across the road from the Mondelez candy factory (Sour Patch Kids! Swedish Fish!) in the Ainsley Wood area of the city. For those feeling emboldened by the day, there is an optional tour through Ainsley Wood and halfway up the escarpment to find the First World War shooting range wall hidden in the semi-suburban landscape. Attendees can walk back to campus (~25 mins) either along Main Street West, or the former Hamilton-Dundas rail line, now the beloved rail trail. Participants are expected to pay for their own beverages.
Sunday, 1 June
8-8:45am: Continental breakfast, Chester New Hall 607B. Please bring any luggage you wish to leave in Jessica’s office for the day to this.
9am-12pm: Mining Danger Workshop at the Council Chambers in Gilmour Hall with John Sandlos (MUN), Arn Keeling (MUN), Jessica van Horssen (McMaster), and Ken Cruikshank (McMaster).
This workshop is hosted by some of the members of the Mining Danger SSHRC Insight Grant, and it’s designed to link the impacts of extraction we explored at the harbour on Saturday to the mines crucial metals and minerals come from. The workshop will address three key themes, which will be applicable to all environmental historians:
- Field Work/Oral History
- Occupational Health
- Sounding Danger
As this is a workshop-style session, we have compiled a series of sources for you to read beforehand for this. These sources are housed in a OneDrive folder and if you have any trouble accessing them, please contact Jessica. Coming from a generation of mix tapes, we have also made a mining history-themed playlist for you to enjoy on the lead-up to CHESS (below). As you listen, ask what sort of camaraderie mining songs foster, why so many are so sad, and why are coal and unions the dominant themes of these songs. Both the sources and the songs are quite extensive and diverse and we look forward to a wonderful set of discussions of them with you all.
12-1pm: Lunch with 50 Pesos’ food truck, Pepe
1:30-3pm: mass canoe ride on Cootes Paradise to celebrate Ken Cruikshank’s career and conclude the events. It is likely we will be 3 people to each canoe, and we’re hoping that this is a lovely way to finish off a fantastic CHESS 2025! For those not into canoeing, an alternate tour of Ancaster Creek is available.
