Mum Show: Hamilton at its quirky best
What’s more, it has given me some of my best memories of childhood
The Chrysanthemum Show is my favourite Hamilton cultural institution — more so even than our art gallery and that CHCH TV classic, “The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.”
Founded in 1920, the show is an annual celebration of floral art. It runs through Nov. 4 this year at Gage Park Greenhouse.
My late grandmother — May Geoghegan or Gran — loved the Mum Show. Gran revered the grandness of Gage Park. She loved flowers of all kinds. She taught me a subtle appreciation for floral arrangement — an underappreciated art.
May lived in the east end. When I was young, she took the bus most days from East Hamilton to West, coming to my family’s home near McMaster to help raise me and my siblings. A few times a year, I would get to ride the bus back east with Gran. Riding the HSR with her always had the energy of an adventure.
Once in the year, in the fall, we would ride the bus to the Mum Show.
Some of my best memories of childhood are of taking in the vistas at the Mum Show at May’s side, holding her hand, beauty in every direction. In retrospect, I see that Gran was teaching me mindfulness.
May grew up in Dublin, riding that city’s trams. She never drove. She told me public transportation was “more dignified.” In the 1960s, she supported Vic Copps when he first ran to be mayor of Hamilton. She supported her husband, Brendan, during his repeating laps of service as Vic’s campaign manager.
When I was young, May told me about the trams as part of what made Dublin great, fit to be capital of a proud post-colonial republic.
She told me that mayor Vic went into politics, becoming the first Irish Catholic to serve as mayor, because he wanted to help the Irish — but not only the Irish — win dignity.
Mayor Vic wanted to help “the disadvantaged” win equality.
Gran was dead by the time I ran for a seat on city council and won in 2014.
But her belief that a real city has real transit marked me. Her insistence that politics is for justice is with me every day.
I wish that May were alive today to see the outcome of our recent municipal election.
She would have loved the thoughtfulness and wit that so many of the candidates brought to their campaigns.
She would adore councillor-elect Nrinder Nann of Ward 3, who has built a career working hard in practical ways for intersectional equality.
She would love councillor-elect Maureen Wilson, who is replacing me in Ward 1.
Gran would have called councillorelect Wilson “a deep soul,” in the sense of one who sees power as to be shared, communities as sacred sites to be made beautiful.
I will miss serving as councillor more than I can say. I am leaving because suddenly, last summer, I was offered a rare and fantastic job in the field in which I was trained (law).
Specifically, I was asked to serve as executive director of the new social
justice legal clinic in Niagara. The downside: I would have to give up running for re-election.
The choice was the hardest of my life. In the end, I decided to take up the opportunity in Niagara.
The job means serving marginalized people in a new way, with a return to my practice as a lawyer. Until the end of my life, I will be grateful to Hamilton — for giving me and my husband a place here, for teaching me the joy of service, of sharing love in the context of neighbourhood. These lessons will be with me in Niagara.
Helen Keller wrote that “all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” Because of Hamilton, I know this is true.
Our eccentric city has become an even deeper part of me over the past four years. In many ways, I think the Mum Show is Hamilton, or Hamilton at its best, in the form that my Gran called “dignified” — quirky, diverse, and colourful.
Aidan Johnson has been councillor for Ward 1