Camera obscura

This is what happened next — after the photo of Day’s Buildings in the history page for May 12. That view a couple of weeks ago was at the corner of Victoria Street and Claudelands Road. This view is at the opposite end — Bryce St & Victoria St. It is very forlorn and very distressing. One can almost smell that pungent odour which arises from wet ash and charred remains. The fire started in a market building sandwiched between Valintines and the SAC building on the morning of Sunday July 30. There is a series of photos in our collection demonstrating the extent of the damage. The State Advances building was badly damaged and one photo suggests the fire entered that building. The irony here is, of course, the burnt out offices of two insurance companies.

Contributed by Perry Rice, Heritage Librarian – Photographs, Hamilton Central Library. If you have any information you would like to pass on or would like to buy an electronic copy of the photo, please e-mail perry.rice@hcc.govt.nz quoting HCL_05830. Today Scottish actor Ewan McGregor is enjoying a career peak, his brand refreshed through exposure in the film T2 Trainspotting.

In the 1920s Hamilton had its own McGregor, one of great phonetic similarity. His first name was Ewen. There is a scene in T2 Trainspotting where McGregor’s character Renton gatecrashes the Loyalist Club, a rabid anti-Catholic organisation and improvises a song in celebration of the Battle of the Boyne. By coincidence, the Waikato’s Ewen McGregor was of an identical religious stripe, serving as president of the Protestant Political Association of New Zealand.

A fierce opponent of home rule in Ireland, in August 1921 McGregor became incensed when Hamilton was visited by a certain Mr Hall Skeleton, who put the case for Irish independence in a speech at the Town Hall.

McGregor refused to debate Skeleton but in a letter to the Waikato Times decried the visitor’s version of ‘‘the Irish