Hamilton Harbour (6 December 1999): Scumbone and I took a little road trip to the industrial wonderland that is Hamilton, Ontario, in the hope of boarding some boats and having some high-seas hijinks. In spite of it being cold and rainy, we had a pretty great day of journeying around the heavily industrialized harbour, which is nothing but trains, trucks, ships and factories working hard to convert the ubiquitous huge piles of raw materials into replicas of themselves.
        We failed to board the very impressive cargo ship Pintail, but did have some luck on some smaller ships and tugboats. We also came across a decommissioned titan of a ship called the Canadian Explorer, which we figured was named after us. The ship wasn't carrying any cargo, so it was obviously much higher in the water than usual. I climbed a long way up a far-too-flimsy rope ladder leading up from the icy, toxic lake in order to take a peek on deck — when I did, I saw that the ship was being gutted for scrap metal and parts.

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