"There was a time when admitting you were from Hamilton was like admitting you had bad breath.

Remember the jokes? "Where do people in Hamilton go for a good time?"  "Toronto"  Or, if your memory goes back far enough, the answer was even "Buffalo". 

Hamilton has been called the smog capital of Canada.  Usually by people who have never set foot here.  On many maps, the western end of Lake Ontario looks as barren as the Yukon, instead of the working and residential centre for half-a-million Canadians. 

Only from August to November do other Canadians seem to learn about events in Hamilton, and then they're measured in touchdowns. 

And when we talked about an urban renewal program including a convention centre, new hotels, and a Theatre-Auditorium that would draw the world's finest talent to Hamilton and make it an entertainment centre, they all laughed. 

Notice how quiet it is now? 

We've always had more here
than a lot of people realized.
Including ourselves. 

Living too close to something can blind you to its good points.  That's the way it's been with Hamilton residents over the years. 

Consider our location. 

We're on the finest land-locked harbour in the Great Lakes.  And we've managed to preserve one end of it as an attractive nature sanctuary 20 minutes from our downtown core.  We're in the heart of the finest agricultural land in eastern Canada, as well as at the core of the industrial might of all North Americans.  We're close enough to some of the major world centres - New York, Chicago, Montreal, Detroit - to make one-day yet commuting an ease. 

It's what you make of what
you have that counts.

We think Hamiltonians have made quite a bit. 

We've made a reputation as a steel town that others have decried, even when they're sitting in a car or grabbing a snack from a refrigerator that couldn't have existed without a lot of toil and know-how by thousands of Hamilton workers.  And hundreds of millions of dollars in steel-making equipment.

In the process, we've also made Hamilton one of the top ranking cities in per capita income for all of Canada.  So let 'em talk about lunch buckets.  We'll laugh all the way to the bank. 

What's more, anybody who considers Hamilton to be nothing more than blast furnaces and rolling mills is suffering from a severe case of myopia.  Or ignorance. 

After you've seen and heard the fire and roar of the steel mills, you can relax with the flowers and birds of the Royal Botanical Gardens. 

Or take a tour of McMaster Medical Centre and begin to understand why it's been described as one of the finest of its kind in all North America.  Not Ontario.  Not Canada.  But the entire continent.

Or drive through the residential areas and the suburbs of Hamilton and see the same comfortable homes, the same laughing healthy children, the same backyard barbecues you'll find in cities where the men wear homburgs instead of hard hats to work. 

We're here and we're glad. 

All of which brings us to the reason behind this message. 

We're a national advertising agency, celebrating our 60th year in a complex ever-changing business - a business of selling other people's products and services through coast-to-coast messages in newspapers, radio, television, outdoor billboards, direct mail, you name it. 

Over those sixty years, we've often been asked why we didn't move out of Hamilton to the (Fanfare!) Big City, where practically all of Canada's other major ad agencies are headquartered.

We've even asked ourselves the same question from time to time. 

One reason, of course, is our client list.  When people like Dofasco, Firestone, International Harvester, Westinghouse and Hoover want to talk to their advertising counsel, they appreciate having the man on their door-step.

And on the other side are our suppliers.  Printers.  Engravers.  Artists.  Photographers.  This town is full of talented people who have played major roles in the success of our business over the years.  And of our clients' businesses too,  of course.  We've all grown together. 

Now there's something new added. 

There's a spirit in this town that you can feel, an identification of community and sense of belonging that frankly wasn't there a few years ago.  And maybe it wasn't there because some of us were too busy apologizing for Hamilton. 

So now we have it.  Not arrogance.  Not aggressiveness.  Not bull-headed metropolitan chauvinism.  But a quiet confidence, the kind that spurs someone to introduce himself with 'Hi, how are you?  I'm from Hamilton...' 

At RTK, we've stopped asking ourselves why we're not somewhere else. 

And you know what? 

So have others.