Essential English phrases

Hamilton. Used with affection and a certain defensiveness. 'Steeltown' is the older nickname and 'the ambitious city' is the nineteenth-century one the local press revived.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats chant, called and answered across Tim Hortons Field and every bar within a mile of it. Older than living memory and completely unexplainable to an outsider.

The Bruce Trail, the footpath following the escarpment from Niagara to Tobermory. It runs straight through the city, past most of the waterfalls, and you can join it from a bus stop.

Not a mountain — the Niagara Escarpment, a 90-metre limestone ridge that cuts the city in two. Roughly half of Hamilton lives on top of it. Everything in this city is described as being above or below it.

Everything between the escarpment and the harbour — the old downtown, the north end, the industrial waterfront and the pre-war neighbourhoods. Older housing, better transit, and where the LRT will run.

The handful of roads climbing the escarpment — the Jolley Cut, the Claremont Access, the Sherman Access, Kenilworth. There are only a few, they are steep, and freezing rain closes them. Which access you use is a real part of a Hamilton commute.

The taxation formula kept from the 2001 amalgamation, under which the transit portion of your property tax depends on which former municipality you live in. Very few Ontario municipalities still do this for transit; Hamilton is the best-known one that does.

Hamilton Street Railway — the bus network, and no longer a railway. It is not part of Ontario's One Fare programme, so a transfer to the TTC is not free the way it is from Mississauga.

The fabric and textile district, blocks of shops selling cloth by the metre — and the site of the first Tim Hortons, opened here in 1964. A whole afternoon, not a shopping trip.

The second-Friday-of-the-month gallery and studio evening on James Street North, which grew into Supercrawl, the street festival that takes over the whole strip in September.

The two steelworks on the bay. Once the reason the city existed and still large employers, though health care and the university have long since overtaken them. 'My dad was at Dofasco' is a whole family history in five words.

Social Insurance Number. No employer can put you on payroll without one. Free, from Service Canada, and usually issued during the visit if you attend in person.

Coffee with two creams and two sugars. Ordered nationwide, but the chain started on Ottawa Street North here in 1964, which locals will mention.

Police, fire and ambulance. 811 is Health811, the provincial nurse line; 905-546-2489 reaches the City for anything municipal, and Hamilton runs its own police and paramedics rather than a regional force.