For twenty years now, the second Friday in every month on James Street North is Art Crawl. Originally it was organized by local independent artists and enjoyed by only a handful of people. Since then, it has blossomed into a great night out regularly visited by hundreds – even thousands – of people each month.

On that Friday afternoon, artists start arriving on the street and set up their tables or stands to show off their work. No one owns Hamilton’s Art Crawl – there’s no organizing body – and whoever wants to show up to sell their art is able to do so. Paintings, sculpture, mixed media, crafts, musical acts – anything goes.

Temporary Works and Permanent Galleries

Not all the artists are temporary. Many of the original organizers of Art Crawl ran galleries on the street, and some of those galleries are still there. Many more galleries and studios have opened.

During the warmer months, the City of Hamilton has closed vehicular traffic to James street. This allows people to flow out into the street, and larger art displays to be set up. Fun activities like chalk drawing pop up along the street, too, as well as dancing and other performances. Cross traffic is closed on the smaller streets, though the larger ones remain open.

Great Fun for Everyone

In addition to the arts and activities, many shops, cafes and restaurants stay open late. There are so many places along James North to get a great meal! A lot of these places also have patios set up on the street so diners can enjoy the festivities.

When guests arrive and ask us if there’s anything fun to do around town, it’s always a treat for us if that happens on an Art Crawl evening. And, of course, it’s not uncommon for a guest to arrive who is here to perform or to show their art. We enjoy the opportunity to go downtown and take part in the fun. And you can check our walls for art we have bought from wonderful local artists.

It really is a wonderful thing. Hamilton is home to many fantastic festivals throughout the year, but we are fortunate that one of the best happens every month!

We are a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Every year brings on something new and we hustle to adapt. One thing that is now ubiquitous, but which was once science fiction, is Artificial Intelligence.

Useful tools

I have had many stories from friends about how much it helps them, and how it has changed many things for the better. Other people criticize it for ethical or ecological reasons. We can certainly see why it can be helpful, and would not wish to condemn those who find it useful in their daily or work lives.

Indeed, we can use AI in its limited forms – like spell-checkers. Not everything has to be handled by a human, because that is exhausting! Even our washing machine is a “smart” machine which knows how much water to use in each load. However, AI often makes things difficult for us and can be frustrating in running our business.

Frustrating!

Some weeks ago, a guest contacted us because she wanted to cancel her reservation due to a change in plans. Since she booked through and Online Travel Agent, we were unable to make the cancellation, but we told her we would be happy to waive any fees if she cancelled the reservation through the website where she made it. Nothing further happened. Maybe she changed her mind? So, the next day, I contacted the OTA about the cancellation. No, she had requested the cancellation, and we confirmed waiving any fees. But nothing happened. The reservation still remained in our calendar and on the website.

After numerous phone calls to many different representatives, and many emails, the problem became clear. The OTA had Artificial Intelligence handling this system, and there was some sort of glitch. Their AI thought that the reservation was already cancelled. We could not convince the AI that the reservation still existed, despite the representatives of the Online Travel Agent being able to see that the reservation was still in place. There didn’t seem to be any manual override to make the cancellation.

You’re always talking to us.

This is one example of the frustrating nature of AI. There are many more. It’s almost impossible now to write emails or messages to our guests without our booking software or our travel agents insisting that we use AI to compose or schedule our missives. The problem, of course, is that our Guesthouse is a non-standard business in a non-standard building and most AI generated content is simply incompatible with us.

Therefore, you can rest assured that any email you get from us will be written and sent by us, personally. While we cannot control everything that the OTAs decide to do, we will do our best to make sure that you have a real human being at the other end of your calls and emails. We are not opposed to technology! Not at all. But there has to be a way to ensure that a real person has override capacity and that a machine is not making important decisions. Especially when those decisions concern our guests.

Okay, this has absolutely nothing to do with tourism, Hamilton, traveling or anything else we usually write about. But it would be utterly remiss of us not to tell you about the amazing month we have had, even though it’s entirely irrelevant. 

We have adorable pet guinea pigs. We have mentioned them before and, if you’ve stayed here, you might have noticed that we use their names for things like wifi passwords. It was a bit of a missed opportunity, in fact, not to name ourselves the Pring International Guesthouse, so we could use “PIG” as an acronym.

Rescuing

As well as our own pets, we volunteer with the Toronto-based rescue organization All Creatures Rescue. In early April, a dog rescue was called in to help with a sad situation in a puppy mill. When they arrived, they discovered a cage with 20 guinea pigs in it, and called in ACR to help. We took in two very young girls, probably not more than a month old, and we named them Martha and Veronica. 

After a few weeks, two things became pretty clear. The first one was that these two girls were not the least bit tame and were quite stressed out. They didn’t seem to get along at all and would squabble and try to bite each other if they got too close. The second thing was that Martha was pregnant. 

It’s not too surprising, since guinea pigs become fertile very early. And the whole group that was rescued was in a single cage, males and females together. But it’s not an easy thing to have a pregnant guinea pig who is barely more than a baby herself. We took the best care of them that we could.

Babies!

On June 10th, just when we thought Martha couldn’t possibly get any fatter, she finally gave birth! Two little babies, one boy and one girl, perfect little twins. We named them Castor and Pollux.

For two weeks, we had the joy of watching these two tiny creatures as they grew. They went from helpless to fearless very quickly! In just a few days the were following the big pigs everywhere, trying to be part of the herd. But, as we learned from their mother, they grow up very quickly. At two weeks, it was clear that Martha was all done with being a mother and would no longer let them nurse. 

That signalled that it was time to separate Castor from the female guinea pigs. This was really difficult. He was still so tiny and would cry very loudly. We didn’t want him to be lonely. But there was a solution. Among the rescued guinea pigs were other pregnant females and one of them had given birth to another baby boy. He was a week older than our babies, and his name was Chestnut. 

We introduced Castor to Chestnut and they got along at once. We made the decision to adopt Veronica ourselves, and the others will be available for adoption with ACR. It will be sad to say goodbye to them, but they will make another family somewhere very happy.