1. Nathan Cirillo
The tragic death of Hamilton's Cpl. Nathan Cirillo captivated Canadians in 2014. Cirillo, a young father and member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, was shot dead in October while standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.
After the horrific event that gripped the nation for days, Canadians came out en masse to demonstrate pride in their country and solidarity with military members. As Cirillo's body was transported home from Ottawa, thousands lined the streets and overpasses of the Highway of Heroes to show their support for a man who became known as "Canada's son."
Cirillo's funeral in Hamilton was one of the largest the city has ever seen, and was attended by high-ranking members of many political parties, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and opposition leader Tom Mulcair.
Hamilton grieved with the Cirillo family, as his mother Kathy and his young son Marcus followed behind his casket while it moved through the streets of the city for the funeral's regimental procession.
Pictures of Marcus wearing his father's regiment cap for the service and Cirillo's two dogs sticking their noses out from underneath a fence at the family home were among the most widely shared in Canada in 2014.
2. The Burlington Skyway crash
When a large truck crashed into and mangled the Burlington Skyway over the summer, it put a huge cloud over already hefty traffic ahead of the busy August holiday weekend.
Sukhvinder Singh Rai, a 34-year-old Brampton man, is facing multiple impaired driving-related offences in connection with the crash.
The collision was caused by the truck driving with the bed of the dump truck raised, striking the iron superstructure above the Toronto-bound lanes.
It took four days for a temporary beam to be installed, forcing the average 70,000 daily commuters to reroute around or through Hamilton's core – a sore spot for many Hamiltonians who already feel the city is too congested.
3. Tim Hortons Field: Delays, openings and an unbeaten record
Hamilton was supposed to have a finished stadium this year, but after six months of delays, it's not going to happen.
Infrastructure Ontario (IO) is responsible for building the $145-million, 22,500-seat Tim Hortons Field stadium. The city kicked in $40 million. IO hired the consortium Ontario Sports Solutions, which estimated the stadium would be done by June 30.
The delayed opening of the still incomplete Pan Am Stadium was an ongoing story throughout 2014. (Adam Carter/CBC)
In early 2014, news of delays began. Builders missed the June 30 deadline, then each Hamilton Tiger-Cats home game throughout the summer, leaving the Ticats to play in Ron Joyce Stadium at McMaster University. By Labour Day, crews had finished the stadium enough to host the Labour Day Classic. IO now estimates the stadium will be substantially completed by Jan. 31.
"I don't believe anything they tell me anymore. I'm so fed up," Coun. Lloyd Ferguson said this year.
4. U.S. Steel Bankruptcy
On Sept. 16 U.S. Steel Canada declared bankruptcy.
Steelworkers, both current and retired, ripped the announcement, calling it a scam designed to let the company off the hook when it comes to pension and benefit payments.
The company told the Ontario court overseeing its bankruptcy proceedings that it has lost billions at its Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ont. plants (steelworkers take issue with this claim, too.)
The court proceedings, all held in Toronto, have been hard to follow at times as teams of lawyers argue – usually behind closed doors – about every detail of the company's restructuring.
One clear highlight from the proceedings was the approval of a $185 million loan from U.S. Steel Corp., the company's American parent. The move means steelworkers' pensions and benefits will continue to be paid until the end of next year, but also means U.S. Steel gets paid out first if U.S. Steel Canada is dissolved.
Many steelworkers went through this process before with Stelco, which was then acquired by U.S. Steel in 2007. That hasn't made it sit in court and listen to lawyers argue about whether or not the company will honour its pension agreements, many say.
Whether or not you've been following this story, it has huge ramifications for Hamilton. The loss, or decrease, of thousands of pensions would likely harm the city's economy and a complete shutdown of the steel mill would incur hundreds of job losses.
And while there's so much more to this story, there is an end in sight. U.S. Steel wants to sell its Canadian operations by October of next year.
We'll be watching.
5. The housing market
Local housing experts forecasted another seller's market in 2014, and they were right. The market got off to a slow start in a brutal and long winter, but the market bounced back strong in the spring.
A year of rising prices brought competitive bidding wars and realtors offering to buy your house themselves if it didn't sell in a month. Cranes popped up around town as condo developers constructed new housing options and tried to work around a lack of available land to build sprawling subdivisions.
Appraisers weren't necessarily as eager about what price a house should sell for as the would-be homeowners. But by October, Hamilton's housing prices were rising twice as fast as prices across Canada.
The average price of the homes sold in Hamilton went up 6 percent in 2014 compared to 2013. Experts predict slower growth in prices next year, which is partly due to the mix of homes selling. With fewer higher-end homes on the market, the average price among homes that sell each month will appear lower, lowering the percentage by which house prices rise. But in the cheaper areas of the city, home prices could still rise 5 percent in 2015.
6. Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud
A Hamilton man who disappeared this summer was reportedly killed in the conflict between Kurdish forces and ISIS fighters in northern Syria. A 20-year-old Canadian-Somali man named Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud is believed to have been killed while fighting for ISIS, which would make him the first Canadian to die in the anti-ISIS campaign led by U.S. airstrikes.
By July, the man's family was trying to alert the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and RCMP that their eldest son may have taken up arms with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria militants.
Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, pictured here, is a 20-year-old Hamilton man believed to have been killed while fighting for ISIS in northern Syria. ((Calamada.com))
In September, CSIS unofficially told the family the man had been killed. The Department of Public Safety said an estimated 130 Canadians have gone to fight for ISIS.
Family and friends noticed changes in Mohamud, who went from a promising student and athlete to someone who carried harsh views and withdrew from his communities, including the Muslim community and classmates at York University.
"He was seeking his new community online," said Hamilton lawyer Hussein Hamdani, who tried to help the family once they realized he was "crossing over."
Without official confirmation, the man's family believes their son is gone, but holds out some hope.
7. A crazy winter
It was cold. It was icy. And it introduced the term "polar vortex" to your lexicon.
Last winter's frigid temperatures, including at least 30 days (yes, an entire month) where the temperature sat below -10 C, were certainly one of the biggest newsmakers of the year.
On a few days – remember Jan. 7, anyone? – the temperature plunged down past -20 C, even before bitter wind chill values were factored in. That Tuesday's cold record? A brutal -24 C, with wind chill values of -41 C.
Last December's ice storm set the stage for a frigid winter that was one of the main news stories of the year. (CBC)
After a few more weeks of similar cold, you can understand why at we published the headline: "When will this insanely cold winter actually end?"
Of course, it's the ice storm that struck the GTA just before Christmas that will be talked about for years to come. The storm knocked out power to thousands of Hamilton homes as ice-encased tree branches collapsed onto power lines.
Mayor Bob Bratina said "an army of city, hydro, police, fire and emergency workers," were sent out to respond to the crisis, though some remained without power on Christmas itself.
But fear not, forecasts anticipate a milder winter for Hamilton this year, though there will be some yo-yo like bounces in temperature.
"It's not going to be like last year where the heating bill was through the roof, wind chills were almost inhumane, and it went on forever," Environment Canada's senior climatologist Dave Phillips said.
Cheers, Dave. Hope you're right.
8. Eisenberger becomes mayor again
When it came to the mayoral race this year, Hamilton decided to recycle.
The Oct. 27 election yielded about a dozen mayoral challengers, but the most heated race was between three people — former mayor Fred Eisenberger and councillors Brad Clark and Brian McHattie.
Eisenberger was Hamilton's mayor from 2006 to 2010, when he came third in the election. Clark, a former MPP, was a Stoney Creek councillor who campaigned on fiscal responsibility and saying no to light rail transit. McHattie, a left-leaning west end councillor, campaigned on the platform of being "a new mayor for a new Hamilton."
In the end, Eisenberger won by a healthy margin, followed by Clark and McHattie. The mayor's previous term was marred by split council votes and a lack of consensus. Eisenberger pledged to work with councillors more, and to "hit the ground running."
9. Lancaster bomber
Canada's last airworthy Avro Lancaster embarked on a historic tour in the summer, crossing the Atlantic and joining the only other airworthy bomber of its kind for a six week tour in the U.K.
The tour was hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. The chance to see the two Lancasters flying in formation again was described as "once in a lifetime opportunity" by some fans.
The Second World War-era plane left its home base at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum on Aug.5, stopped in Newfoundland and Iceland before flying into the Royal Air Force base at Coningsby, England four days later. It returned to Hamilton at the end of September to a cheering crowd of hundreds of people.
But that's not the end of the journey for the Lanc, nicknamed Vera because of its flight initials, VRA. On Dec. 17, a C-130 Hercules from the Royal Air Force U.K. arrived at CWHM to pick up a Merlin engine it lent to Vera in the summer. One of Vera's four engines broke down during the tour and it was only able to fly back to Canada with the help of a borrowed engine, a Rolls-Royce Merlin.
Meanwhile, Vera's broken engine is still undergoing repairs in the U.K. and is expected to be returned to Canada in April.
So the epic adventure of Hamilton's Lancaster continues.
10. Transit
Transit was in the headlines like never before in 2014. From how it's offered (light rail versus bus rapid transit), to where it's offered (the Mountain versus the downtown versus the outlying areas), to whether it deserves a special lane downtown, city councillors put in long hours debating transit. There was scandal as well.
The most visible debate was LRT, and most visibly during the election. Metrolinx and the province have given the nod to a $1-billion light rail line running 13 kilometres from McMaster University to Eastgate Square. City council approved the notion last year as long as the province funded the project 100 per cent.
Transit was in the news for a variety of reasons, from policy to operations to sexual harassment controversies. (CBC)
But whether it agreed to that this year is murky. During the election, then-Transportation Minister Glen Murray tweeted that the province would fully fund LRT. But the new transportation minister, Steven Del Duca, visited city hall in July without making that promise. The meeting drew plenty of attention, with Hamilton's NDP MPPs showing up for it too, upset about being locked out of it.
During the campaigns leading up to the Oct. 27 election, all-candidates meetings buzzed with talk of LRT. Each mayoral candidate staked their ground. In the end, Fred Eisenberger won and promised to start a citizen's panel on the issue in 2015.
Other transit news: the future of the much-maligned downtown transit lane, a pilot project that should have ended in October, and Mountain transit improvements that were scaled back a little to prevent a tax hike in Ancaster.
Council will vote on the future of the transit lane in January, and you can bet the LRT issue will get many more votes in 2015 too.
In addition to all of the policy and operational debates, the service was rocked by a sexual harassment scandal that led to a shakeup in management.
Which Hamilton story meant the most to you in 2014?
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