Home Town: Donner Avenue and Pasta Shoppe

home town: Now out on the sidewalk, where the diner casts practically the only glow on Donner Avenue, for a fleeting minute the men conjure what it used to be like on an evening such as this You had to walk in the street because the sidewalks were so jammed with people, flush with cash, out to stroll, shop, eat and party, according to Hamilton Spectator. Furniture stores, bars, grocery stores, clothing shops graced every block. They've just been imagining the future from a booth in a diner called the Pasta Shoppe. Above the storefronts hung balconies where residents tended oregano and parsley and waved to the crowds below. Now look, says Mayor Louis Mavrakis, 79, who came out of retirement from the United Steelworkers union a few years ago to try to save his home town as mayor. Then the steel mill closed in 1986, leaving just the coke plant and 180 jobs, down from a peak at the mill after World War II of about 7,000 jobs. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.