The sky was dark the next morning. The land was dark too. Flames blazed above tall, cylindrical smokestacks, casting an orange light on the Equinox. The waterfront was barricaded by black, pyramidal dunes of coal and iron ore pellets at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel mill. My watch read 9 a.m. We were docked in Hamilton, Ontario, steel capital of Canada. Unloading takes about a day, so Captain Ross gave me shore leave until 10 p.m. I took a cab straight to Jamesville, an unlikely arts district that recently popped up in Hamilton. I found a half-dozen art galleries, three coffee shops, a smoothie bar, eight restaurants and two boutique saloons on North James Street alone. The neighborhood didn’t look like Manhattan’s Chelsea, but it didn’t look like a steel town, either. I wandered all day through shops and public parks, looking at hand-cut wood prints, paintings, a recording studio, mixed-media art center and the Hamilton farmers’ market, the oldest indoor market in Canada (founded in 1837). That evening at a bar called the Brain — where the owner was mid-binge with an artist friend from Berlin — a patron in skinny black jeans showed off a print headed for New York City. It was a matted grid of 28 life rings from Great Lakes ships. Neighborhoods grew progressively darker and poorer as I rode in a cab back to the waterfront that night. An orange cloud hovered over the steel mill and flames flickered above Dofasco’s smokestacks. Inside Gate 15, earthmovers roared as they pushed piles of iron and coal around. For More Digital Campaign Video