My Hometown: Niagara Can Still Make Me All Misty

By the time I was growing up there in the ’70s and ’80s, Niagara Falls had ceased to be the honeymoon icon of yesteryear. The region was economically depressed and famously polluted. Forget the 1953 Marilyn Monroe movie Niagara; my experience was better captured in the 1982 made-for-TV movie Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal. The chemical dump, which the government declared a hazard in 1978, was right in my family’s backyard.

Though I happily escaped from the city about a decade later, I return for visits all the time. During the ’90s, while the rest of the country was booming, Niagara seemed to sink deeper into a slump. Factories closed, storefronts were boarded up, and unemployment soared. It’s only been the past few years—after some much-needed cleanups—that things are begining to improve. Now when I go back, I find myself in the middle ...