A book about Hamilton’s Chedoke Creek has won big at last night’s Hamilton Literary Awards.

Daylighting Chedoke by John Terpstra takes readers to the source and flow of the creek, exposing it’s natural course which was developed over many decades ago.

We talked to Terpstra in October of last year, when the book was released. He told us covering up a creek deprives an area of its natural environment. What we didn’t know then was that billions of litres of sewage had been leaking into the creek the last four years.

“In a city like Hamilton, we have kind of a checkered history in our relationship with our natural environment so those of us who are kind of on the side of the landscape every now and again feel like we have to speak up for it.”

Terpstra told us then he hopes his book helps people reconnect to the natural landscape, to take better care of it. Daylighting Chedoke is published by Hamilton’s Wolsak & Wynn.