WINDSOR—Standing under the towering grey piers of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, Dwight Duncan lays out the landscape below.
There are the decades-old salt mines, which had to be mapped before construction could begin, and the vital transmission lines that had to be moved. There, on the horizon, is the Detroit skyline. And in front of Duncan, spanning 2.5 kilometres from end to end with gleaming white cables rising nearly 180 metres above his head, is the bridge he helped get built.
“Incredible,” Duncan said over the constant rattling of trucks carrying goods between Canada and the U.S. “It looks like something from the future. I guess it is the future.”
Duncan, Ontario’s former finance minister who for six years chaired the crown corporation overseeing construction of the $6.4-billion Gordie Howe bridge, crossed it for the first time Wednesday, when it opened to pedestrians and cyclists. But the celebration was overshadowed by the political storm swallowing Canada and the United States — one in which U.S. President Donald Trump continues to threaten tariffs and just this week called Canada “nasty.”
The conflict has transformed a vital infrastructure project decades in the making into an embarrassingly blunt metaphor about the state of affairs between Canada and the U.S. But for whatever broader symbolism the bridge has taken on, many of those living on the border are still optimistic.
Detroit looms quite literally over Windsor, just 600 metres across the river at points, and a third of all trade between these two countries — roughly $1 billion every day — happens here. The people who live on the border are intertwined with the U.S. in a way few others are.
Roots on both sides of the border
Duncan, whose grandparents immigrated from Ireland and decided to stay in the region when Henry Ford offered employees $5 a day, always kept U.S. money in his pocket growing up in Windsor. When he was younger, he skipped over with friends to buy duty-free booze for weekend football games. He once had season tickets to the Detroit Red Wings, even though his father hated the team.
He has cousins who have married Americans, and cousins who work in the U.S.
“There’s an integration here,” Duncan explained, wearing sunglasses and a University of Windsor polo, “that doesn’t exist in many parts of the country.”
Times have changed. Duncan no longer crosses the border. Neither do Dan and Paula Tullio, grandparents from Lasalle, Ont. who biked across the bridge on opening day. They have a nephew who lives in Michigan; on Wednesday, he was finishing what he calls the “Gordie Howe hat trick,” Dan said — “drive over, bike over, and then walk back.”
The Tullios turned around just before U.S. customs to avoid entering the country, as did many others.
The political turmoil that has enveloped the Gordie Howe bridge did not surprise Duncan. “Trump’s gonna f — k this up,” he remembered telling a Star reporter in December. “Trust me.”
In February, Trump demanded at least half ownership of the bridge, despite Canada financing construction. In June, a planned ribbon cutting was postponed to resolve “outstanding issues” between Canada and the U.S., then cancelled entirely after Trump announced a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian goods.
Prime Minister Mark Carney compromised with a plan to share toll revenue with the U.S. for 15 years. And when the opening ceremony finally happened in late July, only Canada participated.
But for whatever political fractures exist, the people who came out to walk and bike the bridge this week were eager to extend a hand to the other country.
“We just want to believe in good neighbours,” said Jeanine Diller, from Detroit. “We’ve always been that.”
Neighbours cross paths
Crowds gathered at the plaque in the centre of the bridge that marked the border, taking pictures and greeting others. Passing trucks honked their horns at waving pedestrians. Border agents handed out commemorative cards upon clearing customs. The walkway still smelled of fresh paint.
Duncan spent 18 years as a Liberal MPP and people stopped to say hi. He insisted on a photo with Buddy the Bear, the Canada Border Services Agency mascot, and asked border guards how the new facilities were holding up.
He arrived late to walk the bridge, he said, because he realized he forgot his passport at home. “I don’t know where my brain was this morning. I was literally two minutes away,” he said, pulling up in a Mercedes convertible. “Lucky I didn’t get arrested, the way I was driving.”
Some hoped to be the first across. Justin Bellemore, from Windsor, parked himself by the entrance 28 hours before the bridge opened with an umbrella, lawn chair and plenty of snacks.
He was so early that security thought he got the opening day wrong. But Bellemore had been joking to friends for years he would be the first across, so he had to be certain. “I’m a man of my word,” he said.
He prepped with a low-fibre diet and brought a yoga mat to sleep through the night. He tried to be discreet while relieving himself in the bushes across the street, although the head of security warned him there are cameras everywhere. When his bowels called, his dad stopped by and held his spot while he fled to a Tim Hortons.
His marathon camp out made the local news and people began stopping by to say hi. “They have the right to think I’m crazy,” Bellemore said. “And maybe I am a little bit.”
Tyler Bloodworth arrived an hour early on the Detroit side. He hoped to be the first unicyclist on the bridge, but someone ahead of him in line beat him to it. Instead, he settled for the title of the first unicyclist to cross while wearing a helmet.
Marlene Ingratta and Marnie Gauthier, sisters from the Windsor area, took photos at the top of the bridge. They hoped they were the first identical twins to cross. “We think we are,” said Marlene. “We’re proclaiming it.”
Marvin Shaouni lives in southwest Detroit only a handful of kilometres from the bridge and gave up years ago on washing the dust from construction off his car. Two years ago, he bought a bike, in part for this day. It is like Christmas in August, he said — made sweeter by a personal animus towards the Morouns, the much-criticized family that owns the nearby Ambassador Bridge.
“Have you noticed how not busy the Ambassador Bridge is?” Shaouni said, letting out a laugh as he gazed three kilometres upstream. “I wonder why. I know that was a deviant laugh, but I am so happy.”
‘It still feels incomplete’
By the end of Duncan’s trip across the bridge, he had walked 11,029 steps. He passed through customs and hitched a ride back to where he had parked his car.
The bridge is spectacular, he said. For all the headaches he dealt with — including protecting the critically endangered Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake and providing special air cleaners to a nearby Dainty rice plant during construction — it was worth it.
But after decades of work for generations of public servants dating back to 2001, when a cross-border infrastructure study first began, this is not how he envisioned this day would go.
The president and the prime minister should have met on the bridge, Duncan explained, or perhaps shared a car on the first drive across. None of that happened. “It still feels incomplete,” he said.
Even so, Duncan is optimistic. He believes trade between the two countries will continue. Despite Trump, Canada’s friendship with the U.S. will continue.
He pointed to the horizon. This, he said, is where the United States first invaded during the War of 1812.
Now it is the site of a bridge.
