Windsor, Canada Summary

photo by gusto

“I’m going to Detroit, Michigan, to work the Cadillac line” growls the old blues number, but if the singer had crossed the river he’d have been equally at home amongst the car plants of WINDSOR, 190km southwest of London. The factories are American subsidiaries built as part of a complex trading agreement which, monitored by the forceful Canadian United Automobile Workers Union, has created thousands of well-paid jobs. Living opposite Detroit makes the “Windsors” feel good in another way too: they read about Detroit’s problems – the crime and the crack – and the dire difficulties involved in rejuvenating that city, and shake their heads in disbelief and self-congratulation. A robustly working-class place, Windsor has a clutch of good restaurants, a lively café-bar nightlife, and is also a good base for visiting both the remains of the British Fort Malden in Amherstburg, 25km to the south, and Point Pelee National Park, some 50km away to the southeast. The main Windsor shindig is the International Freedom Festival with all sorts of folksy events spread over an eighteen-day period in late June and early July.