Guest column: Elbows up — our cross-border friendship getting complex

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By: Larry Cornies

During my childhood in Essex County, cross-border trips to Michigan were common.

If my mother needed materials for her sewing, Detroit’s fabric shops were much closer than the textile district of Hespeler (in Cambridge, Ont.). When Christmas approached, we’d visit Santaland at J.L. Hudson, one of the biggest department stores in the world.

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One morning in May, when the fields were too soggy for planting, our family hopped into the car for a trip to the Detroit Zoo. Lazy Sunday afternoons were sometimes spent at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull avenues, watching the Detroit Tigers. And when the movie Grand Prix was released in 1967, my father drove my friends and me across the border to see it in sprawling Cinerama format.

My parents, especially my dad, felt at ease crossing the border into Michigan. Tunnel or bridge, it didn’t make much difference. Mom and Dad had dated and double-dated there.

Michigan and Ohio were, essentially, Essex County’s fast-paced backyard. At the time, Detroit was one of the wealthiest cities in America, nearly as cosmopolitan as New York, with a vibrant, growing middle class.

For my father, the connection went even deeper. During his youth, he’d encountered the Michiganders who came to Point Pelee for smelting or fishing off Leamington’s pier. During his two years of high school, he’d attended a boarding school in Fort Erie. To get back and forth, he regularly hitched rides with U.S. truckers who used Highway 3 between Buffalo and Detroit as a bridge between upstate New York and the railroads and mercantile exchanges of Chicago.

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During a conversation sometime during my teens, Dad conveyed his admiration and respect for Americans: “They’re usually friendly and always willing to help out. They’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.”

More than a glib line, it was a personal assessment of the hundreds of interactions he’d had with American tourists, merchants, truckers and small business owners.

Cross-border commerce, relationships and family connections aren’t limited to Southwestern Ontario, of course. They have existed for centuries along the 8,891-kilometre line between our countries. In Atlantic Canada, Maine and Massachusetts are interwoven partners in many respects, including commerce and family. For Winnipeggers, it’s Minnesota and Wisconsin. Same with British Columbians and the states of Washington and Oregon.

As Donald Trump continues bending the U.S. toward authoritarianism and isolation (Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman says America is already becoming a “rogue nation”), Canada will need to seek friends elsewhere, not only Great Britain and France, but the European Union more generally, as well as Asian and Australasian countries.

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As the Trump regime sidelines Congress, punishes dissenters, ignores court orders and crushes the constitution, Canada must quickly and dramatically ratchet up its response.

There has been no greater threat to the country in the past 150 years. Once a new federal government is elected, it would be wise to assemble a wartime-style cabinet that includes the best minds on Parliament Hill, regardless of political party.

Trump’s imposition of tariffs, incineration of America’s reputation abroad, rout of domestic safety-net systems and betrayal of historic allies already has sparked a growing flame of buyers’ remorse in swing states and on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, his disdain for court judgments, whether on executive orders related to the funding of federal institutions or on deportations, is sidelining Congress and the judiciary, supposedly equal partners in American democracy.

In a speech to Canada’s Parliament in 1961, on his first foreign trip as U.S. president, John F. Kennedy said, “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.”

For better or worse, we remain neighbours. As for partners and allies, those relationships are in peril.

It will be a challenge during the coming years to maintain a national “elbows-up” posture while not harming the personal friendships, respect and familial relationships that have so long characterized our cross-border lives.

When existential threats are imposed overtop of family ties, things get messy.

Larry Cornies is a journalist based in London, Ont.

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