The QLINE (Photo: Deadline Detroit)
Oh how the narrative has changed.
Award-winning Windsor Star columnist Gord Henderson has a touch of envy these days about the city across the river:
Fifteen years ago, even 10 years ago, a lot of Windsor residents felt pity for our downtrodden neighbours in corrupt, debt-ridden, blood-splattered Detroit.
The Motor City defined urban failure. And now? Now a ride up resurgent Woodward Avenue on one of Detroit’s quiet, buttery-smooth electric streetcars is enough to send an envious Windsorite off in search of a nice cup of hemlock juice.
Henderson goes on to denigrate his hometown:
The return to Windsor is an ice-cold shower. It begins with a scuzzy Transit Windsor tunnel bus shelter. The overflowing trash can sports graffiti and oozes gunk. The shelter needs a bath, or a trip to the landfill. The base of the steel bench is rusting out. A nearby banner promoting the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is tattered. And there’s zero promotion of Windsor apart from a Caesars sign.
Where are we, Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia)? What a comment on the joys to be anticipated at the end of a spine-bashing bus ride under the Detroit River.
Emerging, blinking, from the tunnel, you find yourself, not in Bratislava but in Sleepy Hollow. The contrast these days between downtown Detroit and downtown Windsor is, frankly, demoralizing.
Kids playing at Campus MartiusWhere the hell are the people? Where’s the foot traffic? In mid-afternoon, mid-week, our downtown appears to be primarily a refuge for folks down on their luck or with serious personal issues.
Windsor, he laments, has "No Dan Gilbert. No Roger Penske. No Ford Foundation. No Kresge Foundation."
