@noel.semple7 Walking to America
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I’m doing something this morning that’s gonna get me in trouble with some of my family members, maybe at Thanksgiving. I’m going to cross the border and spend some money in the United States. I haven’t been to the states since before Trump was re-elected.
And in one way it seems like a kind of a weird thing and maybe an unpatriotic thing to do. After all, we’ve got this trade war on and we’ve got a president who has threatened our sovereignty, said he wants to make Canada the 51st state. Buying Canadian and avoiding American stuff seems like an obvious way to support our country.
So why cross the border and why support an American business now? Well, number one, this idea of a boycott has always been a very clumsy inexact way to send a political message. So I’m going to Detroit, where over 90% of the voters voted against Trump in the last presidential election.
So if we say we’re gonna avoid American stuff and avoid these businesses, like who are we really punishing? Are we punishing the guy who’s actually the problem or we punishing all these innocent people who don’t want anything to do with him and are just caught up in the crossfire?
No.2, if you take a long view, I think this trade war is just a bump in the road. The Canadian-American relationship remains the longest and most productive peaceful relationship between neighbours pretty much anywhere in the world. The border remains the longest unmilitarized border anywhere in the world.
And we’re not entirely innocent either. There are a couple of legitimate American grievances about things that Canadians have done. For example, I think for many years until pretty recently, Canada was not quite carrying its weight when it came to military spending and to contributing to the mutual defence of our continent from aggressors and terrorists, and the Americans were maybe carrying us a little bit more than they should have been.
That’s been basically fixed in recent years. But, you know, in any breakdown or tension, it’s odd to find that all of the fault is on one side.
No.3, I get to cross on the Gordie Howe bridge, which just opened a few weeks ago. I’m an architecture and infrastructure nerd and I think this is really beautiful and incredibly cool.
And yeah, Trump’s being a dick about it, but this thing will be here decades after Trump is just a bad memory, hopefully cementing a happy and productive relationship between our two nations.
No.4, I can walk across this bridge. They actually built it so it has this beautiful wide separated path for cyclists and pedestrians, which we never had in the Windsor/Detroit area before.
And I think this is great forethought. And there’s a beautiful natural trails on both sides of the border here
going around the lakes and the rivers and this now connects them and I think it’s really cool.
I’m not gonna lie, it does feel weird and a little bit anxious to go back to the States after such a long time away, especially if you listen to too much of this vicious animosity that you get from Trump and from his sycophants.
But most of what every politician says is just for public consumption and that’s even more true with this guy. The people who are just dissing Canada to suck up to him are even less worth paying attention to.
Homeward Bound! Had a great fried chicken sandwich. One piece of advice I’d give to anyone walking across the Gordie Howe bridge is to bring American cash. They often don’t accept credit cards and very seldom accept Canadian dollars over there.
The first place I tried to go to lunch, I could not eat for that reason. Also figure out what you’re gonna do when you get to the other side. There’s really kind of nothing there.
I was fortunate to find a rental e-scooter I could use but, you might need a cab or something.
Not super easy to walk to any place you might wanna eat, once you get over.
But great time. Nice to see that it’s still there, and we’ve still got an undefended border we can traverse in new and cool ways and, happy to be home. No place like home.