Thoughts and Opinions On Today's Important Issues

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Photo Question Answer


A number of you were very clever and guessed the 1930's or 1940's. You figured that a shot taken from that height had to be taken from an airplane or a hot air balloon. And you concluded that also from the state of construction of the bridge and road.

Some of you for the same reason guessed the early 1950's.

One of you was almost right. Hmmm that means I am becoming too predictable and better change gears.

I actually found a time machine being developed at a secret engineering lab in town and went back to the future. This photo is actually Windsor in 2030.


Here is what happened from the history books I read when I was in the future.

Windsor mayors and councils from 2004 on fought every attempt to build a road to the border and every attempt to build a border crossing that worked. Eventually the Senior Levels got fed up and decided to invest their billions in the Sarnia and Sault Ste. Marie areas where the communities welcomed the investment since they recognized the economic development opportunities. They understood that there was a need for the "New Domestics" to get parts and move their finished vehicles to market through the I-69 and the northern I-75 corridors. All levels of Government in those areas also wanted to help and gain new investment and jobs.

As plants closed down in Windsor, worker salaries kept being cut and jobs disappeared. The results were that there was economic stagnation here with homes being foreclosed and people were forced to move out of Windsor in order to survive.

Ironically, many moved to Newfoundland where Premier Pupatello welcomed many of her old Windsor West constituents as that Province prospered due to oil money and continued equalization payments from the "have-not" Ontario Treasury. In fact, Sandra and Canadian Prime Minister Dwight Duncan were responsible for re-starting the old Bricklin factory to appeal to the crowd of rich Newfoundlanders who wanted and could afford super-expensive niche vehicles. That was the beginning as well of the new booming auto industry in Maritime Canada.

It wasn't all bad however. Windsor now was transformed, as some people in the early 2000's wanted, into that idyllic, serene countryside that it never was.

And that is what really happened!