Windsor Declares War On Detroit

Councillors Jones and Postma will get their way after all.

We will have a new Sandwich festival celebrating an event that is now taking place that will attract tourists in droves to our new "Heritage" district from both sides of the river .

Windsorites will be active participants so that we can tell our children and grandchildren about it from actual experience. University students from the media program will visit us and record on tape our words for posterity

It is the War between Canada and the US...no not that minor skirmish, silly. Not the War of 1812. It is the war that is developing between Canada and the US as to the location of the new bridge.

In other words, which Community should be destroyed: Sandwich or Delray.

We were good friends with Detroit at one time: their Mayor said "the best regional partnership for his city is not with the suburban cities in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, but with Windsor...The best opportunity Detroit has and Windsor has for survival into the future is to join together and market each other jointly" Can you imagine, a city in Canada was key for Kwame and he wanted to work together with us! The Big City and region of 5,000,000 people would work with the Smaller Region 1/10th its size for our joint prosperity

Then our Mayor showed his gratitude just before the election day in Detroit when Kwame was in the fight of his electoral life by butting into their election to try and salvage a business deal that he wanted to do ie to operate the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel.

You could feel the chill start almost immediately thereafter. For the so-called International Super Bowl partnership, Kilpatrick thanked Eddie for an offer to send snowplows and crews across the river if it snowed on Super Bowl Sunday.

Then escalating the issue to try to usurp Kwame's role, Eddie and Windsor Council held what was called a Joint Councils meeting in Detroit which was in fact nothing more than a sales pitch to block the Bridge Co. from redoing their Tunnel deal with the Mayor and letting Windsor be the partner of choice (notwithstanding that the 1/10th the size "partner" has so far been making 10 times the revenues!)

Unknown to most people on both sides of the river, the Detroit Mayor had already struck and struck hard a few weeks before the meeting. He followed up on his Council's oppostion to a new bridge in Delray by writing to the Governor demanding that no bridge be built in Delray and that Windsor and Ontario be told to fix up its roads as Detroit and Michigan had already done.

It was a huge blow to Eddie when Kwame's letter became public. After all Eddie was conceding all over the place that Windsor was sitting on $300 million to fix the mess on our side. It was hardly good for the "Eddie" image being cultivated as a fighter for Windsor when he was the problem for Windsor. His snub of the Senior Levels and his indecisiveness on the border issue for almost his whole Mayoral term was becoming known to the Governor, the Detroit Mayor and Council and the entire Michigan House and Senate.

Windsor had to rattle its sabres since it was only a few months to the next municipal election and Eddie's E-Machine strategists could see Eddie losing badly.

First it was Gord Henderson

• "Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis isn't rolling over. He wants the DRIC to remove Crossing Alternative C (the C surely stands for Crazy) from consideration since it amounts to an 18-wheeler assault on the historic Sandwich neighbourhood, and is insisting it focus on the tunnel proposal."
  
  

Then it was the Star Editorial Board

• "City residents should also lobby fiercely against Option C for the location of the proposed crossing, which would all but destroy historic Sandwich, a culturally significant community that has embarked on a commendable self-improvement program.
  
  The Sandwich crossing would be the shortest of the three spans at 735 metres and would have the least impact on U.S. residents..."
  
  

Then it was Liberal Cabinet Minister Sandra Pupatello

• "Calling recent comments by Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick about being no need for a third border crossing "electioneering," Windsor West MPP Sandra Pupatello said Friday "the border remains my main focus and we are still committed to meeting the announced timetable for a new crossing."
  
  Pupatello, [then] minister of community and social services, said at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon that "the issues relating to the border are more important than one political career and we cannot, and will not, allow election schedules and politics on either side of the border to slow down this process.
  
  "I was very happy to see the mayor's comment shot down," said Pupatello. "This is a long, involved process and it goes beyond one political career."
  
  

The gloves were off now. No more being a nice guy. It was out there in the open for all to see. To hell with Delray, Sandwich had to be preserved at all costs. Let there be an impact on Delray, it did not matter to us.

And Sandra, dumping on the Mayor----did she not understand that he was amongst the most powerful political leaders in Michigan and that her insults would not help Windsor or Ontario? But then again, she was safe. She could always escape to Newfoundland and run for office there now given her hubby's new job!

The United Nations Security Council is setting up a meeting to try to stop the war from escalating. UK's Prime Minister Blair will try and draw upon his friendship with both combatants to reduce tensions. China's President, Hu Jintao, is threatening to cut off the sale of consumer goods to both nations and turn them into Third World countries while Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said that Japan will not build any more automobile "New Domestic" plants if they both do not come to the table to resolve their issues in a more friendly fashion.

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