Oh Canada

Dominion Day Weekend was spent in dear Windsor, a most American of a hometown that tends to hide in cars and behind air-conditioned walls to escape the sick and dirty heat most of the time — except on this weekend, one I liked because of the public-ness of it all. There was always the Freedom Festival down on the Detroit River, with events like the “tug across the river” that had Detroit firefighters compete with Windsor firefighters to see how quickly they could pull a very long rope out of the river (they didn’t actually pull across the river, but the current in the Detroit is so strong it was a big challenge). Detroit generally won, as expected, as the DFD had to deal with a city intent on self-immolation, which gave them the edge. The annual fireworks display saw a million people massed on the banks of the Detroit river, and my favorite moments of each year were when they finished and we would walk among thousands, in the middle of the streets, many blocks to our car.

The Freedom Fest has become insolvent in the way Caribanna has in Toronto. It’s now something called “Summer Fest”, and is the exactly same thing, just very different. At one time the Conklin Carnival associated with it would take over Dieppe (the riverfront park) and much of Riverside Drive. I think it was my first experience in a big urban pedestrian only area carved out of a space usually filled with moving cars. I remember being shocked at how big the turn markings and road lines were when you stood on them. They seem smaller when you drive over them. The carnival has shrunk though, and now just fills up a waterfront parking lot in front of the Casino. There were still carnies around — ungentrified people, if there is such a thing — which is comforting in some kind of nostalgic way. Some of my friends got to be carnies each year, trying to get people to play midway games, and worked with the folks who travelled with the fair all year, learning new swears and aquiring tatoos. I was going to ask if I could take their pictures, but it was too hot, and the world doesn’t need anymore pictures of carnies taken by interlopers like me.

Over where the carnival used to be, at the foot of Windsor’s main drag, the old spectacle has been replaced by a new one: Windsor Elvis Fest. There were Elvi everywhere, and I saw one in a white jumpsuit hide behind a trailer and shoot water through his nose, then go up on stage to sing. There were loads of people out though, drinking beer in plastic outdoor Labattes Blue cups — just like Pride but less gay and more campy. One old lady, maybe a Birdwatcher in other seasons, said “oh look there’s one in red.” The jumpsuits aren’t made for the heat, and some of the sweating Elvi looked like they were reenacting 1977 Elvis rather than the less bloaty 1968 Comeback Special Elvis — but they turned a parking lot into Graceland for a bit, which I think is good, rather than bad.

Much of the grassy part of the park was turned into a classic car parking lot, very appropriate for Windsor, and the sounds of the many Elvi on stage was a nice aural backdrop. Nice old muscle cars and big Caddy boats with dead-body-trunks were scattered around, the pride of their owners, baby-booming into their 60s with beer bellies and stories of cruising Woodward in Detroit before the riots scared the white folks and their 351 cubic inches out to suburbia.

Mostly I spent the weekend driving, which is the only way to get around. Through superheated streets and out into the county where steam was rising from the green fields. Essex county is just about as flat as land can be, and only 3% forested, so it makes for Montana-wide horizons, often with Detroit off in the hazy distance — “Metro Detroit” ends a lot sooner on the Canadian side, so it’s possible to see it’s skyline rising above hinterland corn and soybeans. Few things have yet matched the wonderfulness of nighttime drives through Essex County — the flatness, the glow of Detroit and the fields and ditch reeds swaying in the wind, making a constant sssssssssssssssss sound.

Lots of people want that, and want to live in it, so they’ve been moving out to the county, then commute back to the city, creating a sort of rural sprawl. What results is country roads that had speed limits of 80 are now down to 50, all because a few houses have sprung up along the road. So driving through is like driving slow in the city, but without any density. Certainly frustrating, and I wonder if it’s enough of a drag to outweigh any of the benefit living outside of the city has. There are lots of costs to rural sprawl, but this one seems like one that people might take seriously, as it impacts them every time they have to drive home (though high gas prices don’t seem to do it).

The highway by my old house is like that. It was always 80kph, and it was the border of my young world. Crossing it meant death (by mom or 18 Wheeler). Today it’s slowed way down, lined with subdivisions and sprawling Esso-Tim Hortons complexes and flaming mailboxes that remember the good ‘ole speedway days. It’s still “the county” (as we referred to anything outside of Windsor proper), but it’s “the county” in the way Shania is Country.

The last night was spent back downtown, watching Toronto’s Owen Pallett bring his Final Fantasy to a little bar called Phogg with big windows looking out into the street. People would wander by and look inside, and linger for a moment or more, listening as the inside sound spilled out onto the sidewalks, the way cities should work on hot summer nights. All he has is a violin and a bunch of pedals and somehow builds entire thunderous (and sometimes quiet) songs, with lyrics about Toronto’s streets, the CN Tower and the size of the Condo-King Brad Lamb’s giant (metaphorical) genitals. Just the thing to make you really start to miss Toronto.