The Gordie Howe Bridge

 Monday, July 27^rd, 2026

 On Friday last, there was a single-country, ceremonial opening of one end of the Gordie Howe Bridge. The Canadian end. The US of A was, it is reported, uninvited. If, under the circumstances, they decline to open their end to traffic, will anyone be surprised? Edited to add, open as of Monday afternoon. 

I have been following, with both amusement and alarm, the saga of this bridge since it was a vague arch on someone’s table napkin at a pub dinner. The reason for this is my personal relationship with the Ambassador Bridge, a major link between Canada and the US of A, and a structure not very far from where I grew up in Windsor, Ontario, the town south of Detroit, Michigan.

We lived only a few blocks from the Ambassador Bridge. When I was five, my father took me to play on the wall on the east side of the bridge’s entrance and exit ramp. When I was in high school, I my route to and from that school involved walking across that ramp. Neither interaction was at all dangerous; there was very little traffic entering or exiting. Sometimes there was none. A few times, causing the adolescents that we were a lot of amusement, an American tourist would wave one of us over and ask if, say, they could make Toronto for lunch. Uh, no sir. Six to nine hours depending on road work.

 You see, you drove off the exit ramp, a widish apron of concrete stretching back to a customs control, and you were on a major Windsor artery, Wyandotte Street, that was two lanes wide with parking, mixed residential and small business. A right turn took you toward downtown Windsor. A left turn decanted you through a residential area, at a stoplight, onto the Huron Church Road, a four lane road with a boulevard in a few spots that meandered through a bit of a tourist section with fast food and a couple of motels, a small plaza and within five minutes became a country road where there were stands for farm produce and fields on either side. Then you wound your way through a bit of a maze of local highways until you got onto Highway 2, two lanes, speed limit 50 mph, headed for Toronto via London. A short distance from that intersection down another very country road was my grandparents’ hundred-acre farm, excellent soil where my grandfather had grown crops for Heinz tomatoes, cucumbers, and, back in the day, tobacco.

So, my best friend and I could be sent out to the Huron Line to buy strawberries when I was sixteen and had just passed my driver’s test. And we went, using my mother’s VW bug. We felt quite grown up. In truth, there was so little traffic that even my worrier of a mother could not get up much angst at our errand.

As you can imagine, few transport trucks entered the US by such a route. A lot of, most of, the commerce crossed the Detroit River on railway cars, the cars being loaded onto barges and towed across. Quite a bit of the shoreline of both Windsor and Detroit was taken up by the infrastructure needed for this. And that the ownership of the Ambassador Bridge came into the hands of a private company, with one man owner, did not seem important.

I grew up for real. Married, moved to the other side of the province, had children. And they grew up. All the while my parents stayed in the house just off Wyandotte Street. And we drove from Ottawa to Windsor to visit them. We rejoiced when the high speed 401 highway was finished mostly, sort of, from our city to theirs, even though we usually broke the trip into two days. I am not sure when the last bit was opened, but I remember driving the whole route in one go, tired but determined, to be with my best friend when her father died. And I remember being astonished at the number of trucks from Toronto that were on the road with me, headed for Windsor. To cross on the Ambassador Bridge.

To cross on a two-lane… well, two and a centre lane.. even at that time elderly bridge. And paying tolls through the nose to the owner. Having survived this, the traffic all flowed into suburban Detroit and there was some confusion before it could exit by highway.

Here is a short article about the bridges and the drama. 

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2026/07/23/new-gordie-howe-bridge-expected-to-save-truck-drivers-time-money-at-detroit-border/

Each time we visited the traffic was worse. Some improvements of Huron Line (Huron Line and Huron Church Road are the same thing. Sorry.) from time to time did not really ease off the frequent gridlocks. I vaguely recall getting stuck in a lineup of trucks waiting to enter the bridge when I was at least a mile and probably more back from the turn to Wyandotte. I suspect the locals had a better idea of when the road was possible, but driving in on the 401 from Toronto/London, the last exit decanted the weary traveller onto the Huron Line at the edge of Windsor’s newer subdivisions, a good ten miles from the bridge, and all of the through traffic had to compress onto four narrow lanes with stoplights and the unfortunate local traffic.

By this time, of course, there was to my knowledge no train ferry still running. Most of the downtown river shore was sculpted into pedestrian walks and flower gardens. And all of the commerce was compressed onto bigger and bigger transport trucks. People could still use the tunnel by car or bus, but the trucks had one route only. Oh, and of course it decanted them into urban Detroit. So the bridge would bottleneck if American Customs was slow.

My parents moved to Ottawa in the early 1980’s and thus I was not making the drive to Windsor. I think we went a few times to visit my aunts, there were my parents’ funerals at a church only a few miles from the 401/Huron Line junction, but I felt more lost each time I drove there. All of the fruit stands and farm stands were gone, cookie-cutter hotels and plazas had taken over the roadsides, and the big tandem trailers were everywhere. When I first heard about the proposal for the Gordie Howe Bridge, I cheered.

That was a lot of time ago and a lot of cost incurred. That part of the story is all over the news this week as the Canadian half of the totally Canadian-funded bridge opened in Windsor. I have seen photos and short videos. Huron Church Road (always the Huron Line in my mind) appears to have vanished, along with my grandparents’ farm, which my daughter tells me is now buried under access ramps or some such. My public school has been bulldozed, and my high school is on the list to follow. My daughter was visiting in the area this spring and was able to report the family graves intact in the church both my parents attended. But she could not find my grandparents’ home or land.

I hope to add a video and some links here about the childish nonsense going on about this bridge. I am waiting till Monday brings information as to whether the American side is going to open to traffic.

It is a beautiful, beautiful bridge. And the hours long lineups to cross the other one should be things of the past, making the part of Windsor where I grew up livable again.

Photo Credits, George Harrold.