a bridge not far enough

My favourite American podcast - 99 Percent Invisible - has done a deep dive into a story close to my heart – the trials and tribulations and the shit show that was and still is the inadequate bottle necked Ambassador Bridge between Windsor Ontario and Detroit USA. It was one of the last stories I covered as a news reporter at CBC Windsor in the early 2000s, before I moved back west. I was part of a news crew trying to cross into Detroit via that bridge to cover a local community meeting about the issue. Long story short, we were turned away from the USA and back to Canada. As a journalist I tried many, many MANY different times to contact the owner of the bridge - Manuel “Matty” Moroun - to talk about his shenanigans regarding the privately owned international bridge. The assignment always resulted a lot of eye rolling. We knew we wouldn’t get a call back, even a “no comment.” Down the road in Sarnia ON they twinned their bridge to Port Huron USA lickety-split. Planned in ‘92, it opened in 1997. All these years later Windsor finally gets it’s badly needed second bridge soon – the Gordie Howe International Bridge. It’s about bloody time.