The charms of Windsor

By Brian Kalt and Jonathan Kay

Friday, September 10, 1999 - Windsor Star

Many tourists come to Canada for the skiing and hunting. Not my family, though. We came for the bowling.

And we came often. From where we lived, a suburb of Detroit, Windsor was only a 30-minute drive. At least once a month, we'd pile into the family station wagon, cross the Ambassador Bridge and then gorge ourselves at one of Windsor's many Chinese restaurants before spending the afternoon knocking down "duck pins" with those tiny cantaloupe-sized bowling balls you just can't find south of the border.

And yet, fun as those day trips were, I always came back to the United States with a lingering sense of pint-size malaise. Crossing into Canada was like going to visit one's slightly more respectable neighbours. Their house seemed tidier, their kids better behaved. When my family got home, we all pretended to prefer our easygoing, slovenly American lifestyle. Secretly, however, we all wondered why we couldn't be a little more like our tidy and polite northern neighbours.

In fact, Canada was perceived as so genteel and non-threatening that the Spanish club at my high school took its annual field trip not to Mexico, but to Toronto. Most parents would be wary of sending their kids to Oaxaca, but who could worry about Ontario? (For some reason, it didn't seem to matter that most Ontarians speak English rather than Spanish. The odd Canadian accent imbued the destination with a sufficient level of exoticism to justify the excursion).

Even when I was home in Michigan, the Canadian influence was strong. I grew up tuning into Canadian TV: Hockey Night in Canada, curling and Canadian Sesame Street episodes (the latter punctuated by French language instruction vignettes instead of Spanish); and Canadian radio (learning only later that they were legally required to play that much Loverboy.)

As I entered my teenage years, however, I learned Canada had its less civilized side as well, a realization that brought my fascination with your country into a new, adult context. Windsor was where exotic "dancers" performed completely naked (or so I heard). Windsor was where they laced their Tylenol tablets with codeine and sold them over the counter, legally. Windsor was where they let you drink when you were only 19 (two years earlier than in Michigan). And once the Windsor casino was built, the selection of vice offerings was complete. Maybe Canadians don't see themselves this way, but to me and my Detroit-area friends, Canada was like the world's biggest – and safest – carnival of pleasure.

And yet none of this has affected my early perception of Canada as the tidy nation that knows how to behave itself. Maybe that's because my cross-border roistering was limited to modest indulgences (like the single Blue I quaffed on my 19th birthday). Or maybe it's because I traveled beyond the border area, deep into Canada's prim and proper interior, ranging beyond Windsor's "loutish American district," to visit Quebec, Victoria and the too-seldom visited parts in between (I was disappointed to hear that the Windsor casino was the biggest tourist attraction in all of Canada.)

I came to wonder – how does Canada manage to have it both ways? How can it be the land of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, yet remain safe and non-threatening? In Detroit, my friends and I saw Canada as playing the role of lampshade-wearing party animal and designated driver simultaneously.

Perhaps it is because, in Canada, respect does not imply a lack of freedom, as it does under my own country's Dukes of Hazard ethic; it means a reluctance to misbehave at society's expense – even when opportunities for mischief present themselves. Canadian government officials seem to realize that permitting certain largely harmless activities (giving people a little codeine, for instance, or stripping) provides the government with more legitimacy when it regulates other areas – like guns.

And here we get to the serious policy lesson of my Nearly Canadian upbringing: If Windsor residents had as many guns as their neighbours in Detroit, would it still be an all-ages fun house? The lampshade drunk would wrap the family station wagon around a lamppost on his way home from the party – presumably after perpetrating a drive-by.

Americans may talk a good fight about their Second Amendment, but when it comes to having a good time, gun-free Windsor certainly has its charms. Canada has found a balance it's comfortable with – perhaps more so than the U.S., notwithstanding all the American bluster about freedom and firepower. Maybe that is why, 25 years after my first trip across the Ambassador Bridge, my love for all things Canadian – Loverboy excepted -- remains undulled.

Brian Kalt is an attorney in Washington, D.C. The article was written in co-operation with Jonathan Kay, a member of the National Post editorial board.