Stick shift to automatic — how does Windsor change gears?
By 1841, due to an enormous British passion for bowler hats (named after creator John Bowler), there were no fewer than 3,500 hat factories employing some 25,000-plus persons within the Borough of Southwark, located across the Thames from downtown London.
By 2012, 171 years later, there was not a single hat factory remaining in Southwark. And gone, too, were vinegar and pickle factories and dozens of leather tanners. Products of 19th century manufacture either had fallen into disuse, or production had been shifted elsewhere.
By 2015, significant automotive production has been relocated away from historic U.S. and Canadian automotive capitals. It is probable that a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will accelerate that trend. One of those locations is across Mexico’s tortilla border. Mexico, now the world’s fourthlargest exporter of automobiles, is located conveniently at America’s southern border.
Of course, if that Trumped-up U.S. presidential candidate — the one whose mouth rarely seems connected to his brain — were to succeed and his wall constructed, then it might be essential that gates be included in his wall to permit Mexican-built autos to enter the USA, and, it follows, Canadian markets.
Although every visiting politician in our recent federal electoral scrimmage proposed more money for the auto industry, it is possible to imagine that while all proffered short-term palliative care for the industry, none were prepared to openly question longer-term viability of Canada’s auto industry. Indeed, perhaps the last federal government’s announcement to eliminate funding for Auto21 was a modest glimmer of prescience insofar as the auto industry’s future in Canada. Auto21, an applied automotive R&D project at the University of Windsor, may have achieved anachronism status.
AUTO21 may have seemed a good idea a dozen years ago, but as the focus of both auto manufacturing and sales has moved away from this region to places like China, Brazil and Mexico, it might have been more sensible in the longer run to have invested that same Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada money into the development of innovative platforms and formats for alternate future commercial and post-industrial initiatives.
The auto industry is certainly not dead in Ontario, but it may be in the proverbial late innings as new auto concepts elsewhere make it into the global marketplace, and more so when the TPP becomes operational.
The Rose City and Canada’s Automotive Capital may need re-tooling to dissuade dreams of a revived auto industry, imagining, as many cities in America’s rust-belt are doing already, a post-manufacturing economy. Imaginative horizon thinking is a critical skill for a community’s future.
Essentially, Windsor needs to vigorously reinvent itself. Already, it has two quality academic “anchor” industries, a university and a valued technical college. Windsor also has a modest collection of notable tourist-appeal foundation attractions in Olde Walkerville and Sandwich.
Perhaps Windsor could revisit the “Rose City” image to complement its world-class waterfront sculpture garden. A science museum should be front and centre and not obligated to scramble for leftover venues.
Museums, art galleries, film festivals (WIFF), music from riverfront concerts to Caesars Windsor top entertainment to the remarkable Windsor Symphony Orchestra, a healthy live theatre and modest dance theatre are all prospective building blocks for a burgeoning tourism industry. Focus on creative human resources already available regionally.
Windsor needs to change gears and shake its auto company town lunch-bucket mentality, perhaps as Leamington already is learning to do.
Competing American communities are seeking creative ways to reinvent themselves. South Bend, Ind., replaced derelict Studebaker plants with industrial parks, offering attractive new industry locations. Windsor has a great future if talent can be encouraged to innovate and create. Perhaps Ontario needs an attitudinal change as well to support assurances that stronger cities do translate into healthier, more economically sustainable communities for creative people. Failing that, our auto industry hangup could quickly become another Bowler hat phenomenon.