Time to rename Windsor ‘The City Invincible’

The time has surely come to trade in Windsor’s passe and largely inaccurate “City of Roses” label for something more indicative of the city’s steely inner core and street-fighter survival instincts.

As 2017 draws to a close the evidence keeps piling up that Windsor, The City Invincible, is the comeback champion of Canadian municipalities, a burg that invariably climbs back up, no matter how many times it takes a beating and lands, face up, on the canvas.

If it weren’t for that one soggy day in late August when an absent-minded Mother Nature left the taps running hour after hour, creating basement flood misery for the owners of more than 6,200 homes, 2017 would go down as a vintage year for this community.

It’s hard to believe, with all the good news rolling out in our region, that just a few years ago media ghouls from across the country were here checking Windsor’s pulse and concluding, with a hint of morbid satisfaction, that it was about to croak.

You’ll recall that 2008 claim by a certain Toronto newspaper that Windsor, a city of pain and sadness, was “falling apart” and there was — cue the violins — little hope of recovery for the once-mighty industrial centre.

TV crews from far and wide found ample fodder in dismal images of rusted-out factories and padlocked gates. It was, even then, an extreme interpretation of how bad things were down here. And they were bad.

The claims of then mayor Eddie Francis and other civic leaders that Windsor boasted a strong economic base and was “in transition” to recovery were dismissed as death-row bravado from folks unwilling to face reality.

And now here we are, on the cusp of 2018, in a city with one Canada’s lowest unemployment rates, a rate that would be even lower if Windsor could find the skilled workers its employers need.

Last month, our jobless rate was 6.3 per cent, less than half of the dismal 15.7 per cent in the summer of 2009 when all those turn-out-the-lights and call-the-movers predictions were being made.

People are moving, all right. They’re moving here from across Canada. There’s surely nothing more uplifting for civic morale than seeing folks from Vancouver to Greater Toronto cashing out and moving down here to the Banana Belt with their real estate winnings.

A few years ago, before the word got out, this would have been unthinkable. Even among a certain toxic Windsor element, the prevailing wisdom was that nobody in their right mind would move here and the only reason people stayed was because they couldn’t sell their homes.

Now, amid predictions that Windsor-Essex will lead the nation in 2018 with the highest percentage increases in house prices, and with $600,000 homes becoming commonplace, that “nation’s armpit” mentality is changing.

These new arrivals, from bigger and in some cases more progressive communities, will, in time, have a major impact on Windsor’s collective thinking. Filling potholes, the perennial top issue with some longtime residents, won’t be enough. These newcomers will push hard for improved amenities and steps, like tree planting and better landscaping, to make Windsor more attractive. We’ll benefit from that injection of fresh thinking.

The engine driving Windsor’s turnaround was, of course, Fiat Chrysler’s massive investment in its van plant. But many are coming here, not to grab factory jobs, but to take advantage of our mild climate, tolerant mindset, comparatively low cost of living and location on the doorstep of resurgent Detroit with all its big-city features.

Those who cheerily predicted Windsor would be the next Flint, an urban basket case, have been silenced for now by the wave of new housing and retail projects planned or under way.

The cynics should have known better. Windsor, which has the scars to prove it, is Canada’s rebound city. It endured the Great Depression, Ford’s devastating move to Oakville in the 1950s, punishing recessions in 1981 and 1991 and the Great Recession of 2008.

It has been a long, rocky road. But each time Windsor, which is about a heck of a lot more than sniffing roses, gets up, dusts itself off and moves on.

Time to celebrate that.