Slane, Adios, Au revoir

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:41 am

Why the good-byes. It is reported in the Windsor Star, Windsor, Ontario, Canada a mile and a river and now very tight border across from Detroit, Michigan.

The paper is reporting this morning that the border between Canada and United States will be closed at midnight to night for the weekend and possibly longer, affecting both the bridge and the tunnel.

The large Irish community that exists between these two cities will be devastated. There isn't a day that goes by that there isn't someone from Canada, playing, learning or just visiting as we have for years or vice versa. These are long friendships with ITM the focus of our lives.

The Gaelic League on Michigan Avenue just down from old Tiger Stadium just a quick ten minutes from Windsor might be a thousand miles now. Friday nights there is a gem of a night. Ceili dancing with instruction, a bunch of us musicians playing for the dancers (Cdn, US), and on the dance floor you can't tell who is from where.

This night has been going on for twenty some years and sadly it will continue but without a lot of us Windsorites, not willing to sit for two or more hours to see if we can get into the United States, and again vice versa for them coming into Canada.

The sessions through the week are always a split wonderful mixture and won't be the same if the border stays closed or on high alert.

Alas some of us have decided it isn't worth the trouble. So adios amigos. See ya after the war!

MarkB

Martin Milner · Post by **Martin Milner** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:47 am

That's really sad Mark. With the problems at Heathrow and mnow Gatwick, plus the London Underground being half non-funtional much of the time, we feel like we're living in a city under siege.

But I don't attend a session regularly as you do, so I'm not really badly affected as you are.

Here's to the status quo being restored asap.

Martin

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:59 am

Our Prime Minister, Sawnoff Johnny, has a novel idea to protect us against terrorist attacks. He's sent every Australian household a fridge magnet. (I AM NOT KIDDING.) The Post Office has been inundated with magnets being 'returned to sender'. Now, if he'd sent us wooden crosses and garlic we'd all have understood.

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 9:06 am

How will Americans get their duct tape from 3M in London Ontario? I was visiting my mother in Indiana and just got back yesterday. On the news it was clear that the key to everything is duct tape. Don't leave home without it. The newspaper featured it this morning. The demand has doubled. Well, I dunno. I just hope you are able to get your duct tape.

Steve

peeplj · Post by **peeplj** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 9:13 am

Down here in Arkansas, we don't tape our ducks, havin found that the confounded critters can't flap right with all that on their ...

uh...

oh, duct tape. Nevermind.

Ya'll come back now, ya'hear?

--James
http://www.flutesite.com

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 9:32 am

Right now there is or supposed to be an eight hour delay in crossings. So the duct tape trucks are probably parked on the 401 near Chatham.

Over a billion dollars a year in trade crosses at this border- the busiest the western hemisphere. There are over 5,000 individual cars that cross every day also between the two countries.

The economies on both sides of the border are entwined, joined at the hip like no other place in world.

MarkB

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 9:37 am

I went over at Sarnia/Port Huron on Tuesday. Trucks were lined up across the bridge into Canada and beyond. On Thursday on the way back they were lined up about halfway acorss the bridge, not nearly so bad as Tuesday. There was not much car traffic either time and we had no trouble crossing either way.

Steve

burnsbyrne · Post by **burnsbyrne** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 10:36 am

I was born in Detroit and still have lots of relatives there and in Windsor and its surroundings. I think nearly everybody of Irish descent in the Detroit/Windsor area have family on the other side of the border. When my grandparents died their funerals were in Detroit but they were buried in Essex county, Ontario. The whole funeral procession went through the tunnel and we all had to stop at the guard house. Still, we all got through in less than 15 minutes. I can't imagine what would happen now. War is a divisive phenomenon, a fact that comes home to all of us in one way or another.
Mike

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 10:54 am

For those who don't know how close here's some pictures; Detroit on the left, Windsor,Ontario,Canada on the right.

http://www.ambassadorbridge.com/gallery.html

I live right across from General Motors World Headquarters in the Renaissance Center, the huge tower in some pictures.

MarkB

edited to take out extremely long URL.

_________________
Dance to the fiddles in the rhythm of the reels /Dance to the life and the love that you feel / Dance to the song of the one that you love so true / Oh, Life is in the dance you choose. The dance you chose (album)Aselin Debison/Bruce Guthro

[ This Message was edited by: MarkB on 2003-02-14 13:22 ]

brianormond · Post by **brianormond** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:00 pm

-Sorry to hear of the tight border. I grew up in Detroit suburbia and thought of Windsor as an easy place to go, likewise Sarnia further north-usually just a friendly
query from customs going over, along with a pat on the head for our dog, and
similar coming back through U.S. customs. The one occasion I brought back purchases in excess of duty-free limit, I declared the items and was instructed to forget payment as amount owed was only $5.00, and their revenue collection mechanisms weren't equipped to handle such small sums. What a great country!
One memorable trip was different-when father received a gigantic reel-to-reel
tape recorder from my grandfather near Goderich, Ontario. -Returning it through customs was something out of a spy novel. -Dad was taken to an austere customs building with bright lights and hard chairs
and grilled by hard-boiled agents of anti-communist 1960 officialdom at length. He was finally allowed to go, but I've always remembered the suspicion of both his person and his technology- tape recorders were rare then outside of media facilities. -Such can be the fate of early adopters.
-Windsor and Detroit enjoyed a close relationship during prohibition as riverine smuggling was widespread and profitable for both sides.
_________________
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
-B.

[ This Message was edited by: brianormond on 2003-02-14 21:30 ]

spittin_in_the_wind · Post by **spittin_in_the_wind** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:40 pm

I can't believe this is happening. What is happening to our world? So sad.

Robin

Soineanta · Post by **Soineanta** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 9:59 pm

Amazing all the little things that are affected by these conflicts.
Here's to a very short-lived and, gods willing, not too bloody war.

tuaz · Post by **tuaz** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 10:23 pm

On 2003-02-14 10:13, peeplj wrote:
Down here in Arkansas, we don't tape our ducks, havin found that the confounded critters can't flap right with all that on their ...

uh...

oh, duct tape. Nevermind.

Ya'll come back now, ya'hear?

--James
http://www.flutesite.com

But there really is "Duck Tape", isn't there?http://www.ducktapeclub.com/

Re: the tightening of the borders - you have my sympathies.

Walden · Post by **Walden** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 11:36 pm

Yes, Duck Tape is a brand of duct tape.

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 2:53 am

On 2003-02-14 09:41, MarkB wrote:

The paper is reporting this morning that the border between Canada and United States will be closed at midnight to night for the weekend and possibly longer, affecting both the bridge and the tunnel.

Maybe it actually did report that but I was unable to find it in the online version of the Windsor Star the Globe and Mail, The London Free Press or The Toronto Star. It is not reported in the news section of the Rogers home page that I have. I would think that a border closing would be pretty big news. The euthanization of Dolly is bigger news.

Here's a quote from this morning's paper about duct tape.

"Duct tape, the new tool of American homeland defence, has a way of sticking to everything, including the public's imagination.

Sales of duct tape in the U.S. soared this week after an official with the U.S. Homeland Security Office suggested homeowners load up on the stuff to seal their doors and windows in plastic sheeting in event of chemical or biological terrorist attacks.

The sales flurry has even been felt in London, home to 3M Canada's plant, the sole supplier of duct tape to the big U.S. multinational."

Steve

[ This Message was edited by: SteveK on 2003-02-15 06:37 ]