HAVE A CUP OF JOE WITH JOE
Celebrating Our Automotive Heritage! By Joe McParland
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our yourself a hot “Cup of Joe,” sit back and relax, and let’s chat! In my initial blog in early January on the newly designed BizXmagazine.com website, I introduced myself to you as a political geek and junkie whose interest in politics began at an early age with a number of role model influences and grew even stronger when I moved to Windsor’s historical Victoria Avenue, a street boasting no less than 15 political candidates and elected officials in the past few decades. Well, there is actually more to me than just politics and in my bi-weekly blog, “Have a Cup of Joe with Joe,” I will attempt to flush this out. I am also writing a monthly column in the print and digital issues of Biz X (the page you are reading right now!) with different content for the most part. My blog and articles aim to be read like the type of conversation friends have with friends at local downtown coffee shops. There’ll be a lot of reminiscing, opinions tossed around, humour and just plain good old chatter about the community and region I have been blessed to call my home. So, coinciding with the auto theme for this February magazine, it is the perfect time to celebrate the automotive industry, the historic foundation of this region’s economy and employment base. “The North American International Auto Show” in Detroit at Cobo Center from January 16 to 24 captured the hearts, minds and dreams of all of us, both young and old. While the auto industry showcases the new, the innovative, the imaginative, this is also the time in Windsor Essex to reflect on our heritage as the “Automotive Capital of Canada.” I had to reach way back to my Assumption High School history classes with Mr. Bertoia in the late 1960s to remember that the birth of the auto industry occurred outside North America. The earliest examples of “horseless carriages” have their roots in Europe as a corollary of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and 1800s. In fact, the word “automobile” is, itself, of French origin. The automobile was initially conceived in Europe as a luxury item of transportation for the noble and the privileged. This fact is highlighted in PBS’s “Downton Abbey’s” first season introduction of the Rolls Royce automobile for the nobility, in the early 1900s.
Eventually, these European auto concepts made their way across the Atlantic to the “new world” of the U.S. and Canada to be improved on both in terms of technology as well as mass manufacturing. No longer was the automobile a luxury item reserved for the rich and famous, it soon became everyday transportation for the regular folk. Only a 1.5 mile wide river separates Windsor from the “Motor City” Detroit, which for years has been recognized internationally as the automotive capital of the world. Due to our proximity, Detroit and Windsor has enjoyed a co-operative and complementary manufacturing relationship dating back to the early 1900s. A Windsorite, Gordon McGregor, formed the Ford Motor Company of Canada in 1904. His business, Walkerville Wagon Works, assembled the Fords as parts were transported by ferries across the Detroit River between the two cities.
This is but a thumbnail sketch of the earliest roots of our automotive industry foundation in Windsor Essex. Meanwhile, on the U.S. side, such notable auto giants as Walter Chrysler, Henry Leyland, Ransom E. Olds, Henry Ford, Charles and Frank Duryea, Charles Nash and Charles Kettering and others constantly improved the viability of the auto industry though the introduction of mass-production assembly lines and other technological advances. These influences quickly found their way to the “north” side of the Detroit River and helped make Windsor the auto capital of Canada. This is but a thumbnail sketch of the earliest roots of our automotive industry foundation in Windsor Essex. Many books have been written in greater detail and provide the continuing historical development of this industry — our industry — throughout the 20th Century. And now time for a personal confession. As a lifelong Windsorite, I have never been a car enthusiast, one in love with style, design and what’s under the hood. As a kid, I hated receiving model car kits for my birthday — B IZ X M A G A Z IN E • F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6
except for the glue that came with it. Cars have just never been my thing even though I worked three summers in the Windsor Ford Engine Plants through my university years. I see the car primarily as a necessary utility in my life, not a symbol of status or amorous desire. Yet, every year I join the massive throngs of people who pilgrimage to Cobo Center to attend the auto show. So, then, why do I attend? It’s because it’s an inspiring people event filled with enthusiasm, awe and excitement of those who are car enthusiasts, especially the young and the wide-eyed children. It’s also because I am paying thanks and tribute to the industry that has allowed generation after generation of families in my community to be proudly employed and enjoy a quality of life for so long envied by many other Canadians. We have hit hard times in the auto industry in the past dozen years or so, causing our regional unemployment numbers to skyrocket to national leading levels. This has forced us to pause and re-strategize how best to diversify our employment possibilities and future. But, I am confident that our future will continue to prominently include the automotive industry as our postsecondary schools of learning re-tool and readapt to that future, and to the challenges of global competition. Just recently I took a half hour stroll by myself through Ford City on Drouillard Road. If you haven’t done this, please do it. I could actually sense generation after generation of the men and women who day after day entered through the gates of the nearby Ford plants with pride to do what Windsorites did and do best — build cars. Many of the historic and legendary watering holes outside the plants are now shuttered, but I swear I could still hear their honky-tonk piano music, and the raucous laughter — and occasional fight — of auto workers from the past gathered for a brew or two after their shifts. And on your Ford City stroll you will be mesmerized by the amazing artistic wall murals of Ford City depicting our automotive roots and reflecting our predecessor’s individual and communal dignity and self-worth. These artistic renderings will bring you back to a time and a people that helped define our city and region through the years as the legitimate “Automotive Capital of Canada.”
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