POSTED: AUGUST 1, 2026
Friends and regular readers know I am a Canadian living in Malta on an old wooden live-aboard boat. They also know that I try to stay current on what is happening in Canada. So, this post on Bridges should come as no surprise. Last week Canada opened the new Gordie Howe Bridge linking Windsor Ontario and Detroit Michigan. The project was over three decades in the making and was conceived and executed to respond to the over worked Ambassador Bridge that had been completed in 1929 and is the single largest surface border between the two countries, accounting for about one quarter of all goods shipped between the two.
But it is the symbolism of course that is the significant thing here. While the new bridge will speed up traffic, and make movement more efficient, the real story is its conception and construction between two strong partner countries, named after a famous Canadian hockey player who played for Detroit and was a beloved adopted son in that city. But the other big aspect of course was the associated story of Donald Trumps attempt to stop it from opening. It was paid for by Canada with an arrangement for profit sharing between Canada and Michigan after all costs were recouped. But Trump needed to jump in to extract a better deal for the U.S. mainly because the Ambassador Bridge is privately owned by a big Trump supporter. The symbolism runs rampant in this story – the monopoly of a single bridge owned by a capitalist, in a country where capitalism ranks ahead of democracy, now eclipsed with a bridge built with taxpayer dollars for the good of both countries by a country that still holds the public interest above private interests.
While this story was certainly on my mind, todays post was also triggered by another bridge discussion. A few months ago, I had a wonderful, very long conversation with a friend I had not seen in some time. She phoned to talk about Amsterdam as she knew I had spent a fair bit of time there when I was younger. She is about my age and I knew both her and her husband who unfortunately passed about a year ago. They had both been academics – her in architecture, urban planning, and human geography and him in science. Their lives were rich in experiences and travel but had accumulated little wealth so lived quite a modest life in various places where they taught.
She was calling to say she was interested in my thoughts on a few locations she was considering for buying a house in Amsterdam. The question had shocked me as Amsterdam is a crazy expensive place to live, but she explained that while they had little life insurance when her partner passed a few months after his passing she was contacted to buy his portion of patents that he had on a few things that the other participants in the patent ownership were actively marketing. The sum was a very large one, so even after putting a substantial part aside to generate income she could consider such a move to not just Amsterdam but a canal house in Amsterdam and within the Grachtengordel (central canal area).
So I shared my somewhat dated thoughts on which areas I would choose based on her interests, but as we chatted the discussion became much more academic. While I was chattering on about which canals I liked best and why, her perspective as a person who understands, and teaches, how people interact with their built environment, was more focused on the bridges than the canals they span. The canals have their own character, but it is the bridges that create more of the human flow, whether as a pedestrian or cyclist, and have real distinctions of what they link to if travelling more that a few blocks away. For me the conversation about the relationship of bridges and canals was like the first time I was introduced to negative space in art terms.
Like many conversations I have with people of our age, the notion of bridges also morphed into this being a bridge from her old life to her new one. We need to keep moving forward and sometimes that is a challenge, especially if the old life, as in this case with the loss of a loved partner, leaves a rather big hole in your heart with no clear way to get back to a happy place. But a good place to start is to not to try to duplicate it, but to move to a new initiative or adventure.
Django