Latest / Kvetch & Release / 25 Years Ago, 9/11 Made the Canada-U.S. Border a Wall and Transformed a Neighbourhood into a Fortress

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25 Years Ago, 9/11 Made the Canada-U.S. Border a Wall and Transformed a Neighbourhood into a Fortress · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Friday morning, and it is time for Litke's Got a Take.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: John Litke joins me. Good morning, John.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Gene.
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  Speaker 1: Well, listen, just about 30 minutes ago at 846, traffic
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  Speaker 1: halted on the U.S.-Canadian border, the Gordie Howe Bridge, to
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  Speaker 1: mark exactly 25 years since 9-11 and the first jet
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  Speaker 1: going into the North Tower. I just told my story. John,
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  Speaker 1: take us back to that morning in 2001. What do
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you remember?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's surreal to think about the border
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  Speaker 2: closure for the 25th anniversary of September 11th just moments ago.
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  Speaker 2: I was 12 years old, and rumors began to trickle
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  Speaker 2: into classrooms right after school started from students who arrived late.
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  Speaker 2: It was kept from us from teachers. I remember teachers
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  Speaker 2: crying openly in classrooms, signing busy work. But at lunch,
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  Speaker 2: I was a crossing guard, and a man walked up
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  Speaker 2: to the crosswalk, and I told him what I had
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  Speaker 2: heard about, you know, what was relayed by, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the rumors. And he sort of froze, reached into his pocket,
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  Speaker 2: and shoved a $ 1 bill into my hand, U.S. And
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  Speaker 2: then he reached down his shirt collar, and he pulled
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  Speaker 2: out a set of military dog tags. And I didn't
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  Speaker 2: realize what was happening really at the time, but he
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  Speaker 2: looked at me with this sheer intensity and said, which
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  Speaker 2: way is the river? I pointed, and he just said
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  Speaker 2: to me, I have somewhere I need to be. And
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  Speaker 2: he took off sprinting north towards Detroit. You know, I
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  Speaker 2: was 12, two months away from my bar mitzvah, becoming
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  Speaker 2: a man at that point, so I was still, you know,
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  Speaker 2: a child by all accounts. And that was the second
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  Speaker 2: that the world changed, even though I didn't realize it
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  Speaker 2: around me. I saw the reality of the U.S. Armed
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  Speaker 2: Forces and the panic of a border city right there
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  Speaker 2: on the pavement.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, today we watch global tragedies in 4K
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  Speaker 1: on our phones regularly. But in 2001, social media didn't exist.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I was telling my story. I had a
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  Speaker 1: Nokia flip phone, and I kept calling my pals, all
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  Speaker 1: of whom died in the World Trade Center on that morning.
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  Speaker 1: What was your experience that day?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I just it's so difficult to explain
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  Speaker 2: the morning of September 11th, even days afterwards to the
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  Speaker 2: cell phone and social media generation today. I mean, when
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  Speaker 2: COVID hit or when Russia invaded Ukraine, we all were
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  Speaker 2: doom scrolling, the world collapsing in high resolution on our
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  Speaker 2: phones together in a way. But on September 11th. We
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  Speaker 2: were trapped in information vacuums and silos. So yeah, again,
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  Speaker 2: teachers were weeping in hallways, desperately trying to keep us
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  Speaker 2: all calm while crying in front of us. But there
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  Speaker 2: was no social media. No one had an actual understanding
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  Speaker 2: of what was going on. Some classrooms in grade eight,
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  Speaker 2: which I wasn't in, I was in grade seven, they
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  Speaker 2: had TVs rolled into the classrooms on metal carts, and
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  Speaker 2: they saw some grainy footage. But Nothing was really coming
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  Speaker 2: out that was clear until much later in the day.
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  Speaker 2: And I mean, I've heard stories of people, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the cell networks that did exist and the phone networks
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  Speaker 2: were down for quite some time across like the entire
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  Speaker 2: continent in some places. So, you know, it's just it's
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  Speaker 2: so hard to explain to today's interconnected world what it
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  Speaker 2: was like to be completely separated from an event that
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  Speaker 2: touched us all.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember, you know, when the U.S.-Canada border was
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  Speaker 1: closed on 9-11, the road leading to the Ambassador Bridge
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  Speaker 1: became like a parking lot. In your memory, how fast
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  Speaker 1: did our cities and factories just grind to a halt?
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  Speaker 2: September 11th was a heart attack for our economy. And
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  Speaker 2: I've been doing a bunch of research, reading back some
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  Speaker 2: of the reflective stories from the time, and then from
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  Speaker 2: 10 years later, 20 years later, and now the recent
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  Speaker 2: ones that are out. And the U.S. went on highest alert,
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  Speaker 2: and the border literally became a border wall. The road
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  Speaker 2: leading the bridge wasn't just backed up, as you said,
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  Speaker 2: it was a parking lot. The former mayor, Eddie Francis,
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  Speaker 2: recalled 20 kilometers of idling transport trucks from the bridge
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  Speaker 2: down the 401 to the nearest town of Tecumseh. That
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  Speaker 2: bisected the entire region. And, you know, auto plants run
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  Speaker 2: on just-in-time delivery. Those rolling warehouses that are transport trucks
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  Speaker 2: were stuck on both sides of the border. And there's
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  Speaker 2: actually a local story from a worker who was on
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  Speaker 2: the line at the Windsor Assembly Plant at the time, Chrysler,
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  Speaker 2: And they were all listening to the news on a boombox.
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  Speaker 2: And adult autoworkers were crying on the line, but the
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  Speaker 2: physical line hadn't even stopped at that point. So they
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  Speaker 2: were standing there, tears in their eyes, installing rivet nuts
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  Speaker 2: every 46 seconds. And that's how jarring it was. The
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  Speaker 2: world had ended, but the assembly line kept moving, even
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  Speaker 2: though the trucks rolling off the line had nowhere to go.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. The tourism CEO, Gordon Orr, said 9-11 killed spontaneous
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  Speaker 1: border travel overnight. You know, and I was telling my
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  Speaker 1: story about how I would go down and see my
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  Speaker 1: pals in New York City. And I remember you'd go
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  Speaker 1: to the airport and they'd say, where are you born?
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  Speaker 1: I'd say Toronto. And that would be it. Occasionally, you'd
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  Speaker 1: have to show like your birth certificate. But, you know,
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  Speaker 1: just in and out. Just how permanent was that economic
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  Speaker 1: hit for all the border cities in Canada?
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  Speaker 2: Permanent is the perfect exact word to describe how the
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  Speaker 2: border changed. Before 9-11, Windsor-Essex had over 7 million visitors
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  Speaker 2: a year, 80% of which were Americans. And Gordon Orr,
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  Speaker 2: the CEO there, nailed it. I mean, we were a
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  Speaker 2: passport-free suburb of Detroit. You just flashed your license, even
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  Speaker 2: if it came to that. And you were able to
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  Speaker 2: cross the border one way or the other. And 9-11
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  Speaker 2: killed that spontaneous traveler overnight. And the U.S. would eventually
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  Speaker 2: mandate passports. And Homeland Security rolled out the terrifying color-coded
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  Speaker 2: terror threat scale. And Americans stopped coming across en masse.
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  Speaker 2: We lost over 2 million American visitors in just two years.
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  Speaker 2: That wasn't made up by domestic visitors. But to put
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  Speaker 2: things in comparison, I looked up the numbers. We went
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  Speaker 2: from 5.5 million U.S. visitors annually before 9-11 to 3.5
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  Speaker 2: million two years later. And today that number is 1.7 million,
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  Speaker 2: and that reflects pre-pandemic levels. So the old frictionless border
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  Speaker 2: culture never fully came back. It's different.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I feel sorry for people who never
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  Speaker 1: experienced that. I remember when I was in university, like
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  Speaker 1: on a Friday night, it was no big deal to
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  Speaker 1: hop into somebody's car, and drive down to Buffalo to
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  Speaker 1: have wings and then drive back. And, you know, the
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  Speaker 1: border crossing guards, oh, you crazy university kids. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: now it's take off your shoes, none of this liquid
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  Speaker 1: and that. It's really, really quite something. Well, you know,
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  Speaker 1: 9-11 ultimately catalyzed the necessity for the Gordie Howe Bridge
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  Speaker 1: and other bridges. So what's the Litke take on the
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  Speaker 1: legacy of 9-11 and Gordie?
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  Speaker 2: You know, the gridlock of 9-11 proved that relying on
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  Speaker 2: one privately owned bridge, Matty Maroon's Ambassador Bridge, was a
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  Speaker 2: massive national security economic threat. And 9-11 ultimately brought Prime
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  Speaker 2: Minister Chrétien and Ontario Premier Ernie Eaves down to Windsor-Essex
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  Speaker 2: to announce a new border crossing fund at the time.
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  Speaker 2: And here we are 25 years later, $ 6. 5 billion later,
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  Speaker 2: building and opening up the Gordie Howe Bridge to guarantee
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  Speaker 2: that our mutually integrated economies on both sides of the
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  Speaker 2: border could survive externally imposed border closures. But the tragic irony,
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  Speaker 2: I guess, Gene, today, the 25th anniversary, is that We're
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  Speaker 2: watching a U.S. president who delayed the bridges opening, refused
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  Speaker 2: to attend the ceremony, unilaterally imposed massive tariffs without, you know,
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  Speaker 2: real justification, threatening to sever our economies all over again.
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  Speaker 2: We spent a quarter century bulletproofing our infrastructure against external
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  Speaker 2: threats only to have the trade relationship threatened from the
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  Speaker 2: inside of the House. But the legacy remains, though. And
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  Speaker 2: as you said, you know, just a half hour ago,
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  Speaker 2: the brand new Gordie Howe Bridge still had to drop
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  Speaker 2: its gates and fall silent at 846 for a half hour.
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  Speaker 2: 25 years later, 9-11 is still stopping the border. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Excellent take this morning. Thank you.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, Jim.
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  Speaker 1: And thanks for your story, 9-11. Litke's Got a Take
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: with John Litke.