Elbows Up on the Gordie Howe Bridge

 

Today, the Gordie Howe Bridge officially opened. Finally. After a decade of construction, cabinet-level interference, presidential threats, a flood of disinformation, and inflammatory demands.

The second bridge spanning the Detroit River from Michigan to Ontario, The Gordie Howe Bridge was intended to relieve traffic across the Ambassador Bridge, a privately held span that funnels people, commercial goods and culture across North America’s busiest international crossing.  Every day the Ambassador Bridge was responsible for 10,000 vehicles daily, and 25% of Canada’s imports for a total of $360 million in trade per day.

But that was before the second Trump administration, punishing tariffs, and especially, the President’s repeated threats of involuntary annexation.

More than a decade earlier, on May 14, 2015, Stephen Harper, the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada and Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder announced that the planned new trade conduit was to be named the Gordie Howe International Bridge “in recognition of the legendary hockey player, a proud Canadian who led the Detroit Red Wings to four Stanley Cup victories.”

Of course, in light of later events, the name would end up being ironic.

Gordie was an NHL legend, born in Floral, Saskatchewan in the Rural Municipality of Corman Park, and raised in nearby Saskatoon. One of the most talented ever to play the game, Howe was just as well known for his tough physical play and willingness to fight back, a style of play exemplified by what became known as the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick”: a goal, an assist, and a fight all within a single game.

As he once explained, “if a guy slashed me I'd grab his stick, pull him up alongside me and elbow him in the head.”

Already known as Mr. Hockey, this tactic earned Howe the additional nickname ‘Mr. Elbows’ among his fellow National Hockey League players. He came by this scrappiness honestly. Born in 1928, he was a child of the Great Depression. Like many families, the Howes were poor, and faced such hard times that they often did without enough food. Often, they would have to eat oatmeal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As a result, young Gordie suffered from a calcium deficiency that prompted him to take vitamins and also begin an exercise regime to improve his bone and muscle strength. It was also the same year, at the age of five, in which he started playing hockey on neighbouring ponds and sloughs, and eventually town rinks.

The website ‘Gordie Howe – A Childhood on the Canadian Prairie’ describes how he “…played hockey with his friends during the long winters on any frozen surface. He got his first pair of skates after his mother gave a dollar-and-a-half to a neighbor whose husband was hospitalized; in exchange, Mrs. Howe got a sack filled with assorted odd items, including a pair of skates. Although they were far too large for him, Howe put on several pairs of socks and spent all day out on the ice. After he outgrew that first pair of skates, and unable to afford to replace them, he strapped blades onto his street shoes.”

Nothing stopped him from playing. If there was a shortage of available ice time he’d skate for hours on creeks and ponds. If he was embarrassed about home-made or worn-out equipment, his answer was simply to outplay and out-muscle those tempted to make fun of him.

Kevin Allan of the Detroit Hockey Now website remembers, “….when I grew up in the Detroit area in the 1960s, we believed Gordie Howe was Superman with a hockey stick. He seemed invincible, powerful, fierce and incredibly ruthless. Kryptonite could take down Superman and none of us ever saw anything, or anyone, who could knock Gordie off his game.”

Gordie’s father Albert, or Ab, worked in construction. As a teenager Gordie worked alongside him, pouring sidewalks – as back-breaking a physical task as you can find in the world of manual labour. He recalled loading five 95-pound bags of concrete at once, lifting them from the ground and slinging them onto a wagon.

 “My dad would always brag about how much I could lift, so I could never embarrass him by dropping the bags.”  

At age 15, by now six feet tall and nearly 200 pounds, he started playing for the junior hockey Saskatoon Lions, making it to the northern final of the Saskatchewan Junior Playoffs that year, only to lose against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.

The following year he was noticed by a scout for the Detroit Red Wings and ultimately signed to Galt Red Wings, the Detroit farm team in the Ontario Hockey Association. Promoted to the United States Hockey League Omaha Knights for the 1945-46 season, he scored 48 points in 51 games.

The net result (pun very much intended) was that he was called up to the Detroit Red Wings the next year, scoring a goal in his very first game. Alongside Ted Lindsay and Sid Abel, Howe was part of the ‘The Production Line’ which finished 1-2-3 in scoring in the 1949-50 season -- foreshadowing the Wings’ first great hockey dynasty. In a span of six seasons from 1950 to 1955, the team would win four Stanley Cup championships and seven consecutive league titles during the Original Six Era.

Howe himself would go on to become arguably the game’s greatest player.

A 23-time all-star. 2,186 major league games played. 975 career goals – a record that would stand until broken in 1994 by Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky often said Howe was his childhood hero. In 2016, upon Howe’s death, he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation "Gosh, I remember being 10 years old, and I got to meet Gordie Howe. I remember thinking how lucky I was to meet him. He was just everything."

In fact, Gretzky selected his signature 99 jersey number by adding another digit to Howe’s number 9. It was his youthful tribute to Mr. Hockey – the complete package, a hockey legend who combined talent, grace and toughness.

Fast forward to 2024. Donald Trump is elected for the second time, and immediately begins protectionist trade rhetoric -- and more offensively, threats of annexation -- against American allies like Denmark, Panama and Canada.

Canadians responded with targeted counter-tariffs, removal of US alcohol from many liquor store shelves and a voluntary boycott American-made products and US travel – all part of a nation-wide campaign of resistance exemplified by the slogan ‘Elbows Up’ – an explicit reference to Gordie Howe’s physical and high-impact style of play.

Donald Trump famously says the US-Canada border is a wholly artificial line: “Somebody drew that line many years ago … like with a ruler, just a straight line right across the top of the country”.

The truth is, he’s not entirely wrong. After all, all borders are artificial constructs. But while they may be man-made, they are far from uncomplicated. And they’re certainly not irrelevant. They are a line alright, but it’s a line drawn in law, sweat and blood.

The real question is whose?

Our borders are the result of a complex web of forces and events in a saga covering hundreds of years, marked by conflict, family ties, trading networks, rivalries and lifelong friendships. Thousands of incidents, hundreds of narratives and dozens upon dozens of random happenstances all interacted to shape the relationship between these neighbouring countries.

Intertwined with the stories of the peoples are stacks of agreements, charters, negotiations, maps, declarations and treaties. These agreements all eventually coalesce in what is famously referred to as “the world’s longest undefended border”; a frontier marked not by armed troops and barbed wire, but by bridges.

Bridges between nations. Bridges between our peoples. Bridges whose very names exemplify collaborative and peaceful co-existence. Bridges like ‘The Peace Bridge’, connecting Ontario and New York State at Buffalo and Fort Erie. The ‘Rainbow Bridge’ crossing the Niagara River. The ‘Ambassador Bridge’ connecting Michigan and Ontario. The ‘International Bridge’ at Sault Ste Marie, between Lakes Huron and Superior.

They are more than capital infrastructure. They’re arteries of cultural exchange. Bridges between cultures whose mortar is leavened with the blood of First Nations, fur traders, explorers, settlers, and the soldiers of a succession of empires, coming and going across the centuries.

Within the framework of negotiations and conflicts, war and peace, taking place over more than 500 years, individuals, tribes, raiding parties, whole peoples, cultures, capital, and armies have all crossed this border uncountable times, ultimately forging the unprecedented and complicated relationship between Canada and the United States.

Called ‘The Medicine Line’ by first nations, this shared border is a kind of storybook written in a dozen tongues and telling of the 49^th parallel involves hundreds of tales of drama, heroism and adventure. Many peoples, today and in the past believe the border has potent powers. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull was confident that US cavalry would not follow them across the Canadian border, even in hot pursuit.

When North West Mounted Police Major James M. Walsh, a sergeant and three troopers walked into Sitting Bull’s camp at Pinto Horse Butte, about 130 km south of today’s Swift Current, Saskatchewan, he asked Sitting Bull why they had come to the White Mother’s country. “To find peace” they said. A war chief, Spotted Eagle, said they had been forced to cross the big road – another Sioux term for the medicine line – to protect their women and children from the Long Knives.

According to RCMP historian John Peter Turner, Sitting Bull said: “Yesterday I was fleeing from white men, cursing them as I went. Today they erect their lodges by the side of mine and defy me. The White Forehead Chief (Walsh) walks to my lodge alone and unarmed. He gives me the hand of peace.”

To American First Nations the border was a refuge. And the events following the Little Big Horn would not be the last time it served as such.

Hence the term Medicine Line.

It’s just possible that learning these stories can strengthen the many ties that bind our two nations and help us to better understand – or even heal! – those divisions that still separate us. In doing so, we’d encounter religious schisms, clashes between empires, rebellions, massacres, and the accumulation and loss of vast fortunes.

We would meet fascinating characters, some of them are icons, like Samuel de Champlain, Louis Riel and Tecumseh. But we would also meet lesser-known figures who deserve to be equally celebrated: the pioneering Boucher family, stonemasons and carpenters from Normandy who were among the first builders of New France and who rose to become frontier nobility.

Or Enrico Tonti, a literally iron-fisted Italian who helped build the first sailing vessel on the Great Lakes, was among the first to explore Lake Erie, the Mississippi Valley, the Gulf of Mexico, Alabama and Texas, and who later became known as the Father of Arkansas. Or Jerry Potts, the Montana Metis plainsmen who whose contributions to the emerging Canadian nation made him a frontier icon on par with American scouts like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger.

We would learn about world-changing events like the Seven Years’ War, the American Revolution and the War of 1812, all while shedding light on equally interesting but lesser-known episodes in our shared history. Like the Beaver Wars, which disrupted the balance of power among the First Nations in the Great Lakes Region and resulted in the rise to power of the Five Nations Confederacy, the Iroquois-speaking Haudenosaunee or ‘People of the Longhouse’. Or the Cypress Hills Massacre, the catalyst for the establishment of the North West Mounted Police – today’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In so doing, we can find out how our peoples lived, ate, drank, travelled, loved, fought and thought during the time between the discovery, founding and solidification of our long partnership and our current North American society.

Stay tuned for more stories in the near future.