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The Current Transcript for February 6, 2025

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: I have lots of friends in the States. We love the States. It's just, it's really a shame.

SPEAKER: It's feeling betrayed. That's what we feel. It doesn't make sense. Like it's your best friend that is betraying you. They're giving you all these rules. They’re trying to take things away from you. They're trying to destroy you.

MATT GALLOWAY: The city of Windsor is in the far southwestern corner of Ontario. When you walk along the waterfront trail, you look into the United States. The skyline looms right there on the other side of the Detroit River. Windsor shares a bridge and a tunnel with Detroit, Michigan. This fall, the new six and a half billion Dollar Gordie Howe Bridge will further connect these two communities. This city is in many ways a microcosm of Canada's relationship with the United States, one that is complicated and close, but has also been fraying this week. And so we jumped on the train to come down to a place that considers the United States more than just a next door neighbour. This morning, we are at a table in the Backroad Cafe. Across the street is the Stellantis plant, where thousands of workers are rattled by Donald Trump's claim that the United States doesn't need Canadian cars. In a moment, we will hear from those workers and the people who grow fruits and veggies here that end up on many American tables. But Windsor is much more than a car city. And coming up, we will also speak about the ties that bind and the mixed emotions of this week with those for whom the Americans whose anthem is being booed are actually best friends. And speaking of relationships, in an hour, an incredible story from Atlantic Canada about friendship and priceless works of art lost and found. Here in the diner, though, the coffee is on. The locals are coming in for breakfast. And as you would expect, there is a lot to talk about. Good morning from Windsor. My name is Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

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WINDSOR AUTO AND AGRICULTURE

Guests: Jonathon Azzopardi, James Stewart, Richard Lee

MG: Detroit may be the Motor City, but on this side of the river, I am in the heart of Canada's auto sector, looking out at a parking lot that is full of Chrysler vans at the Stellantis plant. The industry is the main economic driver for this region. It employs thousands of people. And for these workers, the stakes are very, very high, with the threat of 25% tariffs from the United States looming. James Stewart is president of the local union that represents workers at that Stellantis plant. And Jonathon Azzopardi is the president of Laval International, an auto parts tool and mould manufacturer in the region. They both join us here in the cafe with coffee. Good morning to you both.

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Good morning, Matt.

JAMES STEWART: Good morning.

MG: James, how’re you feeling? It's been some week.

JAMES STEWART: You know, it's been more than a week. The threats have been there for, you know, a year. He's been talking about tariffs. How that was going to look here in Canada obviously wasn't outlined clearly. And the goalposts have moved a lot since he came into the presidency. So, you know, it's been rough, and I don't think that's over yet. I think it's going to continue to be rough for a while yet.

MG: Jon, you said that in some ways, it feels like a funeral.

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Yeah.

MG: What did you mean by that?

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Well, it's funny. I was sitting in the same room, in the same spot, in the same chair eight years ago, and things felt a little different back then. This time, it feels like a funeral because it seems like our best friend, who we've had a relationship for many years, as you said, most of us have families on both sides of the border. Most of us, you know, if we had to go to dinner, we'd go to the other side of the border. All of a sudden, that seems like it's died to us, like that's been closed to us. And that's in a lot of ways, that's hurtful. And we're starting to get a bit angry.

MG: You make your way here to this cafe, James, and you come through, I mean, the plant is everywhere around here. It's enormous. And you see everybody who's heading into work as we were making our way in. This is the largest employer in Windsor, Stellantis is. What would 25% tariffs mean for the auto industry here?

JAMES STEWART: It would be devasting.

MG: Devastating.

JAMES STEWART: Make no mistake. When you understand the system, you understand, no one knows this better than Jonathan. But the parts that go into the vehicle, they cross the border six to eight times before it's actually built and then shipped. So if you can imagine each part every time it crossed the border getting a tariff of 25%, the cost of the vehicle goes up exponentially and consumers aren't going to buy it. And suppliers that have to bear the brunt of the cost originally won't be offered to ship the parts that they need. So I think it would affect our plants almost immediately on both sides of the border, in the States, in Canada and in Mexico.

MG: The plants, but what about the people who work in those plants? What are you hearing from your members about what this last week and a bit has been like?

JAMES STEWART: They're nervous. And I think they feel a lot of the same feelings that everyone is feeling, betrayal.

MG: I mean, the belief was if those tariffs came into place on Tuesday, the talk was that lines were going to shut down within a week.

JAMES STEWART: Then that's true. We would do everything we can to keep them running as long as we can. But there is no doubt without the stop of the tariffs, that could happen very quickly. I don't know if it's a couple of days. I don't know if it's two weeks, but it would be fast.

MG: And so for people who have, I mean, they got mortgages, they have, you know, car payments, they have kids in hockey and dance and whatever else.

JAMES STEWART: Terrifying. That's, you know, it's one word, terrifying. Their whole world would change literally overnight. We have good things bargain in our collective agreements, but the supply chain doesn't have those things, work protections, income protections for a short period of time. That would, it would be a terrifying feeling for these workers and the result would be terrible. This city would be affected almost immediately.

MG: What about for you, Jon? Tell me about Laval and what you make, but also the stakes for your business in the face of this threat.

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Well, Matt, I'd like to say that you're welcome to the manufacturing capital of Canada. You know, the automotive is a big part of our economy and our community. But we are a manufacturing juggernaut. So what this community has done is continue to make things that make things. So that's what we do. We primarily make moulds that make parts that go into potentially vehicles or, you know, other products. So that’s we have two plants, one that makes the equipment, one that makes the parts. So our parts, as James was saying, you know, we are the, we live the spirit of what the free trade agreement was written for. We will buy American steel. So steel is about 50% of our cost of goods. We buy that from America. We take that American steel, turn it into a mould, send it to the United States, have it further processed by Americans and American companies, bring it back to Canada, finished processing it, take that, send it to the United States. Then Americans take that equipment and make parts that will be put into vehicles that will be sold in Canada and the United States. By definition, that's what a free trade agreement was written for, for us to invest in both communities, in both countries equally, at the end to benefit both countries.

MG: Sitting in a cafe, I mean, that's like you can't unscramble the omelet. Do you know what I mean? Like it sounds as integrated as you could possibly be.

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: And that's how we feel about it. I mean, I can speak for myself, and I can probably speak for James and probably everybody in this room. We've done everything we could since we've been born in this community to make the border nonexistent, imaginary, doesn't exist. And it seems like all of a sudden, because of one person, and I'm going to say it's the Trump tariffs, not the American tariffs, because I don't think the Americans obviously don't believe in what's happening because they believe in the same system as us, that it’s all changed.

MG: Do you feel betrayed by that?

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Absolutely. Yeah. Like I said before, and this is no lie, I have half of my family on that side of the border, and it feels like it's literally been closed to us because of somebody's agenda.

MG: James, what do you make of, there's a buy Canada mentality right now. We talked about this on the program. People go into the grocery store and they're looking, you know, at the can of beans, trying to figure out where they came from, looking for the little sticker on it. And it's not just in the grocery store. It's well beyond that as well. What do you think people across this country need to understand about how that buy Canada mentality is being felt differently in this community?

JAMES STEWART: Well, I don't think it is different. I think what happened with Trump and his proposed tariffs, it was a betrayal. We cross the border for concerts. We cross the border for dinners. There's a revitalization of Detroit. It's a good place to go for an evening out. We have family. We have people that live in this city. We have 1500 nurses that live in this city and work in Detroit. You know, we are a very, we're close knit. And you're right, you almost feel like the border is not there. It's there. You go through it, you show your id, but it is a betrayal. And that's the way we feel. And it's not by the American people. We have friends. We have family there, but you can see people in the grocery stores looking at this. But I think the challenge for us is greater because, you know, you can choose to buy Canadian all you want. And I think it's really, what's happened is polarized Canadians in that venue. But we still, you know, in manufacturing, in auto manufacturing, we still depend on 90% of our product crossing the border and being sold in the States.

MG: I guess, I mean, part of it is there's a buy Canadian mentality, but there's also people who are booing the American national anthem. There are people who, I was on the train yesterday, and a guy had a hat on with the Stars and Stripes on it. And I will say as he walked down the aisle of the train, people kind of gave him the stink eye as he was walking down the aisle. It's not about just buying Canadian. It's an attitude in some ways that's been directed towards people in the United States. And when you say that you have that close up tie, people talk about how this is an, people look at this as a suburb of Detroit or that, you know, Detroit is a suburb of Windsor. It's more than just being neighbours, right? And I just wonder how that strikes different.

JAMES STEWART: I personally don't feel that the American people are against Canadians. I don't. I have people texting me, friends and families saying, I'm sorry, what's going on? They know what my job is. I'm sorry, what's going on? I feel so bad. And that's directly from people living in Michigan. So I don't feel it towards the American people, but I certainly feel it towards the administration and the lack, the lack of understanding that Canada has been the number one ally to the US for a hundred years. We've been the number one trading partner with the US. We sell our oil and gas at a discounted rate. And the oil and gas is the only reason there's a surplus for Canadian, the Canadian market. You take that out of the picture and there's a deficit in trade with Canada. So when you're talking about perception, I don't feel it towards the American people. I certainly do feel betrayed by the administration that's there today.

MG: You know, what's interesting is before the election, we were down in Dearborn, and we talked to a lot of folks who work in the auto sector on that side of the border. And they were really enthusiastic about voting for Donald Trump. And they talked about that idea of reshoring an industry. They understand that it goes back and forth and back and forth, but they felt that he represented their interests more. Do you understand where they were coming from?

JAMES STEWART: I think they don't understand it, how it will affect our auto industry. I don't think…

MG: Even people working in that industry.

JAMES STEWART: It’s an easy thing to say. It's an easy thing to say that, oh, great, he's going to rebuild the American manufacturing sector. And realistically, with the tariff issue and what he's doing, Canada didn't take jobs away from the US. We have good paying in auto. We have good paying jobs. We have good benefits. We're not losing, the States isn’t losing jobs to Canada. They're losing jobs to jurisdictions that don't pay good wages, that don't have high health and safety regulation. That's where they're losing jobs to, not Canada. And I think there's a misunderstanding by some of the Americans that maybe work in the auto industry, not recognizing how this would affect them, not understanding that parts cross the border before they land in a vehicle six and seven times from Mexico to Canada to US. So not recognizing how it would affect their industry the way the whole system is developed today.

MG: Jon, you talked about feeling betrayed. In light of what's happened and what may still come, I mean, people say that this is a reprieve or, you know, a stay of execution briefly or something like that. How are you rethinking your relationship with the United States?

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Well, I will say and I will say this honestly, and probably a lot of people don't want to hear this, but in my lifetime, we will not see us not become dependent on the United States. That's just the reality.

MG: That that dependency will continue.

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I've honestly always said to everybody, you know, people have come to me and say, you know, we should, you know, break our dependency of the United States. And I keep saying, why do you want to do that? Why does the pie have to be less? Why can't the pie be more? Why can't we continue to create this relationship that we've had for so many years that has been great? Why can't we just add to it? Why can't we go to other countries in addition to the United States? Everybody thinks it has to be without. And I'm going to be Honest with you, I think that should be the plan. We are very fortunate. We have access to the largest consumer in the world. We have been a great trading partner. We've been a great partner in their growth. And I don't see that changing. I do see that right now, we have some things that we need to work on. If I was the Americans, I would probably be looking at our banking system and our communications and our milk, as an example, as our dairy industry as maybe an insult, right? We want access to their markets. They need access to our markets. I think that a looser border is probably in the cards. I think we have to seriously consider that. That does not mean we're going to become the 51st state. That's not, that shouldn't be in the cards. I'm not excited about that at all. But I think the European Union showed that you can have looser borders that still work for everybody. And I don't think somebody who lived in Germany after the EU, I don't think they were less German. So I don't fear that we would become less Canadian. But I do think over the next six months to a year, you're probably going to see some changes. And some of those changes may be, you know, for the first time for a lot of us.

MG: I’m going to let you both go, but what do you want the rest of the country to know about what is happening here and how that plays out?

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Well, I mean, I won't jump in on what James got to say, but I'm going to say that, you know, pay attention to what happens in Windsor. It's we're like the canary in the mine. What happens here and the outcome of what happens here in the short term is what the rest of Canada will feel in the next six months. So we're going to continue to fight hard. We think that there's a win at the end of this, but pay attention to what's going on.

MG: James?

JAMES STEWART: My message would be that I'm a Labour person, so I think Labour, business, government have to work together to make sure that we're successful and we withstand this.

MG: Do you see that now? Do you see that happening now?

JAMES STEWART: I think it certainly has changed over the course of the last three weeks. And I think that, you know, there's some bipartisanship. There's some real coming together of people. And we've always had a good relationship with our business partners in Windsor. But I think people have to know that it's got to be, you know, the full country has to be on board on doing this. And I think some of what Jonathan said is correct in the way things are going to change. I think it's a two-pronged approach. You know, in some ways, we have to expand our markets around oil, gas, critical minerals, finding new markets. But at the same time, we are going to be dependent on the States’ manufacturing, skilled trades, investments. They are going to continue to be our number one trading partner. So I think you're right. Watch Windsor. And we're going to work hard from the Labour community, work hard to do everything we can to support Canada across the board.

MG: It's good to have you both here. Thank you very much.

JONATHON AZZOPARDI: Thank you, Matt.

JAMES STEWART: Thank you.

MG: James Stewart is president of the local union representing workers at the Stellantis plant, which is right across the street from us here at the Backroad Cafe. Jonathon Azzopardi is president of Laval International. It's a tool and mould manufacturer in Essex County. The automotive sector is a major economic driver in the city of Windsor, but agriculture is a close second. Essex County is home to the second largest concentration of greenhouses in the world, shipping billions of dollars of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers across the border every year. And as you can imagine, a 25% tariff on that sector would be devastating. Richard Lee is executive director of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, and he joins us here in the Backroad Cafe. Good morning to you.

RICHARD LEE: Good morning, Matt. How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks. I gave a kind of thumbnail sketch. Tell me about the size of your industry. I'd read that something like 80% of all greenhouses in Canada are in this area.

RICHARD LEE: Yeah, southwest region is the host of the majority of our production. We represent over 31, 4100 acres of greenhouse vegetable production dedicated to cucumber, tomato and pepper production. 3200 acres of that is located in Essex County, and that would consist of the Kingsville, Ruthin and Leamington area.

MG: Something I did not know until reading it this week was that a lot of the, for cherry tomatoes, for example, a lot of the cherry tomatoes that people buy in the United States come from right here.

RICHARD LEE: Yes. Yes. So we rely heavily on the US for access. We reach about 58% of the US population. Our proximity to the borders ensure that we can get fresh, nutritious vegetables to the store shelves within a day's drive. So I mean, when you talk about fresh produce, it can't get much fresher than that. All these tomatoes that you see, there's different varieties, peppers and cucumbers, a lot of snacking varieties that are hitting the shelves in the US market. And we go as far down south as the Florida, southern tip of Florida.

MG: So you get a 25% tariff. What does that do to this industry?

RICHARD LEE: Very challenging. You look at the supply chain, there's not the margins anywhere along that supply chain where a grower, a produce seller or a retailer can absorb. So ultimately, that taxes the end consumer.

MG: Could they be just sold here instead of being shipped to the States?

RICHARD LEE: Yeah. You know what? Ontario retailers, Canadian retailers do their best to take what they can.

MG: And I ask you that in the context of like the buy Canadian kind of movement that seems to be springing up.

RICHARD LEE: Yeah, there's no interprovincial challenges. We have greenhouses on the West Coast, Quebec, that can steadily supply retailers. But the Canadian population compared to the US is just so, it's 10%.

MG: We couldn't eat all the tomatoes and cucumbers that you're growing as good as they are.

RICHARD LEE: We grow 500, five million kilograms of produce a year. So to put that into context, that's about 300 trailer truckloads leaving farms daily, with 200 of them destined south of the border.

MG: So what are you hearing from growers in the region? I mean, there's this 30-day reprieve, but nobody knows what's going to happen at the end of 30 days. And Donald Trump has been president for two weeks.

RICHARD LEE: Very concerned. A lot of investment made into this sector. We experience the most sunlight throughout the year, which makes our farming location optimal. There's a lot of investment that's at risk here. And it's not… like my counterparts that were just on earlier, we can't shut the switch off. We can't shut that production line off. The investment has been made. The crops are planted.

MG: So what does that mean? People are just going to lose money or what? Or companies are going to go under?

RICHARD LEE: I really hope not. That’s not a foreseeable future.

MG: But you must be looking at, you know, doomsday scenarios or at the very least trying to game this.

RICHARD LEE: You know, worst case scenario, you're looking at impacting over 29, 29,000 jobs across the full value chain. You’re talking about truckers. You're talking about pallet boxes, marketing, advertising. If that market is completely shut off, these marketers and these growers are very resilient. They'll find ways to be able to keep the doors open, but it's going to come with some pain.

MG: What does that tell you? And again, we wanted to come down here because, as I said, you're in Windsor. The United States is right there. You can see it, but also, the ties are just kind of back and forth and back and forth all the time. What does what you're saying tell the rest of the country about the state of that relationship between these two countries?

RICHARD LEE: Leadership. We need leadership. We need a policy alignment with our key trading partners. We need to be able to strengthen that relationship to promote the economies in both countries as opposed to weakening it. And these tariffs and retaliatory tariffs only weaken that relationship.

MG: What would you say to your friends on the other side of the border? I mean, one of the neat things about being here is that media crosses the border too. And so the radio waves are going to go back and forth and back and forth. So our folks in the United States who are listening to this broadcast, what would you say to them?

RICHARD LEE: Integrated North American supply chain. If I bring us back to the pandemic, food flowed freely across that border. We fed North America. There were no issues. We need to enhance that. And we need to be enabled by our federal government to ensure that North America is fed.

MG: Are you losing sleep over all of this?

RICHARD LEE: It feels like Groundhog Day since just after Christmas and into the new year. And it's the same messaging. And we're hoping that leaders in Canada and the US are listening.

MG: You just wonder whether they are.

RICHARD LEE: I'm sorry?

MG: You just wonder whether they are listening.

RICHARD LEE: It's tough. We're in a tough situation with the provincial government and federal government, and that's where we're looking for that leadership.

MG: Richard, thank you very much.

RICHARD LEE: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Richard Lee is executive director of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers. Your CBC news is coming up in just a moment, and then.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: I'd always been brought up to think they were our best friends, and I'm very disappointed. I think it's so unnecessary. I don't hate Americans, but I don't want to be the 51st state.

MG: That's a sentiment that you hear a lot. I don't hate Americans, but I don't want to be the 51st state. Folks in Windsor are conflicted right now. Their best friends are right across the river, and yet the government that represents them has in some ways declared economic war on Canada is how people feel. And so coming up in six minutes, we're going to be joined by three friends, two from Windsor, one from Detroit, with their thoughts on the future of that friendship. What does it mean now in the wake of those tariff threats to have those ties that run as deep as the marrow in your bones? We'll talk about that coming up after the news. My name is Matt Galloway, sitting here in the Backroad Cafe in Windsor, Ontario, and you're listening to The Current. We're back in just a few minutes. Stick around.

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WINDSOR IDENTITY PANEL

Guests: Tom Lucier, Reno Bortolin, Jeanette Pierce

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current live from the Backroad Cafe in Windsor, Ontario. We came to this city because it is joined at the hip and then some with Detroit right across the river. And for many Windsorites, Detroit isn't just their neighbour. It's the other half of a shared community. More than 40,000 people cross the Windsor-Detroit border every single day. We are joined here at the cafe by three people to talk about this city's relationship with Detroit and how it shapes Windsor's identity, especially in a moment like this. Reno Bortolin is a former Windsor City councillor and a chef who owns Petrella’s Italian Street Food here in Windsor's Ford City neighbourhood. He's also a strategic advisor with the University of Windsor’s Centre for Cities. Tom Lucier is a longtime owner of the Phog Lounge. It is a popular live music venue in Windsor. And Jeanette Pierce was one of those people who crossed the border this morning. She's here from Detroit and repping it on her sweatshirt that says Detroit City. She is the founder of the City Institute in Detroit. Good morning, everyone.

ALL GUESTS: Good morning. Good morning.

MG: Good to have you all here. Reno, let's start with you. How would you describe your relationship with Detroit?

RENO BORTOLIN: For me, it's as much intertwined as it is being Canadian. My mom immigrated to Detroit. My dad immigrated to Windsor, both from Italy. They met here. They dated on the streets of Detroit, going down Woodward to see Elvis at the Fox Theatre. So for me, it's as much part of my growing up as most people have for their origin story of being a newcomer to this country. I'm a first generation Canadian that sees as much home in Detroit as he does in Windsor. So crossing that border, I think it really put a spotlight on us during COVID when the border was closed and we realized just how much we missed it and relied on it.

MG: That you could see it right there, but you couldn't go.

RENO BORTOLIN: Yeah. I mean, a lot of, you know, I joked about I think Jeanette's drive here was shorter than mine today. So depending on where you live in the city, the access points, people don't realize how close it is. We pop out of that tunnel, we’re Downtown Detroit. So for all the obvious reasons, there's all the cultural aspects. We talk about going to concerts, going to shows, going to all the sports, but there's the connection with the people. You know, I grew up with lots of family, aunts, uncles, great aunts, cousins, things like that. So it wasn't, this border was almost just, you know, this toll you pay on the way through and that's it.

MG: What about for you, Tom? I mean, people talk about this idea of living in a couple of places at the same time and that they blur the border. What does the border mean to you?

TOM LUCIER: Oh, it's blurred for me. The border to me is just a line on the map. It's not really much more than that for me because parroting Reno, my entire life has been memories on both sides. I mean, my parents taking us over to have a different relationship than I have with the city now, which was kind of what I feel like the relationship is for most people in Windsor, which is shopping, going to concerts, going to sporting events and then coming right back. That was the old experience I had, which has transformed with a lot of effort on my part.

MG: I mean, you do this. You take people from here across the border to show them Detroit and a Detroit they might not know.

TOM LUCIER: Yeah, it's this mystery, you know, because it's right there. And we hear about it a lot. It's in our socials, but there's a blind spot even for people who do live here that don't experience it the way I try to make my friends experience it.

MG: What do you show them?

TOM LUCIER: Well, since I'm a dive bar owner, I like taking them to places where, like real human beings, ground level Detroiters.

MG: Real human beings.

TOM LUCIER: Live. And, well, yeah, not the shiny parts of the city. Even when I take people over there, we don't even get out of the east side of Detroit. We will spend six and a half, seven hours stopping at the Heidelberg Project, for instance, which is this incredible outdoor art display, I would call it. And it's not just about going and having drinks. It's about stopping at the side of the road on Mt. Elliott to meet our friends and pick up barbecue. And you're pulling over next to a cemetery in East Detroit and people are like, what? What are we doing? And it's like, we're going to eat. We're going to eat right here. What? That smoking box? Yep, that's what we're doing. And other Detroiters are pulling up behind you and next to you and you're having conversations. That's the experience I want to have. I want to meet real people there, and I want people in Windsor to meet those real people there. It's just a better experience as a Windsorite and a Canadian knowing that, period.

MG: Jeanette, you're on the other side of the river. And I mean, I said the sweatshirt, but I did not notice the earrings with the Big D on it for the Detroit Tigers. Tell me about your relationship and how people in your city view this city, view Windsor.

JEANETTE PIERCE: Yeah. So it did take me, I did, I took a photo when I was at the light before going into the tunnel, even paying the toll. And then I took it after the tunnel, the toll and, you know, customs, and it was literally five minutes.

MG: Five minutes from one country to another.

JEANETTE PIERCE: Yes. And that's with stopping and, you know, paying a toll, talking to somebody, telling them where I'm going, all that stuff. And, you know, we have such a great city that I'm always talking about. And for a long time, I do remind people that Detroit has always been a great city. But one of the things that makes us great is our proximity to Windsor. We get two countries at the price of one, right? And it's so close and there's so many, you know, there's a lot of similarities that bring us together. But there's also just enough differences that make it so interesting. And like, you know, oh, why would you go there if we have that here? Well, guess what? We don't have that here.

MG: So you do that, you do that as well. You bring people from Detroit over here.

JEANETTE PIERCE: Yeah, absolutely.

MG: What do you show them? What are the differences? Give me something that you can get here that you wouldn't be able to get over there.

JEANETTE PIERCE: So, you know, first of all, it's about the people. So we always want to make sure we talk to same thing, like, you know, have a Windsor guide, right? Like I'm not going to be the storyteller of a place that's, you know, that I'm not necessarily from. But the best thing that I always talk about, like literally, I'll be like, people, have you been to Windsor lately? And it's the soup dumplings.

MG: Soup dumplings.

JEANETTE PIERCE: At Shanghai Bistro and, you know, the Xiao long bao. I don't know if you know, the soup is in the dumpling.

MG: Yeah. Yeah.

JEANETTE PIERCE: We don't have it in Michigan.

MG: There's no soup dumplings in Michigan?

JEANETTE PIERCE: Like I never even heard of it. I was like, I literally didn't even know it existed. And 99% of the people I tell, have you had this? And they go, no. And I talked to our, you know, some folks in our Chinese community, and actually, some folks in Chinatown, San Francisco, when I'm working doing some work with them. And it's because it's a northern, like we have more people from, you know, the Cantonese, you know, area and the south. And so that's literally something I like. Like for my birthday lunch, I came across to Windsor to get soup dumplings.

MG: I love it. We have seen this surge in patriotism in the last week. How does that land here in a community like Windsor, do you think? I mean, people have taken a lot of pride in their country and wrapped themselves in the flag in the wake of this.

RENO BORTOLIN: We have. I think we need to be careful because it also has turned into, you know, for example, booing the national anthem at sports games.

MG: What do we need to be careful of when it comes to that? Because, again, there are a lot of people who were like, yeah, boo that anthem.

RENO BORTOLIN: Well, you're throwing away, you know, hundreds of years of friendship and hundreds of years of connection because of the few stupid actions of one idiot. So, I mean, to be blunt. So this is we need to be careful not to. We know that all the governors, all the senators of all these states are calling every day, telling him not to do these tariffs. It's just a really stupid idea, and we can't take it out on the people. You know, as much as, you know, we, you know, months ago, we were celebrating the success of the Detroit Lions here. You know, the mayor raised the Detroit Lions flag at city hall. To then come out and say, we don't want you going to Detroit to spend any money there, I mean, that's not how we should be looking at it.

MG: Has that closeness in that relationship been tested in the last week, do you think?

RENO BORTOLIN: Oh, I think so. I mean, there are people like us that I think will go, will do the same things. But I think a lot of people in Windsor have said, okay, I'm not going over to Detroit for the next month or next few months until this settles. But I think they're missing the point. And I think a lot of those people don't fully understand the relationship. The relationship, as Tom said, it was like, you know, they go over for shopping. They go over for the things that benefit them only. Whereas if there's a reciprocal aspect to it, you realize that, you know, a lot of attention has been on Detroit over the last 10 years. But if you're from here, you actually see some of the amazing things happening on the ground floors. It's not just about these billionaires pouring money into a city. The people of the city have been unbelievably resilient and innovative and creative.

MG: And you worry that those people are being targeted by some of the, I don’t want to say anti-Americanism, but the way that that anger is being directed.

RENO BORTOLIN: Yeah. And to be honest, on their side, it won't hurt them as much. I always compare it, you know, they're the super cool older cousin or older brother of ours. So if the pesky little brother doesn't come around, they won't, Matt, they won’t care. A lot of Jeanette's friends won't notice that Canadians are not coming over. But I think for us, and I think for the general health of this area, Windsor is as much intertwined with Detroit. And not just about the economic, the, you know, the auto part goes over 11 times across the border, but for everything, for the creativity, for the arts, for the culture, for the soup dumplings.

MG: You were nodding as he was saying all of that. I mean, when you hear, hear that anger, I mean, you hear it at the hockey rink, you hear it at the basketball games, but you also see it as well. How does that strike you?

TOM LUCIER: I was shocked to hear my customers having that patriotism, that buy back reaction. Like I've got a free throw contest to win in Detroit on Saturday at my favourite bar, and I'm going, I am going to win. But I can’t believe that like… I felt like I was taking heat from my contemporaries here that I still have this extreme interest and love for the people that I know over there. I messaged a bunch of my friends, friends. These are people I care about, telling them that we were going to do this today and what their thoughts were. And they just said kind of collectively, the border and one person or a collection of people can't stop, you know, the love we have for each other. No, we don't get to see you as often as we'd like, but they still value those relationships. One of my favourite things to ask my new Detroit friends, people when I meet them is How often do you think of Windsor? And they go, what are you even talking about? What kind of question is that? And I say, well, I probably think about Detroit 50 times a day. How many times are you going to turn your eyes to Detroit while you're in town for this? You're going to see Detroit and think about it that many times. Plus, whatever is in my social media feed, it's all the sports teams. It's all of that. I got an actual message today from my friend in Detroit, and she said like proudly, I think of Windsor maybe once every week or two. That's a very different way that we think of one another. We have this enormous dependency and love for the people there, but it does take a little bit more effort on our side. So it's not the exact same relationship, but it's super valuable to me regardless of that lopsidedness.

MG: I want to talk to the American here in a moment, but how do you unscramble that idea that people feel pride in their country, but part of that pride perhaps is leading them to, you know, say, I'm going to buy here and we're not going to visit the United States and I'm going to go down there, that they are represented by somebody that we take offence to. And so it's a collective kind of sense of anger. How do you take that apart?

TOM LUCIER: It's exactly the way people have relationships with different customers of mine. Sorry to boil it down, but people who are like, how do you stand that guy? It's like, I have to take the best of every customer I have. It doesn't mean that I am best friends with every single one of them. So I can't look at somebody who wants to be, you know, selective and not go or choose where they're going to spend their money and tell them they're wrong because people have different relationships with even people or countries. Mine is really intimate. It's a bit much different than most people. So it just, it stinks. I really don't want that for them. I'm trying to bring people over there to give them the human side, have them meet their contemporaries over there, and this whole mess is messing with that.

MG: Jeanette, you're the American here at the table. How do you make sense of what is an anti-American sentiment, that I mean, people often in this country will define themselves as not being from the United States, but that's become sharper in the last few days.

JEANETTE PIERCE: Well, there's a couple of things. Detroit has always kind of, we're used to people being like, we're not Detroit. I mean, don't, you know, that was the thing. It was like, oh, how far are you from Detroit was how people would say it. And now, everybody a little bit more wants to be like connected to Detroit. So we're kind of used to people like being not caring that much about us. They're putting us in the doghouse. And that is when the people and the relationships do matter the most, right? And I guess one thing that just popped in my head was like, you know, the problem about getting, you know, extra nationalism and being anti other countries is kind of how we got into this mess in the first place.

MG: What do you mean?

JEANETTE PIERCE: I feel like, right? So I mean, this whole us and, you know, we only care about us.

MG: We don't need your stuff.

JEANETTE PIERCE: You know, and we, it's like, you know, I mean, it goes all the way back to, you know, Germany, right? You have like when you had… there's a slippery slope when you start to or a negative side to a nationalism and a, you know, really against everybody else kind of thing. But I mean, I also understand it, I mean, right? So this is the thing. Detroit is not the, you know, we're more with you guys, right? Like we, I mean, look at if you want to get into like who Detroiters voted for, right? You know, and our president does not like Detroit.

MG: But a lot of people around Detroit voted for him. I mean, again, when we were in Dearborn and other places like that, a lot of folks, people in the auto sector who were supporting Donald Trump who said this is going to bring the jobs back to our… I just wonder how, what the future of that relationship is given the last week. How do you, what are you worried about?

JEANETTE PIERCE: I think, I mean, again, all the financial, you know, domino effects, absolutely. And we care about the small businesses here. We care about the tomatoes coming over. You know, these, I think, and this is kind of one of the bigger issues as well, is that people in Detroit and Michigan and America to some extent, you know, to your point, they might not think about Canada all the time, but I think they would notice, right? They are going to notice. Like I drove a Pacifica here. I passed the plant that I got my van. I have triplets. I need a Pacifica, man. You know, and I don't want to, I'm already, you know, I was already paying a lot for it. And now, you know, so I think people are going to notice even if they don't realize it. And one last thing before we just because, only one third of America voted for our president, okay? One third voted for our president, one third voted for the other person and one third didn't vote, right? So it seems like this majority, but there's more of us that are frustrated and scared than not.

MG: Reno, I'm going to let you all go. And I mean, there's a big breakfast menu here, so people might want to eat as well. But there are real concerns about the economic health of this community. And it's the agriculture, it's the auto sector, it's the threats of those kind of tariffs coming in. What worries you most about the future of this town? Or are you worried?

RENO BORTOLIN: I think, you know, unfortunately, we're a little bit used to it. The boom and bust of the auto sector has prepared us. We've gone through these boom and bust cycles, including, you know, COVID most recently. So we're a little bit used to it. But I think what worries me is sort of this, this new, this new idea of nationalism that changes where we now are starting to focus elsewhere. That would change that relationship with Detroit. So just looking at that specifically, you know, we will come out of this with new trading partners, with new trade deals with, you know, whether it's the EU or other organizations.

MG: But you’re going to live next door to the United States no matter what.

RENO BORTOLIN: Exactly. You know, I have season tickets to the Detroit City soccer team. I don't want it to be where I can't go see those games. I don't want it to be where all of a sudden, they do something stupid like we need a visa to visit or you need a visa to do any work there. We want this to be a seamless area. I say this all the time. This is one of the best urban environments in the country to live in, except for maybe Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. And I still would compete with them because of that proximity and because of that relationship. So when we talk about how great it is to be Canadian here, it's so great to be Canadian here because we have Detroit so close.

MG: It's good to have you all here. Thanks for being here.

TOM LUCIER: Thank you.

RENO BORTOLIN: Thank you.

MG: Safe trip back across the border. It'll probably take you less time to do that than it’ll take us to get back to our hotel. Reno Bortolin is a former Windsor City councillor, owner of Petrella’s Italian Street Food here in Windsor's Ford City neighbourhood. Tom Lucier is a longtime owner of the Phog Lounge. It's a live music venue here in Windsor. And Jeanette Pierce came from Detroit to talk with us. She is the founder of the City Institute in Detroit, joining us here at the Backroad Cafe in Windsor.

WINDSOR BLACK HISTORIAN

Guest: Irene Moore Davis

MG: The city of Windsor is one of Canada's most diverse cities. And for the black community here, the roots go back to the 1800s. Windsor played a crucial role in the Underground Railroad, helping black families escape slavery and come to Canada. Irene Moore Davis is Assistant Curator of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum, president of the Essex County Black Historical Research Society, and she's here with us in the cafe as well. Good morning to you.

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: Good morning.

MG: This is a personal story for you. Tell me about your family's connection to Windsor and how your family got here.

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: Oh, I mean, so many of my ancestors came here through the Underground Railroad and have been here since the early 19th century. They came from Green County, North Carolina. They came from Mason County, Kentucky. They came from Frankfort, Kentucky, and other places, and made their way here with dire circumstances. And there are many descendants around.

MG: How closely are you tied to the city of Detroit? We’ve just been talking about how people's lives in many ways overlap with that city, that it is as integrated as you could possibly imagine. What about for your family?

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: I think that for a lot of families, regardless of ethnicity here, there are tons of connections to metro Detroit. But for black community members especially, it's very rare that we don't have tons of relatives in the D. And…

MG: The D.

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: Yeah. I mean, truthfully, for me, I have way more blood relatives at this point in metro Detroit than I do in Essex County just because of the way that populations flow, the way that people moved across to seek better opportunities and so on. I just came back not long ago from my cousin's 60th birthday party in Farmington Hills. I mean, this is just a very normal thing. And we do really think of ourselves as a transnational group of people.

MG: How then has the last week and a bit, but it's not just the last week and a bit. As everyone's been saying, this has kind of been hanging over this community for a long time. How has that impacted that relationship?

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: This is really one of very few times in my life that I have had a sense of an actual border. 911 was one of those times. The pandemic when the border was closed was one of those times, and now is one of those times when people just aren't as comfortable crossing and being together necessarily.

MG: Can you explain that? Because I think a lot of people perhaps outside of this community would say, I mean, it's a border. Of course it's a border. And when you cross the border, there are things you need to do. There are things you need to have. You never really thought about that.

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: I mean, if you grow up in Windsor and Essex County, it doesn't really feel like a border. This is a place where, you know, for many of us growing up, our rites of passage happened mostly in metro Detroit. All of those fun things that we did when we were coming of age and, you know, just flashing a birth certificate was all you needed to do to get there. There are moments in world history when that border becomes a border. After 911, things became much stricter for a while. During the pandemic, it was actually shut down. And now, there's a sense of, you know, something lost Once again. I literally had a message last week from a dear friend from Detroit who said, given the fact that our two countries are at war, I probably won't be crossing as often. And I had to explain we're not actually at war.

MG: But that says something.

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: But it does say something, and people have that sense. I mean, for us as family members, I don't think that we're going to allow this to stop us from being together. Our family reunions happen on either side of the border, often alternating. And we're just, you know, we're always connected. And it's funny, I was listening to Tom in the past, in the last interview talk about how, you know, people in Detroit don't think of Windsor that often. But, you know, for our family members, they think of it all the time. I mean, we really recite to one another all the time our origin story. We're very keenly aware of the family stories, the ancestral stories. We all talk about them regardless of whether cousins have grown up in Michigan or here.

MG: So what would you want the rest of the country to know about these ties? Again, one of the reasons we came down here is because something has happened in the last week, and how people think of that border is different now. Maybe they're worried about what might be coming, but they're also thinking about their relationship with the United States. What would you want the rest of the country to know about this relationship and where it might go in future?

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: I think that we have to be keenly aware that there are forces that seek to divide us, and we have to make sure that we're doing the necessary things to safeguard our economy. But we should not allow this to cultivate any kind of hatred or division between people.

MG: Are you worried about that? We've used this phrase anti-Americanism. I mean, there's a pro Canadian sentiment, but it can lead to an anti-Americanism or defining yourself because you're not somebody else. Are you worried about that?

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: I think that there's always a piece of Canadian culture that's about seeing ourselves in binary terms as in contrast to the United States. It is, for example, why we sometimes, you know, deny the existence of racism here, because we're always thinking, well, we're not like those people over there. But I think that, you know, it's really important that we don't allow ourselves to fall into those easy definitions, and that we have to understand that, you know, most American people are good people. And we've got to keep working alongside them and understanding that these are integrated economies, that there are sociocultural ties that are undeniable. And we've got to keep nurturing those, especially in a border region like this one. It's so important that we don't let those relationships go.

MG: Who are you thinking about when you talk about that? Is there like one person or a group of people specifically that you're thinking about?

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: I mean, I'm always thinking about these people. They're the people with the good recipes and the people that show me the good new dances and all of that stuff.

MG: Glad to have you here. Thank you very much for being here.

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: Thanks so much.

MG: Irene Moore Davis is Assistant Curator of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum and the president of the Essex County Black Historical Research Society. And she joined us here in the Backroad Cafe to talk about those ties and the very personal ties between Windsor and Detroit. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

SYNDEY BLUM: I had chills. I don't know. I was floored by it. I was… I lost my breath when I read it. It was your sculptures are alive and well.

MG: We've been talking about borders and friendship and ties this morning. Up next, something different but very related. An incredible story of an unlikely friendship across provinces. How two sculptures lost in the mail found their way back to their maker in Nova Scotia. And then we'll hear from a family of Syrian newcomers here in Windsor whose sweetshops has customers hooked. Again, this is about the ties that bind people together, and in the last week and a bit but perhaps longer, how those ties have been strained and stressed and people are rethinking of them perhaps in different ways. All of that coming up in 90 seconds. My name's Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current. We are live in the Backroad Cafe in Windsor, Ontario. Back in just a minute. Stay with us.

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LOST SCULPTURES

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current from the Backroad Cafe in Windsor, Ontario. You might be able to hear the café. There’s lots of noise here. Bacon sizzling on the griddle and some kids coming in for breakfast. School's been cancelled, or at the very least, the school buses have been cancelled because there's a bit of an ice storm this morning. Some freezing rain on the road. So it's a busy place to be here at the Backroad Cafe. We've been hearing a lot about friendship between Windsorites and Detroiters this morning. I want to bring you a different story of friendship. This one crosses provincial borders, and it starts with a lost package.

SOUNDCLIP

SYDNEY BLUM: This is what I'm doing. I'm creating this potentially curved surface. Another person described them as bending colour, and I liked that. The colours are, in my mind, Beautiful.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Have you ever seen anything like it?

SYDNEY BLUM: No. And I hope I never do because it just came out of my head. It came out of my heart. It came out of my mind. And then I had to figure out how to do it. So I went through a lot of stages of experimenting, like how could I make colour bend?

MG: The Nova Scotia artist Sydney Blum has always been fascinated by what is considered beautiful. She's painted nearly every surface in her Tatamagouche home luminous shades of blue, green and yellow, even painted the handle on her butter dish. In the fall, Sydney sent two sculptures to an art gallery in Montreal through Canada Post, but the sculptures never arrived. They were worth thousands of dollars. Took her over 300 hours to complete. You have to see these pieces of art. Go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. They're really quite something. Made from architectural chipboard, acrylic, wire, pencil. Vibrant colours, patterns and texture seem to jump off of the wall. When those sculptures went missing, Sydney thought, well, they're gone forever. But as she is about to describe for us, losing them helped her find something unexpected and beautiful. CBC producer Mary-Catherine McIntosh has the story.

SOUNDCLIP

SYDNEY BLUM: What happened is I got an email from the gallery inviting me to be part of Art Toronto this year, which I was thrilled at. And they selected two of my sculptures. I packaged them. They were sculptures I had just recently finished. So many, many, many hours worth of work, probably about 300 hours worth of work in the two pieces. I wrapped them up, very carefully labelled them, put them in a box, but boldly labelled. I mean, no question about where they were being mailed to. They were insured modestly only for some, hopefully nothing, but basically some mild repairs if the box got damaged or something, and sent them on their way, and then they disappeared.

SYDNEY BLUM: I filed a ticket to start the process of searching. Like where are they? Then they wanted to know the value of the contents, a professional appraisal of the sculptures. I said, okay, that's going to take me at least a week to do. I got the gallery in Montreal to take care of that. I emailed it to Canada Post, and Canada Post closed the ticket without any response. Then my only option was to contact the Ombudsman's office. They said they were going to send a physical person to the sorting facility in Montreal to look for the package, which seemed kind of ridiculous to me. But if anybody could help me, just help me find out where, what happened to these pieces. They're really important to me.

SYDNEY BLUM: I put so much of myself into this. They’re really just an extension of me. It just was very personal. It's… It's… It's just my life. So a part of it got cut away, so I was very depressed by it. They'd never been shown yet. I was crushed. I couldn't work in my studio. I just was very depressed.

SYDNEY BLUM: I have a streak in me that doesn't give up too. What happened to these? If they're gone, I still want to know why and where. Where did they get kicked off the truck? Where did they, you know, where? Who's responsible here? So it was that level of frustration that had me calling anybody I know who might know somebody in the press or politicians. I called any and emailed any politician I know. Can you help me? Can you put a fire under Canada Post to give me answers? This is just not right.

SYDNEY BLUM: Again, I was putting out all this energy over a couple of days, again, contacting everybody I could think of, people who knew people who knew people. And the next, literally like the next morning, and I attribute it to all this energy output because I really believe in these woohoo kinds of things, but I get an email and it's the strangest email. I don't know. I was floored by it. I lost my breath when I read it. It was from a woman named Sonja who lived in the Hamilton, Ontario area, who was an elementary school teacher. She introduced herself in all these ways that were very long, lengthy email. And she said, your sculptures are alive and well. And she had them.

SYDNEY BLUM: And I had chills and I thought it was a scam. I thought, oh my God, somebody has found me. I live a, you know, pretty isolated life, has found me, is going to extort money. They're taking off on this story that my work was missing. And I did some research on her. Her name was unusual. It referenced the fact that she was a teacher. And so I called the Board of Education in that area and they said, well, we do have a person of that name. And I said, I just want to know if this is for real or if this is a scam. And yes, she had sent me this email and yes, she had found this work.

SYDNEY BLUM: So I was aghast at that. But it gave me confirmation and some grounding that I was not being scammed and that these pieces had been discovered at a Krazy Binz, which I'd never heard of. I looked that up too on Google, Krazy Binz in Hamilton, Ontario. Crazy story.

SONJA KRAWESKY: Well, my name is Sonja Krawesky. I'm a grade four teacher from Caledonia, Ontario. Grew up in Hamilton, actually. So I was at Krazy Binz, And I was wandering around like usual, going up and down the rows. And basically, what they do from what I gather is they buy up returns from online stores and they don't know what they're going to get. It's just basically like going into a big, kind of like a big flea market or a garage sale in a big giant garage. There are so many random things. There are phone cases, lots and lots of phone cases, air filters for furnaces, bits and pieces of metal that probably came from lamps. One time, I came across a bag full of fake moustaches. And that one was my favourite, actually.

SONJA KRAWESKY: And it was actually my second day off of work. I'm an elementary school teacher, but I've really been struggling with my mental health lately in terms of being able to focus, depression and anxiety, and that's been a big part of my life.

SONJA KRAWESKY: I live in a small town, and I've been a teacher there for 20 years, so a lot of people know who you are. I'm off of work and I don't want to even go to the grocery store because somebody will see me and wonder why I am off work. And going to Krazy Binz was just a way for me to get out of the house. It gave me that opportunity to just go.

SONJA KRAWESKY: I looked up and I saw this gorgeous, beautiful, colourful, giant piece of something. I didn't know what it was. At first, I couldn't tell. And as I walked towards it, I thought, like, it is so unique. It is so different. It was wavy and had all of these curves in it and such a brilliant mix of colours. And the closer I got to it, the more I thought, I don't want it to be broken. I want to see this. Hopefully it's not destroyed, because a lot of things at Krazy Binz get ripped open or tossed, things get tossed on them, or people shove articles out of the way with sticks or whatever they find. And of course, when you pick it up, you realize it's pretty fragile and you see what it's made out of. And it was held together with little like black pieces of wire. And as I picked it up, I thought, don't be broken. Don't be broken. Don't be broken. Please, don't be broken. Don’t be this, don't be wrecked. And as I flipped it over, I thought, for sure, it's going to have some scratches on it or, you know, dents or something busted. And, you know, it wasn't. It was amazing. And my heart was pounding and it was just, okay, wow! Just be all wow. And then the next part was, but this, how is this here or why is this here? This doesn't even make sense that this is here. This doesn't fit in Krazy Binz. And my mind was just whirling. I was just so in love with it and so bewildered by like, I just found this thing here. How in the world did that happen?

SONJA KRAWESKY: So the other thing that I was going through my mind was, I know it's only $5, but do I need it? Do I want it versus do I need it? Because that's another thing that I have to work on is, you know, can't just buy everything that I would like. And at that point, I thought, you know what, no, no, I'm going to practice and I'm going to put it back down and I'm going to walk away and just keep wandering around. And that was a hard decision, but I thought, no, I need to practice. So I went, put it down, wandered away, up and down the rows couple more times, and then I came across another one. Another one was there. Not the same, but you could completely see that it was exactly the same type of item. Again, that one wasn't broken either. And it was whoa, this is mind boggling, and I need to get the other one. This is a sign. I need to get this. And I was so worried that the other one would be gone or that somebody else had picked it up or, you know, thrown something on it. And I couldn't remember exactly where it was. So it was that panicked feeling, go, go, go. Find it. Find it. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? And there it was. And so I was just completely relieved and still not sure what they were or where they came from, but I knew I loved them.

SONJA KRAWESKY: I thought, okay, it's somebody’s art. Didn't find a signature. So I thought, okay, well, what I'll do is I'll do a Google lens search. So took a picture of them, threw it into Google Lens and typed in a few names of online stores to see if it would find a match. And it didn't. And that didn't surprise me because, I mean, the mystery was still, was still there. I still didn't know what was happening. You know, little bit searching further on, I found an artist named Sydney Blum. I found some pictures of her through her art gallery or the art gallery that represents her in Montreal. Clicked on the picture and it opened up. And I didn't see the exact pieces, but you could tell that was where these things had come from. But I was still confused because I thought, okay, if these really are pieces done by this artist named Sydney Blum, how in the world did they wind up here and why?

SONJA KRAWESKY: Some time went by and eventually, I wound up searching again. And this time, I came across Sydney's Instagram account. And I didn't have Instagram, so I signed up for it. There they were. I clicked on one, my heart's pounding, clicked on the one, and it said something along the lines of I'm so excited I get to have a show or an exhibition. I get to show my work in Toronto, but they've been lost. Right away, it was, okay, I now know these are hers. I love them, but they don't belong to me, and I need to get these back to her.

SYDNEY BLUM: She was there that moment when they landed on top of the pile because apparently, Krazy Binz trashes things. They layer them, they dump them. If they haven't sold, they go down in price again and down in price again. So she was there at that moment. At that moment, her hesitations were important because it allowed her to move on to another bin. Her emotional needs drew her to the colour and the forms of these pieces that made no sense there. Somebody else would have just brushed them off and thought, oh, I'm not interested in that. I'm looking for something that was remaindered from Amazon or something. She's incredible. We have now developed a friendship. And I have such admiration for the person she is on so many levels, but she is tenacious and she's smart. And she loves art and she loves music. When she took them home, initially, she just was so smitten with them she wanted to hang them on her own wall and have them near her, but it gnawed at her that they were so out of place at Krazy Binz. And being the person she is, and she's a voracious sleuth. Not only that she had to find me, but she had to return these pieces to me and kind of close that loop that had been left open by Canada Post. It's remarkable.

SYDNEY BLUM: Okay, so I have this friend, Piotr, who does a lot of work on my property for me and is a dear friend, and he knows how much effort and heart I put into my artwork. And so behind the scenes, he was trying to figure out once Sonja was identified, how to get these works back to me. And he used to be a trucker, so he knew people in the trucking world that might be crossing the country or out on runs or something. There might be somebody somewhere that could stop in Hamilton and get these pieces. But he was kind of thinking of all this behind the scenes, and I didn't realize to what extent.

PIOTR BANASIK: Wow. Well, I’m Piotr, and I end up fixing her porch. So now, we are friends. It was even painful listening to her because you can tell in the voice and everything how bad she felt. I was in transportation business for all my life, and I said I'm going to do whatever I can possibly do. I'm going to call all my friends. If anybody of them is coming here with transport trucks, they can maybe pick it up. And then the opportunity happens that friend from Minersville was going to trip for Christmas to visit his family in Chicago. Right away, I said like, I'm going to have to torment him and torture him, whatever is needed in order to get it. And he agreed. He was actually laughing when I was calling him at least two to three times a day just to make sure that it's going to happen. And he was laughing and he was like Piotr, like don't worry about it. Tell me once, it's going to be done.

ROBERT MIETUS: Outside?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Is there somewhere where we could do it inside?

ROBERT MIETUS: No, you're not allowed.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I'm not allowed.

ROBERT MIETUS: No. Robert Mietus. Piotr called me. He know we're going to Chicago, and he's like, can you guys pick up something for me? He told us the whole story. We didn't know what it is. It was nicely packed. And I know how fragile the thing is, so we were really careful with the stuff. My wife told me to make sure it's art, not something illegal, because she's very suspicious person. So yeah, that was art. My son was like, what's that? I'm like, art. But because he's 15, he's like, oh. That was his response. Oh, and that's it.

PIOTR BANASIK: To his final destination, it was about 2400 kilometres. So he definitely have to stop for the night just to rest. And he said, look, I'm afraid that maybe somebody's going to break in into the vehicle and steal it. So he actually ended up renting more expensive hotel instead of just the motel. And he showed me pictures when they are sitting right on their little corner so far. He showed me the picture. He was, no, no. He was like, I pay more attention to that than I did to myself during the transportation. So even when I saw him pulling it out of the vehicle, it was like, he almost looked like he was handling something so extremely fragile. And like when he was passing it over to me, he was actually watching my hands if I'm actually having a good grip on it.

SYDNEY BLUM: I used to do work that could be very dark, personally dark because it came from a very depressed place in me. And at one point, I made a decision if I continued to do artwork, it was only going to be about something uplifting, taking me upward into the realm of kind of a glorious, a place of affirmation and goodness and light and movement. I didn't care if other people got it because I knew I was only going to do the best I could to do my small part to shift universal energy toward goodness and toward trying to correct whatever is going on in this world right now, which is really complex and dark. And if people got it, they got it. And if they didn't, they didn’t. The magic in this is that people do get it. And when I got Sonja's email and then started communicating with her, and again, we've communicated quite a bit, my feeling was, oh my God, it worked. The energy that I was putting into this through colour and flow, it worked. It drew her in and she got it.

SONJA KRAWESKY: It's one of those stories where it's kind of the end, but and then there's more. I think that's our friendship. The connection that we have is I think pretty special. Maybe I'll be inspired to get back and to do more of my own creative things, more creative or less worried or more sure of myself, less socially anxious, more out there, more engaged with people.

PIOTR BANASIK: In the recent years, you keep hearing that people don't care about each other anymore, people don't do this, people don't do that, everybody's kind of locked in in their own little box. It proves the point that it's not. 2000, 3000 kilometres away from here, there is still somebody who cares. And that little thing, you can see that people are not locked in their little boxes, that when it comes to helping each other, they’re coming out, they’re helping, they’re doing whatever possibly can be done. And yeah, it changed the idea of what you actually hear on internet about people saying all kinds of different stuff. And then what happened in real life, it's completely opposite.

SYDNEY BLUM: I think it's a story about goodness. I think that's the essence of it. The Canada Post part still needs answers. Sonja, in all her amazing goodness and all the effort they went to to make sure that the work was safe, that it was protected as well as could be to get it back to me, it's a beautiful story of generosity, integrity, honesty. It's about how much people can reach out to each other, be there for each other. And we've all grown from this a lot. I think everybody involved has.

MG: Sydney Blum is an artist in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, and that story brought to us by CBC producer, Mary-Catherine McIntosh. Canada Post says the company does not know how the sculptures ended up at an Ontario store called Krazy Binz. Canada Post website says the company will sell items considered undeliverable, but a spokesperson says it has no business relationship, either direct or indirect, with the Krazy Binz chain. As I mentioned, you can and you should have a look at Sydney's art on our website. Go to cbc.ca/ thecurrent.

SHAM SWEETS

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. We're live in the Backroad Cafe in Windsor, Ontario. Whenever you visit a city, it is a smart idea to ask, this is the first thing often I will do, what's good to eat here? This city is home to a growing Middle Eastern community, and we were directed to Sham Sweets, which is owned by the Haboub family. They came to Canada as refugees from Syria, walked over the border from the United States into Canada in 2017. Mohamad Amer and his wife, Hanadi Almaraiati, and their sons became Canadian citizens last year. They probably call Windsor home, and this place, Sham Sweets, welcomes customers from Windsor and from Detroit looking for their crazy good baklava. He says crazy good baklava because he had some last night and it was delicious. One of those customers was just walking in as our producer, Joana Draghici, got in.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: Can I order the pound of baklava, this pistachio, and this cashew with black coffee? Very delicious.

HANADI ALMARAIATI: Hi!

JOANA DRAGHICI: Hello!

HANADI ALMARAIATI: How are you?

JOANA DRAGHICI: So nice to meet you.

HANADI ALMARAIATI: Me too. How are you?

JOANA DRAGHICI: I'm good. How are you?

HANADI ALMARAIATI: Good. I make sweets. This baklava, five hour, I make this baklava every day. I came to Canada before eight years ago. Somebody tell me in Windsor, the weather is very, very beautiful.

MOHAMAD AMER: Windsor is good for start life. When I arrived to Canada, to Windsor, after maybe two months, and open business. I open small store. And after one year, we go to other store, bigger.

JOANA DRAGHICI: And now your sons are working here?

MOHAMAD AMER: Yeah. I have three son.

ABDULMALIK HABOUB: My name is Abdulmalik Haboub. We are really happy and enjoying living in Canada, especially in Windsor. And it's like on the border with US. Like we live between two countries. That mean more, more like a mixed culture. And we can like, sometimes, I get supplies from US. And sometimes, we go there to enjoy the weekend. I feel very welcome here, and it’s very easy to see, like to meet friends, new friends, because we find that now, on the street here, like everywhere you go, you can see like the signs on Arabic. That's mean we have a lot of Arabic community. So we have a lot of friends.

JOANA DRAGHICI: With all the talk about the uncertainty, the tariffs, people being afraid of losing their jobs here, have you felt that in the community?

ABDULMALIK HABOUB: Yes, I feel that. Yeah, I feel that. And I feel like everyone is have fear. And like they just like think about in the future, what we have to do if that's happened. We are a neighbour in the end. We have to stand together and to live together. That's the point.

[conversations off mic]

JOANA DRAGHICI: So you guys are still getting ready because you've expanded, right? So you're still putting some stuff up.

MOHAMAD AMER: I want to make like an Arabic coffee in the corner and beautiful design for the walls, like make it like a historic design for the walls, like a Damascus design. We are the new, the new generation, and the grandfather gave us this. Not anyone like can make a baklava. This is like we have a special way to make it. We make everything handmade. I feel this feeling that I want to share the taste of baklava to not just my country. I want to share it also in Canada and US. So to make like not just one sweetshop. I want to make one and two and three, everywhere in Canada. I want to make that's like a culture of like Middle Eastern sweets. Is my grandfather work. I have to follow it.

MG: Delicious stuff. That is The Current for this Thursday live from Windsor, Ontario. Thanks to the great people here in this city and in the Backroad Cafe for such a warm welcome. We were talking to Tom Lucier earlier, owner of the Phog Lounge, which is a mainstay of the music scene in this town. Here is Ron Leary, Windsor musician, regular performer at the Phog, and a tune called “The Road In Between.” I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current from Windsor. I’ll see you tomorrow.

[Song: “The Road In Between” by Ron Leary]

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