Windsor 20/20 on CBC

I was tuning into the webcast of last nights CBC news to catch Windsor independant film maker Gavin Booth being interviewed regarding the Windsor International Film Festival's 48 Hour Flick Fest, when I stumbled across this series the CBC is doing. From their website...

Windsor is an enigma. It should be an overwhelming success story.

It has great weather, hot humid summers and fairly mild winters. It sits in a geographic pocket that puts it four hours from Toronto and five hours from Chicago. It has the busiest international border crossing in North America with one-third of all trade between the US and Canada passing over the Ambassador Bridge. It has affordable housing within the city limits and a skilled workforce. It's a boater's dream with quick access to Lakes Erie and St.Clair from dozens of marinas. It is home to Chrysler Canada and Hiram Walker Distilleries and has turned its once shameful waterfront into a garden oasis and outdoor sculpture park. It has a multi-million dollar casino-hotel-entertainment complex. And it is also the fourth most ethnically diverse community in Canada behind Toronto, Vancouver and Hamilton.

Windsor should be an overwhelming success story... but it isn't. And in part what is missing is vision. The grand plan. The path that takes us to a brighter future. Windsor has the people to make things work. Windsor has a sense of itself as a community. What Windsor doesn't have is a sense of its own future.

Every Thursday, over the next 15 weeks, CBC and Radio-Canada Windsor will examine Windsor's potential and its future.

We're calling the series Windsor 20/20 because it's all about the vision.

Join us. Be part of Windsor's future.

What we've been saying all along.

The segment last night was on the University's possible move to a downtown campus and the impact that move would have on the city as a whole. After seeing Professor Rick Haldenby, who the DWBIA brought into town for a speaking engagement, the reporter traveled to Cambridge, Ontario, to check out the University of Waterloo's school of architecture and what the students and residents thought of their move. With over 90% of the core businesses reporting an increase in business, the overwhelming response was positive.

A big thumbs-up to the CBC for producing the Windsor 20/20 series. We need more progressive visions to guide our city through our current economic doldrums.

Check out the CBC's local website to watch last nights episode before they yank it down to post tonights.