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The big shiny new thing in Detroit, Michigan, is the Gordie Howe International Bridge, named for the legendary Canadian hockey player who played 25 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings.
A universally beloved figure, he was the inaugural winner of the National Hockey League’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, and is considered one of the greatest of all time.
Hockey is usually a great unifier between the US and Canada, at least in the northern states. But in recent times it has reflected inescapable political tensions – with some Canadians booing The Star Spangled Banner at the start of games, for instance.
Practically, the bridge provides another needed link across the Detroit River from the Motor City into Ontario province, Canada, and on to the cities of London and Toronto. The nearby Ambassador Bridge is the busiest and most important border crossing between the two countries.
And the Gordie Howe certainly looks good: like a bigger, grander version of Sydney’s Anzac Bridge, resplendent in white, emerging from the industrial wasteland of the Michigan riverbanks. But it is also another pawn in the neighbourhood dispute between Canada and Donald Trump.
The bridge was funded entirely by Canada, to the tune of about $6.4 billion. The opening, already delayed from 2024, was supposed to take place early this year until Trump dropped a bombshell on Truth Social.
Complaining that the Canadians built it without using enough American steel – for which he blamed Barack Obama – Trump declared he would not allow the bridge to open “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them”.
He added: “We should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset. The revenues generated because of the US market will be astronomical.”
In the end, Canada agreed to pay 50 per cent of the “net revenue” into a development fund controlled by the Americans. Prime Minister Mark Carney said it meant the US would only start to see the money after Canada had recouped its costs.
Eventually, the planned opening ceremony – involving both countries – was cancelled after Trump imposed a fresh round of tariffs on Canada, and the Canadians decided it would be inappropriate to have the Americans there. A smaller and somewhat awkward ceremony took place on Canada’s side of the border, with Canadian officials only.
The bridge opened to motorists on July 27, and to walkers and cyclists on August 5 – which is when freelance writer and keen cyclist Mark Wedel of Kalamazoo, Michigan, rode his folding bike across to Canada and back.
He chronicled the journey for Second Wave Media, including his encounter with three Canadian cyclists, all wearing matching T-shirts featuring a beaver in a Gordie Howe jersey crossing its hockey sticks over “51” – a rejection of Canada becoming the 51st US state.
On the back of their shirts? “WE PAID FOR IT”, a reference to the bridge.
Wedel, 59, tells me he met a man by the river on the Windsor side who moved to Canada from Britain 45 years ago. He worked in the Detroit car industry and his daughter married a man in Minnesota.
“[The man by the river] said that what he feels seems to be happening is that [for] a lot of people in America there’s been a change in spirit, and it’s not a good change,” Wedel says. “He felt there was a darkness happening here. As someone that doesn’t like that darkness, I agree with him.”
According to a Canadian government report, Canadian tourism to the US fell 25 per cent in 2025. US figures back that up, and show large declines from many other countries, including Australia.
More than 41,000 motorists crossed the bridge in its first few days; it will not be a white elephant. But it may not be used quite as much as envisaged – for now.
“There was a huge crowd on the American side to get on the bridge that first day,” Wedel tells me. “There wasn’t a whole lot of Canadians that were packing the gates there to go into the United States.”
But as much as the Gordie Howe Bridge became a political football, it can also bring Americans and Canadians together. Wedel notes that Michigan is very similar to Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.
“The people have a slightly different accent,” he says. “But the land is the same, the cities are mostly the same. It feels like we are siblings … one’s a little weirder than the other, one’s a little crankier than the other.”
The new bridge, Wedel says, “feels like a way to just reach out and say: ‘Hey, I want to go to your land. I want to ride my bike to your country, and I hope you do the same for us.’”
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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