Brian Masse represents the federal riding of West Windsor in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He has held his seat in the House of Commons since 2002, representing a city at the hottest point on the border with the United States. At the age of 57, he’s old enough to remember when “all you needed was a library card” to cross to the other side of the river, where the elegant art deco skyscrapers await. They’re a reminder of Detroit’s grandeur from another century.

Today, in an atmosphere of growing mistrust between the two countries — old friends at odds over Donald Trump’s tariff war and threats of annexation — not even a valid passport guarantees a smooth land crossing. Accusations that Canada isn’t doing enough to stop fentanyl trafficking (which, in reality, is almost nonexistent along the northern border) have led officials on the Canadian side to redouble their efforts, while CBP agents across the border are applying an even harsher hand to those knocking on the United States’ doors. Stories of waits lasting several hours — or worse — abound. For instance, in late March, an undocumented Guatemalan migrant who mistakenly took the border bridge ended up detained for five days with her children. She now faces deportation from the U.S.

Between Detroit and Windsor, there are two crossings: a tunnel that can’t handle truck traffic and the Ambassador Bridge, where the woman was trapped. It’s a majestic 1.5-mile suspension bridge that handles a quarter of the goods exchanged between the two trading partners. This makes it the busiest border crossing in North America by trade volume, with some 10,000 vehicles passing over the bridge each day, in both directions.

Masse — who is running for re-election for the ninth time in the April 28 federal elections — is a member of the center-left New Democratic Party (NDP), the fourth-largest party in the Canadian parliament. For decades, he’s been working to dislodge the Ambassador Bridge as the symbol of a now-fractured bilateral relationship. If the construction deadlines are met, that moment will arrive in the fall, when another bridge, the Gordie Howe Bridge, opens. The federal government has invested 6.4 billion Canadian dollars into the project ($4.6 billion).

About 2.5 miles south of the Ambassador Bridge, it will carry a toll (Masse hasn’t confirmed how much, but it’s expected to be lower than the Ambassador’s $9.00) and will have six lanes, as well as a pedestrian and bicycle path. The Spanish company FlatironDragados is leading the international consortium responsible for its design and construction, as well as its operation and maintenance for a 30-year period. With a main span of 2,800 feet, it will break the record to become the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America, while being ranked fifth in the world.

With this new bridge, the authorities are seeking to divert truck traffic from downtown Windsor and connect it to the area’s highways. But, above all, Masse says that the project will end the “anomaly” of the Ambassador Bridge, which has been operated by private hands for 96 years.

“It’s a big investment,” the politician admits, during an interview with EL PAÍS at his campaign headquarters in Windsor. “Still, it’s necessary. It doesn’t make sense for such important traffic to depend on an American billionaire who has behaved very badly toward this community.” Masse is referring to Manuel Matty Moroun, who bought the Ambassador Bridge from the previous owners back in 1979, for the sum of $30 million.

Moroun’s heirs (the businessman died in 2020) also control the duty-free shops that are located on both the bridge and in the tunnel. They’ve continued the crusade of their father, a self-made man who did everything possible to prevent the construction of the Gordie Howe Bridge. The family has filed lawsuits seeking damages, while funding the electoral campaigns of Michigan’s Republican candidates, who oppose its opening. “If it takes 100 years to recoup the investment, it’ll have been worth it, if only for the environmental benefits and the regeneration of the urban fabric,” Masse affirms, speaking from a city whose downtown sprang up around the old bridge.

The opening of the Ambassador Bridge marked a turning point in trade relations between the two countries. “Tourists used it in both directions, [with the bridge] contributing to a significant American presence in Canada’s cooler summers, before the widespread use of air conditioning,” writes eminent historian Robert Bothwell in Your Country, My Country (2015), an engaging essay on the intersecting lives of Canada and the United States.

Bothwell spoke with EL PAÍS last Friday, via telephone from Toronto. “Interestingly, my fellow Canadians have long been going the other way, traveling south in search of warmth. Or, at least they did, because since Trump’s threats began, I haven’t met anyone who wants to travel to the United States,” he notes. Bothwell, a frequent visitor to Washington, D.C., has also lost his desire to travel to the States. “I don’t want my cell phone confiscated and a problem with Immigration,” he sighs.

The historian explains that the bridge became a symbol of Detroit’s automotive industry boom. Many residents of the southwestern part of the province of Ontario migrated across the river in search of work. “The Ambassador Bridge also boosted American investment: at that time, companies like Chrysler and Ford opened branches in Ontario, creating something of a mirror image of Michigan’s automotive industry. It was also a decade of high tariffs, so trade suffered.” Today, Windsor might look like a Detroit suburb, if it weren’t for the enormous maple leaf flag that waves defiantly at the end of Ouellette Avenue.

Regarding the new bridge, Bothwell says it would never have been built “if it weren’t for the desperate efforts of the Canadian government 15 years ago.”

“No one could have imagined then that Trump would come along with his tariffs and restrictions on car trade and threaten to turn the Gordie Howe Bridge into a monument to the past, rather than a structure [representing] the future. If [the U.S. president] keeps his promises, we’ll go back 100 years, to the golden age of tariffs.”

Hockey glory

When Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who served from 2006 until 2015, unilaterally decided to name the bridge after hockey’s greatest hero (against the advice of Masse, who advocated for “a popular vote to choose the name”), it was impossible to know that its opening would coincide with the resurrection of the Gordie Howe Bridge as a national symbol. His rallying cry on the ice rink — “elbows up” — has become a slogan for Canadians who are refusing to be overpowered by the United States in this new era of bilateral relations.

Prime Minister Mark Carney used the slogan in the video launching his campaign as the Liberal Party candidate for this month’s elections, after succeeding Justin Trudeau at the helm of a stormy ship. Trump’s shadow looms over the polls which, until the end of last year, predicted a Conservative victory.

These days, Carney has been trying to cement his image as an economist among an unfamiliar electorate: he previously served as governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013) and the Bank of England (2013-2020). And he wants to appear willing to take on a bully. To achieve this, he uses stagings like the one on March 26, when he chose the Ambassador Birdge’s backdrop to respond to Trump’s announcement that he will impose 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars. Carney emphasized that these tariffs were a “direct attack” on Canada. “We will defend our workers. We will defend our companies. We will defend our country,” he affirmed.

Cars are Canada’s second-largest export (after crude petroleum), while the country’s main trading partner is the United States. The auto sector employs 125,000 Canadians directly and nearly half-a-million more in related industries. In Windsor — the automotive capital on this side of the border — the threat of the strangulation of the auto industry and the consequences for businesses, supermarkets, and restaurants are the talk of the town. Between Trump confirming the tariffs on imported cars on April 2 and Carney’s announcement the following day that Canada would respond with reciprocal tariffs, Stellantis ordered a two-week closure of the plant that assembles the Chrysler Pacifica minivan and the Dodge Charger Daytona and 3,000 workers were sent home until April 21.

Around that time, the atmosphere at the factory gates was quite somber. However, from an abandoned gas station on the mainland, it’s possible to see tradespeople working against the clock to complete the new Gordie Howe Bridge. In June of last year, they achieved the milestone of joining the American and Canadian halves across the Detroit River. The slogan of the ambitious engineering project boasts of “connecting North America seamlessly.” The construction workers are attempting to do this (at least, in a tangible way).

Masse says confidently that “presidents come and go, but bridges remain.” Yet, with both sides facing an induced economic crisis, it’s no longer so easy for Canadians to take those words for granted. The tranquillity of just a little while ago — before Trump’s triumphant return to the Oval Office — is no more. And the feeling among many inhabitants of this part of the world is that the past few months have lasted a lifetime.

Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

Picture the scene: it’s the year 2050. We’re sitting down to a snail risotto and rabbit terrine for dinner. Your children have never tasted salmon and have rarely eaten an ounce of chocolate, a rare and expensive product due to rising temperatures affecting cocoa production. Also, forget your breakfast toast: avocados require a lot of water and are becoming extinct.

That’s the concept behind The Last Supper, a new gastronomic club from innovative 39-year-old South African chef Vanessa Marx, who runs the Riverhouse restaurant in Richmond, an affluent town in the southwest of London. The menu, served once a month, consists of nine dishes featuring numerous endangered ingredients, as well as sustainable alternatives.

“A woman asked me how I dared to host a dinner party showcasing all these endangered foods,” Marx says before the guests begin to arrive. “I told her my intention was precisely to raise the issue. I wanted to get people talking about it, and so far, it’s working.”

The chef speaks openly about sustainability, although she actually prefers to let her dishes lead the conversation. “My language is food,” she says. She started cooking 22 years ago in Cape Town, a place now besieged by devastating droughts due to climate change. At a time when few people embraced environmental concepts, she championed food waste reduction, grass-fed and free-range beef, and sustainable seafood. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” she recalls.

Five years ago, she moved to the United Kingdom and conceived her concept for the gastronomic club with Diana Verde Nieto, an Argentinian living in London, a sustainability advisor for the United Nations, and the author of Reimagining Luxury: Building a Sustainable Future for Your Brand. Nieto believes that our perception of luxury is becoming more conscious, moving away from ostentatious displays of wealth like caviar and yachts and toward concepts like wellness retreats and “barefoot luxury.”

The two women connected when Marx heard Nieto talk about ingredients becoming extinct. “My first reaction was, ‘what are you talking about?’” Marx says. “I had never considered that in my lifetime, there might be a food that would cease to exist.”

Nieto nods. “I think we overeat,” she adds. Our diets have changed radically in the last 50 or 100 years. “Vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and olive oil are part of my diet now, but they weren’t at all what my grandparents ate,” she reflects, noting that these popular foods destabilize the food system and have a domino effect on the environment. “We’re riding these trends, causing an incredible amount of stress for the population and the soil.” For example, the trend among Westerners to consume quinoa is putting pressure on local producers in Peru.

I had never considered that in my lifetime, there might be a food that would cease to exist”

Vanessa Marx

Is the average citizen starting to feel judged? We’re told everywhere that chicken and beef are terrible for the environment. “I agree with that 100%,” Nieto replies. “We have to focus on [cooking with] chickpeas, legumes, and grains, and, above all, eat seasonal and local products.”

The menu at The Last Supper is a mix of foods that may no longer exist in the future (such as oysters, mussels, and bluefin tuna, which could disappear due to rising sea temperatures and overfishing). But it also offers the opportunity to try new foods: river trout instead of salmon and rabbit instead of chicken. “I’ve not only highlighted things that might be missing, but also things we should consider,” Marx notes.

Snails, a rare dish in the UK that elicits grimaces of disgust from diners, are used in a risotto, smothered in garlic butter. Marx argues: “These little critters could save the world, because they are one of the most regenerative sources of protein available.”

The chalk stream trout is more popular and is accompanied by a saffron-infused mussel cream sauce. The chef explains that England is home to 85% of the world’s 200 known chalk streams, although they are threatened by pollution.

Will there really be no chocolate in 2050? And worse, no coffee? In addition to the obvious foods, which we all know aren’t exactly sustainable, there are also some ingredients on the menu whose risk of extinction isn’t as well known. “We have a hard time with smoothies, because all those fruits are pollinated by bees,” Marx says bluntly. “With bananas too, because they’re all cloned and besieged by disease.”

Recently, a diner complained about the price of a scallop starter for two, at 22 pounds (about $28). Marx’s solution? “If you don’t like it, go for something else. But in my restaurant, we only serve scallops that have been caught by hand; we don’t use the product that arrives frozen from Canada in plastic tubs. That, for me, is non-negotiable.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition