Headwaters of Hope

Dave Dempsey

Growing up in southeast Michigan in the 1960s, I experienced a permeable water border. My parents occasionally chose recreation destinations on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, one day including Point Pelee National Park, jutting into an unexpectedly algae-choked Lake Erie. At age nine, I wasn’t thinking about borders that day, but I think I absorbed the notion of a lake bigger than anyone—including nations—in trouble. It wasn’t an American or Canadian lake. It was a shared lake.

Even when we didn’t cross the boundary, Canada was in our sights. Inexpensive entertainment for a young family subsisting on an assistant professor’s salary was watching freighters pass up and down the Detroit River against the backdrop of downtown Windsor, Ontario. You couldn’t gaze at those vessels without sensing the role water played in connecting, rather than dividing, nations.

That base in southeast Michigan was also part of a binational cultural ecosystem. At a time when television shaped the world view of many children, I spent countless hours watching Canadian programming. I watched hockey, of course, but also shows aimed at kids. I didn’t differentiate these shows from those on American television. I grew up thinking Canadians were friends, people much like us; they just had a few quaint differences like saying “zed” instead of “zee.” The border wasn’t a technicality, exactly, but it wasn’t a fearsome wall—or a moat.

Professionally, the value of those early lessons has persisted. Perhaps the differences between Americans and Canadians are more numerous and subtle than a nine-year-old child can discern, but mutual respect and cooperation spanning the border are real. The water that shapes the border also shapes a shared ethic of water stewardship.

More than water flows along and across the Canada-U.S. border. So does human capital. It is a profound resource and, unlike water, inexhaustible. It is the headwaters of hope for a future of wisely guarded and sustainably used water.