WINDSOR'S CONFLUENT CURRENTS.

• Author: Carter, Joan

SHAPED BY THE CONVERGENCE OF CULTURES AND COMMERCE, THIS CANADIAN CITY BOASTS A REVITALIZED WATERFRONT REFLECTING ITS ECLECTIC SPIRIT

The majestic tundra swans look north to the country across the river, towering thirty-eight feet above the grassy parkland. Of hard, handsome steel, with a polyethylene metallic finish, they are both elemental and advanced--modern engineering in the service of a celebration of nature.

To the east, fifty-feet high, hand-carved totem poles of white pine, Neish Do-Dem (twin stories), present brightly colored narrative images of Canada's Pacific Coast First Peoples. Nearby, concrete Columns harken back to the Ionic order of Greek architecture and, to the west, the sharp metallic bite of Eve's Apple captures the moment when knowledge is achieved and innocence is lost. This is art on a big scale, twenty contemporary pieces scattered over more than a mile of spectacular, and historic, waterfront parkland in Canada's sculpture capital.

This is Windsor, Ontario--Canada's southernmost urban center, directly across the Detroit River from the skyscrapers, concrete waterfront, inner-city problems, and big-city amenities of Detroit, Michigan. To the south and east are some of Canada's best agricultural lands, interspersed with prairie grasslands, marshes, and Carolinian forest, supporting rich flora and fauna found in few other places in Canada.

This is Windsor, where Canada begins, at the center of the continent, and a fitting site for the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly 2000, June 4-6. Key Canadian foreign policy objectives--human security, human rights/democratization, economic integration, environmental protection, and sustainable development--find empathetic audiences here.

This is Windsor, "automotive capital of Canada," blue-collar city of 200,000 in the manufacturing heartland of North America and, until a few years ago, an unlikely suitor for any cultural caress. But the waterfront has changed, with Windsor. Last October, an estimated ten thousand people joined Riverwalk '99 to celebrate the completion of almost three miles of unbroken public parkland, the culmination of decades of dreaming and scheming to rescue the riverfront from its industrial past and reclaim it for the people.

Although still proudly "lunch bucket," where the working class calls as many shots as the big shots, modern-day Windsor is known internationally as a center of advanced technology, a major transportation link on the NAFTA Superhighway, and as a destination point for extensive tourism/hospitality resources, which include the new Las Vegas-style Casino Windsor and, of course, the Sculpture Garden. Made possible by the generosity of the P&L Odette Foundation, the garden was installed in 1997 and, in spring 1998, Windsor was recognized as Canada's Sculpture Capital by the Canadian Sculpture Society.

Nothing matches in this garden; no theme connects the eclectic collection of work from very different places and people: the naturalistic power of Inuit artist Pauta Saila's Dancing Bear, the industrially inspired work of...