Pour yourself a hot “Cup of Joe,” sit back and relax, and let’s chat about the automobile.
In my initial blog in early January on the newly designed BizXmagazine.com website, I introduced myself to you as a political geek and junkie whose interest in politics began at an early age with a number of role model influences and grew even stronger when I moved to Windsor’s historical Victoria Avenue, a street boasting no less than 15 political candidates and elected officials in the past few decades.
Well, there is actually more to me than just politics and in my bi-weekly blog, “Have a Cup of Joe with Joe,” I will attempt to flush this out. I am also writing a monthly column in the print and digital issues of Biz X (the page you are reading right now!) with different content for the most part.
My blog and articles aim to be read like the type of conversation friends have with friends at local downtown coffee shops. There’ll be a lot of reminiscing, opinions tossed around, humour and just plain good old chatter about the community and region I have been blessed to call my home.
So, coinciding with the auto theme for this February magazine, it is the perfect time to celebrate the automotive industry, the historic foundation of this region’s economy and employment base. “The North
American International Auto Show” in Detroit at Cobo Center from January 16 to 24 captured the hearts, minds and dreams of all of us, both young and old. While the auto industry showcases the new, the innovative, the imaginative, this is also the time in Windsor Essex to reflect on our heritage as the “Automotive Capital of Canada.”
I had to reach way back to my Assumption High School history classes with Mr. Bertoia in the late 1960s to remember that the birth of the auto industry occurred outside North America. The earliest examples of “horseless carriages” have their roots in Europe as a corollary of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and 1800s.
In fact, the word “automobile” is, itself, of French origin. The automobile was initially conceived in Europe as a luxury item of transportation for the noble and the privileged. This fact is highlighted in PBS’s “Downton Abbey’s” first season introduction of the Rolls Royce automobile for the nobility, in the early 1900s.
Eventually, these European auto concepts made their way across the Atlantic to the “new world” of the U.S. and Canada to be improved on both in terms of technology as well as mass manufacturing. No longer was the automobile a luxury item reserved for the rich and famous, it soon became everyday transportation for the regular folk.
Story continues HERE
