Consuming Freedom: The International Freedom Festival as Transnational Tourism Strategy on the Windsor-Detroit Border, 1959-1976

Abstract

118 Photo courtesy of the Detroit Free Press. "Air Force Missile on ItsWay to Festival Display," June 27,1961. Consuming Freedom: The International Freedom Festival as Transnational Tourism Strategy on the Windsor-Detroit Border, 1959-1976 by Julie Longo On June 30,1959, Detroit commuters found morning traffic snarled by an intercontinental ballistic missile. As U.S. Air Force crewmen wresded with a giant Adas missile that seemed intent on pointing at the ground rather than the sky, traffic backed up for miles before the missile was finally set in place "glinting in the sun, on a center mall at Woodward and Jefferson."1 And so began the first annual Detroit Windsor International Freedom Festival. Timed to link Canada's Dominion Day celebration on July 1 and America's Independence Day festivities on July 4, the international celebration was officially designed "to commemorate the peace and harmony which exists between the two nations."2 In the context of Cold War posturing, the organizers of the first festival hoped itwould not only "dramatize to all people the existence of the world's longest unarmed border" but also display the "determination of the American and Canadian people to protect this freedom they enjoy."3 More practically, urban boosters from both countries recognized that successfully marketing the border celebration as a unique experience?and the borderland of Windsor and Detroit as a special and symbolic place?might actually keep summer travelers in the The author would like to thank Michael Fish, Archivist at the Windsor Archives, Windsor Public Library; Nancy Steffes, Reference Librarian at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), and Miroslav Cukovic in the CCS Digital Media Library; and Bill McGraw of the Detroit Free Press for their help with the photographs. A shorter version of this article was presented on April 13, 2007, at theWestern Social Science Association meeting in Calgary, Alberta. The author is also grateful to John J. Bukowczyk, Helen Ryan, and Katherine Vicars for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1"Festival Day's Frustration Day," Detroit Free Press, June 30,1959, 3A. 2 Background Information on the International Freedom Festival, 1964, E & M fue, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit. 3 Proclamation of the City of Detroit, 1959, box 3, MS/Mayor's Papers, Louis C. Miriani, Burton Historical Collection. Michigan Historical Re view 34:2 (Fall 2008): 119-137 ?2008 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 120 Michigan Historical Review region.4 And by 1959 both communities had begun to realize that increasing tourism to the area might help slow their economic decline and complement their urban-redevelopment efforts. The original Freedom Festival held in 1959 was firmly anchored to the (apparendy transnational) belief that an "undefended border" presented both cause for international celebration and a cultural experience to be marketed like any other.5 For the two border cities it was another way to draw attention to urban-redevelopment projects both as sites of local celebration and as national success stories. Although it was originally designed "to commemorate the peace and harmony which exists between the two nations," the International Freedom Festival would also, in the words of Michigan Secretary of State James Hare, "show how these two cities have successfully saved our Detroit River waterfronts from decay and decline by building civic areas."6 These beliefs formed the basis of a transnational strategy of cultural tourism that sought to construct the international border region as a unique place where one could experience both the physical manifestations of mutual values and the distinctive local and national cultures of the border cities. Typical of the urban entrepreneurialism that characterized redevelopment strategies in North American cities beginning in the 1970s, Windsor and Detroit sought to distinguish themselves from other cities competing for tourist dollars by creating a unique urban image. Favoring an "emphasis upon tourism, the production and consumption of spectacles, [and] the promotion of ephemeral events within a given locale,"7 the two cities adopted the International Freedom Festival as part of a strategy to promote the border region as an unrivaled urban experience. This festival allowed its transborder organizers to commodify "the ways of life, traditions, and the complex symbolism...