The other night the Olympics opened to our favorite and only neighbor to the north—a neighbor we sometimes forget resides above us because they send no drug gangs with vendettas to fulfill, don’t hide in trucks to sneak across the border, or wreak havoc on our social services.

Did I say North of us?

Did you know that there are two places where Canada is south of the U.S

Alaska and Detroit.

That’s right, Detroit.

I’m from Detroit, and we actually had to drive downtown to cross the Ambassador Bridge or take the tunnel into Windsor, Ontario.

The Detroit River divides the cities, and you can stand its banks and peer across to a foreign country.

For a few years in the fifties my father kept our 17 foot luckless inboard boat in a rundown marina on the Canadian side. Spending more time keeping the engine running than cruising the currents, time on the river was often tense and anxiety filled, but there were those welcomed moments.

Sometimes it was even fun.

The Schwartzes owned their little Titanic, the JeTeSu, named after the three of us, Je for my brother Jeff, Te for me, Terry, and Su for my sister, Susan.

Sputtering through the cold choppy waters of early spring—my father didn’t want to waste a precious day of boating—we covered ourselves with jackets and towels against the chilled water spraying our faces and bare legs as we made our way past the many islands dotting both the American and the Canadian sides.

Beyond the islands were the factories spewing smoke, and in one small section on each side stood the Windsor and Detroit waterfronts.

Well Windsor wasn’t much of a showplace, a few office buildings and restaurants, but on the Detroit side stood Cobo Hall, our giant convention center for the day, a park beside it, and restaurants like Sinbad’s and the Rooster Tail.

Summer came, and it got hot, and on the days the boat ran, we searched for a place to swim, away from the current, away from the shipping channels and the many merchant cargo ships streaming through the channels. Some of the islands along the river looked okay to the naked eye, but the river floor turned out to be mucky, or too deep to stand, or clogged with seaweed.

How did we know? My eight year old brother became our human sacrifice—jumping overboard to confirm our nasty suspicions.

But on a particularly Sunday, my father chugged by a lumpy deserted island about the size of an average family room. Jeff stepped over the side and surprised the group when the water swelled only to his waist.

“The bottom’s sandy,” he said, in shock.

“Bernie, let’s anchor,” my mother said, already making plans to sunbathe on land.
Turned out to be a great day and we returned the following week.
A short time after we anchored, another boat joined us.

“What’s the name of this place?” the guy asked.

“Bernie’s Beach,” my father said.

Over the next weeks and months other boaters rumbled by, set anchor, and Bernie’s Beach, a spot on the Canadian side, became a happening place.

Modest. Unpretentious. Like the rest of Canada.

Did you know our innocuous neighbor has no monetary crisis? They made sure their banks had money to lend and that their borrowers could pay the mortgage.

While Americans are trying to build a fence across our ragged border to the south, we often make fun of our under populated over cautious neighbor to the north.

Like the awesome opening ceremony Friday evening, we’re lucky we got them.