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

by
Julie Longo

Photo courtesy of the Detroit Free Press. "Air force Missile on Its Way to Festival Display," June 27, 1961.
On June 30, 1959, Detroit commuters found morning traffic snarled by an intercontinental ballistic missile. As U.S. Air Force crewmen wrestled with a giant Atlas 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.	1
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 it would 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 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.	2
The original Freedom Festival held in 1959 was firmly anchored to the (apparently 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.	. . .