International Freedom Festivals Not Forgotten

Nor the music, 'sans frontières.'

Back in 1959, the cities of Windsor Ontario and Detroit Michigan launched the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival marking the July 1 Dominion Day – now Canada Day – and the July 4 US Independence Day. The highlight of the festival was a fireworks show on the Detroit River, with thousands of spectators on both sides. I was one of them, and our family lived in both cities.

My father was a mechanical engineer who worked for the Big Three automakers. In the early 1950s we drove over the Ambassador Bridge, and sometimes through the tunnel, to visit relatives in Windsor. When we moved “across the creek,” as we used to say, my father drove across the bridge every workday. In those days, the border station was basically a turnstile.

We kids would take the tunnel bus to Detroit, walk to the foot of Woodward and catch the boat to Bob-Lo Island – originally named Bois Blanc by French explorers. On that Canadian island we frolicked at an amusement park run by an American company. In similar style, the music of the day, as the French say, was sans frontières.

On the Windsor waterfront stood radio station CKLW, with 50,000 Watts of power. The woman who picked the playlist was Windsor’s Rosalie Trembley, the “girl with the golden ears.” Musicians from far and wide would send her gifts so she would play their tunes.

Rosalie played “Heavy Music,” by Bob Seger and the Last Heard out of Detroit. Seger wrote “Rosalie,” because she knows music and “she’s got the power, got the tower.” CKLW also gave play to “Mind Over Matter,” by Nolan Strong and the Diablos, which like “Heavy Music” should have been a national hit. Strong’s high vocal style, heard here on “The Wind,” influenced Smokey Robinson, who got plenty of play on CKLW.

Trombley boosted the careers of The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Gordon Lightfoot, and many others. She persuaded Elton John to release “Bennie and the Jets” as a single, and by 1975 it went platinum.

The International Freedom Festival continued until 2007, and the border is now like Checkpoint Charlie. Rosalie Trombley passed away on November 23, 2021 at the age of 82. At this writing, Smokie Robinson, Elton John and Bob Seger are still around. Nolan Strong passed away in 1977, a year after Seger’s “Night Moves.” The “song from 1962” Seger started humming might have been “Mind Over Matter.” As Bob said, I remember, I remember, and like Martha Reeves I can’t forget the motor city.