19-07-2025
The inside scoop on how the '78 Calgary Stampede set the final stage for Ford Motor's Windsor plant
The final setting to conclude months of negotiations between those two great Canadian institutions of long-standing, federal-provincial feuding and government-business wariness, was on a uniquely Canadian stage: the rip-roaring Calgary Stampede.
The topic was not horses, it was money and jobs. In 1978, U.S.-based Ford Motor Co. was thinking about building a V6-engine plant in Windsor, Ont. But the company wanted some public money, $30 million, said Roy Bennett, Ford Motor Co. of Canada president. The injection would offset a variety of higher Canadian costs compared with expanding an existing Ford engine plant in Lima, Ohio, 150 kilometres across the border from Windsor.
Opinion articles are based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
