For the border town of Sarnia, the spectre of Trump frames everything in this election

Mike Bradley has worked for 36 years as mayor of Sarnia, Ont., where the Blue Water Bridge spans the St. Clair River to Port Huron, Mich. Mr. Bradley hasn't been happy with U.S. President Donald Trump's annexation talk.Brett Gundlock/The Globe and Mail

The Globe is visiting communities across the country to hear from Canadians about the issues affecting their lives, their futures and their votes in this federal election.

Mike Bradley looks wistfully in the direction of the towering bridge off in the distance and is transported to a different time in his life.

The Blue Water Bridge, between Port Huron, U.S.A., and Sarnia, Ont., my old hometown, of which Mr. Bradley is the long-time mayor, once held an iconic, rite-of-passage presence for both of us. On Friday and Saturday nights during our high school years, we piled into cars and headed over to the Brass Rail or the Colony Club or any number of the drinking establishments that lined Huron Avenue in the American city, with fake or borrowed ID cards in hand. Staying until closing, we often stopped at The Clock restaurant (open “round the clock”) before heading back in the wee hours to our homes in this working-class city.

“No one asked a thing at the border,” Mr. Bradley recalls with a laugh. “There was one customs guy, Gerry. He’d look at us and just wave us through. And it was pretty much that way, both ways. It was a different time.”

Yes, those days seem so long ago – especially now.

The bridge has become something of a symbolic monument in the war that has erupted between former friends Canada and the U.S. As the Mayor of Sarnia for 36 years now, Mr. Bradley is appalled by U.S. President Donald Trump, and his talk of making Canada the “51st state.” He’s furious about the crippling tariffs the President has introduced that will hurt people in his city. And it is the looming spectre of almost four more years of Mr. Trump that is framing everything, for Mr. Bradley, in the current federal election campaign.

“I want someone to form government that is not going to be cowed by [Donald] Trump and the Republicans,” Mr. Bradley tells me over a glass of wine at Ups N’ Downs pub. “I think I’m like a lot of Canadians who are very upset and angry at our American friends. I want a leader who is going to be tough, but smart. Someone who can rally the country. Who is also going to be honest about the pain this is going to cause. “We need a war-effort-like response to [Mr.] Trump. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Looking over the river at Port Huron is easy for Sarnians, but visiting and doing business there is a more fraught process than it was decades ago.Brett Gundlock/The Globe and Mail

Mr. Bradley was so upset about all the talk of the U.S. annexing Canada that he proposed taking down all the American flags in the city. He backed off when the Sarnia Lambton Chamber of Commerce protested. “We just didn’t want to do that,” Carrie McEachran, the chamber’s CEO, tells me in a boardroom interview. “We have a lot of working relationships on the other side of the border and we didn’t think it was right to antagonize people who really had nothing to do with what’s going on right now.”

Ms. McEachran says the chamber remains neutral when it comes to the federal election. But she admits to feeling “overlooked” in recent years by the federal government. In his 10 years in office, for instance, former prime minister Justin Trudeau never visited Sarnia once. It would be nice, she says, to get some federal investment that would help juice an economy that has been stagnant for a while – just like the population. It’s been around 72,000 for years now.

Sarnia’s unemployment rate in 2024 was 8.8 per cent. Not great. The underlying foundation of the local economy remains “the valley” – or, by its more pejorative name, “chemical valley.” And while the petrochemical industry has helped employ generations of Sarnia families, it has also contributed to an unfair image of a city shrouded by smoke-spewing factory chimneys. The St. Clair River that runs between Canada and the U.S. is a blue so resplendent it can stun a visitor seeing it for the first time. Yet, it is still tarnished by memories of “the blob.”

In 1985, Dow Chemical spilled 11,000 litres of a dry-cleaning chemical into the river, which soaked up other substances to form a toxic puddle that gained international notoriety as “the blob.” Despite its beautiful beaches and access to Lake Huron, selling Sarnia as a tourist destination remains a daunting challenge.

Hardscrabble is a term that certainly fits parts of the city. The south end, where I grew up, remains frozen in time. The small, post-Second World War homes are still standing, with no signs of gentrification in sight. Drug use and homelessness remain a huge problem. The city recently cleared an encampment of about 100 people that had been up for months. The River City Vineyard, a non-denominational Christian church that doubles as a homeless shelter, is always busy.

Manager Audrey Kelway says the drug use breaks her heart. She’s paying attention to the federal election and wants to see a government that will get serious about those selling the drugs that are killing people.

“I like what [Pierre] Poilievre has to say about this,” Ms. Kelway tells me. “His plan to put drug dealers away for life works for me. The catch-and-release mentality of the Liberal government has been terrible. Drug dealers are killing people and yet are only getting a slap on the wrist.”

“We’re in a crisis right now. I think it’s time to get the Liberals out and give someone else a chance.”

Mr. Bradley wants a 'war-effort-like response' to the tariff threat from the south. In Sarnia, opinions differ about who would be best equipped for the task at the federal level.Brett Gundlock/The Globe and Mail

Before leaving town, I meet up with one of my dearest friends, Dave Dillon, the former two-time male athlete of the year at St. Pat’s High School. Unlike some of us, he stayed in Sarnia, working at a chemical plant until he finally retired last year. At 69, he still runs a high-end home renovation business.

Sitting at a table at Big Fish restaurant, he gets emotional talking about what he sees Mr. Trump doing to Canada. He calls the current election “the most important of my lifetime.”

“Let’s face it, we’ve been leaderless in Canada for a while now,” he tells me, his trademark Coors Light in hand. “This is the one time I would have considered voting for someone other than a Liberal had Mark Carney not come along. But I think he’s the right person for the times we are in.”

Mr. Dillon has curtailed his visits to the States in a show of support for his country – even though he can often get products for his business in Port Huron that sometimes take weeks to get in Sarnia. Now, he says, he doesn’t care if he ever goes to the U.S. again, such is the enmity he feels toward a country he always viewed as a close cousin.

“I think this represents a new opportunity for Canada,” he says. “Let’s hope we can find new markets. As for the U.S., I hope they never have maple syrup again in their lives.”

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Through the 2025 election, producer Kasia Mychajlowycz is travelling across Canada to ask locals what’s on their minds. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, many spoke of increasing patriotism and anger at Donald Trump, as well as their struggles with cost of living in rural communities. Subscribe for more episodes.