For nearly twenty-five years, I have lived in Northern Ontario… and watched one of the province’s foundational industries contract around us. The decline of forestry, and particularly of pulp and paper. …Today, watching the escalating trade conflict between Canada and the US and the extraordinary pressure being placed on Ontario’s automobile industry, I find myself wondering whether there is anything useful in that experience for Southern Ontario. …Act earlier. Distinguish a temporary shock from structural decline. Reduce real cost disadvantages where they exist. Use public money to secure future products and future capital rather than merely extending yesterday’s production. Protect suppliers, tooling, engineering and skilled labour, not simply the assembly building. Treat the loss of the next product mandate as seriously as the loss of the current shift. Northern Ontario learned these lessons at considerable cost. Southern Ontario now has the opportunity to use them.