On the eleventh of June, 1805, a torrid fire engulfed a small town in the Michigan Territory. An unflappable local priest, Father Gabriel Richard, assessed the devastation by proclaiming “Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.” The Latin phrase, having the equivalent of “We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes” in English, would become the battered municipality’s motto. Two centuries on, the credo applies more than it ever has, for that town was none other than Detroit and it has become ashes once more.
