General
Info:
"I'm going to Detroit, Michigan, to work the Cadillac line" growls the old blues number, but if the singer had crossed the river he'd have been equally at home amongst the car plants of
WINDSOR
, 190km southwest of London. The factories are American subsidiaries built as part of a complex trading agreement which, monitored by the forceful Canadian United Automobile Workers Union, has created thousands of well-paid jobs. Living opposite Detroit makes the "Windsors" feel good in another way too: they read about Detroit's problems - the crime and the crack - and the dire difficulties involved in rejuvenating that city, and shake their heads in disbelief and self-congratulation. A robustly working-class place, Windsor has a clutch of good restaurants, a lively cafe-bar nightlife, and is also a good base for visiting both the remains of the British
Fort Malden
in Amherstburg, 25km to the south, and
Point Pelee National Park
, some 50km away to the southeast. The main Windsor shindig is the International Freedom Festival with all sorts of folksy events spread over an eighteen-day period in late June and early July.
Windsor itself has few specific sights, but
Dieppe Gardens
, stretching along the waterfront from the foot of Ouellette Avenue - and part of a longer riverside park - is a good place to view the audacious Detroit skyline. Close by, just to the east at the bottom of McDougall Street, is the fantastically popular and ultraglitzy
Casino Windsor
, which is open 24hrs a day, 365 days of the year. The casino has played a leading role in the rejuvenation of downtown Windsor, whose formative years are recalled at the
Windsor Community Museum
, one block south of the riverfront at 254 Pitt St W (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, plus May-Sept Sun 2-5pm; free). The museum occupies a pretty brick house built in 1812 by Francois Baby (pronounced
Baw-bee
), scion of a powerful French-Canadian clan who proved consistently loyal to the British interest after the fall of New France, an example of the money going with the power.
Back on the riverfront, the
Art Gallery of Windsor
, 401 Riverside Drive West (Tues- Fri 10am-7pm, Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; free;
www.artgalleryofwindsor.com
), has a well-deserved reputation for the excellence of its temporary exhibitions. The permanent collection is first-rate too, its forte being late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian paintings. In particular, look out for some good examples from the Group of Seven
- including Lawren Harris's skeletal
Trees and Snow
and the dramatic perspectives of Arthur Lismer's
Incoming Tide, Cape Breton Island
. Also on display is a splendid sample of Inuit art, with a particular highlight being
Hunters and Polar Bear
, a dark and elemental soapstone carving by Juanasialuk. There's more art at the open-air, open-access
Sculpture Garden
, a whimsical assortment of seventeen modern sculptures dotted along the riverfront lawn between Curry Avenue and the Ambassador Bridge, about 1.2km west of Ouellette Avenue. Lastly, you might venture further afield, some 3km east of the casino, to join a free tour of Hiram Walker & Sons'
Canadian Club Distillery
, 2072 Riverside Drive E at Walker Road (year-round; 1hr; times on tel 519/561-5499), on which guides explain how whiskey is manufactured. Windsor boomed during Prohibition from the proceeds of its liquor industry, with bootleggers smuggling vast quantities of whiskey across the border into the US.
More Windsor travel guides (each guide contains specific sub-sections):
Windsor
Practicalities
