Hello Windsor History Fans!

North Entrance of Willistead Park, Windsor, Ontario, before wrought iron fence installed around entire park, circa 1910




Hey, it's Elaine, of Walkerville Publishing. You may remember when we produced "The Walkerville Times" and then "The Times Magazine, publications that celebrated the history of Windsor and area. We did 58 issues in all between 1999 and 2007.

I was the managing editor. It was a ton of work. I loved it. I hated it.

I miss it.

And i'm not the only one. Lots of people have told me how much they miss it too so today, when I was walking around Walkerville during a very welcome February thaw, i decided to do a blog.

Yeah, genius eh?

I'm not 100% sure what will be in this blog, but I do know it will have lots of photos, old and new. People are fascinated with old photos of their city.

The new photos will document how Windsor looks now and highlight which old buildings and streetscapes have managed to escape the dreaded wrecking ball.

Lord knows, Windsor has a culture of tearing down the old and building new, not necessarily better structures.

So, welcome. I hope you like it.

P.S. Two notes of interest about the photo above: 1/ the auto entrance had to be widened to accomodate bigger cars which meant that the pedestrian entrance on the right disappeared to accomodate the wider main gate. 2/ Mary Walker, wife of Edward Walker (son of Hiram Walker of Canadian Club fame and founder of his company town Walkerville where Willistead was built in 1906) had the wrought iron fence erected around the 16-acre property because couples were apparently discovered doing naughty things on the grounds.