City of Windsor

Corporate body

City of Windsor

• Windsor ; Corporation of the City of Windsor

1892 - present

The City of Windsor, Canada’s southernmost city, occupies the northwest corner of Essex County along the shores of the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. Incorporated in 1892, its roots stretch back much further. Indigenous peoples of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa nations) knew this area as Wawiiatanong, and – along with peoples of the Wendat-Huron Confederacy and the Attawandaron (Neutral) nation -- inhabited the area for countless generations both before and after the arrival of Europeans. The Huron, whose traditional lands lay further north, were specifically invited to establish villages here by their French allies. French exploration and fur trade activity had brought Frenchmen along the river since 1640, and in 1728 Catholic Jesuit missionaries established a mission where the Ambassador Bridge stands today – it became the parish of Our Lady of the Assumption in 1767. Beginning in 1749 a little over two dozen French families received land grants for settlement, and established long narrow farms stretching back from the riverfront. The French settlements on both sides of the river came under British rule as of 1763 under the terms of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Seven Years’ War.

The 1796 Jay Treaty between Britain and the new United States of America ceded Detroit to the USA. In response, the British military and administrative cohort previously headquartered there relocated south of the Detroit River and the village of Sandwich was established in 1797 to be the legislative seat of Upper Canada’s Western District. An influx of British subjects accompanied them, populating Sandwich and its environs with English-speakers for the first time. The village suffered during the War of 1812, but was rebuilt, and became a significant stop on the Underground Railroad after 1833 saw slavery abolished in the British Empire, and many African-Americans settled there. Sandwich prospered and achieved town status in 1858.

Further to the East, a small hamlet grew up around a ferry dock connecting the south shore to Detroit on the north shore. Known variously as The Ferry, Richmond, and South Detroit, in 1836 the community named itself Windsor. Initially a much smaller settlement than Sandwich, Windsor benefitted when the Great Western Railway made the village its western terminus in 1854, and the settlement was incorporated as a village in that year. Although Sandwich experienced economic booms in the 1860s and 1890s, the relative positions of Sandwich and Windsor shifted over the second half of the nineteenth century: both settlement and economic activity increasingly clustered around Windsor. Windsor gained town status in 1858, formed its police service in 1867, and was incorporated as a city in 1892.

Economic development, immigration, and the resulting need for new residential areas led to the establishment of additional small communities along the shores of the Detroit River, separate from Sandwich and Windsor. To the southwest of Sandwich, the Town of Ojibway was created in 1913 as a planned community for the Canadian Steel Corporation. To the east of Windsor, Walkerville took root in 1858 as a company town for the Hiram Walker and Sons distillery; it was incorporated as a town in 1890. East of Walkerville, the village of Ford City, home to the Ford Motor Company of Canada and many of its workers, was created in 1913; it became the City of East Windsor in 1929. Further east again, the primarily residential Town of Riverside was established in 1921. Collectively, these small communities spaced out along the river were informally known as the Border Cities. They even shared a newspaper, the Border Cities Star, which later became today’s Windsor Star.

The automotive industry and other manufacturing fueled much of Windsor’s economic prosperity through the twentieth century, with the city becoming Canada’s fifth-largest manufacturing centre. Organized labour has correspondingly played an important part in the city’s politics and development. The creation of the Ambassador Bridge (1929) and the Detroit-Windsor Auto Tunnel (1930) solidified the position of the Border Cities as a leading transportation hub for travel and trade not only within the Great Lakes system, but also between Canada and the United States: the city is served by railways, highways, a deep-water port, an airport, and these cross-border links. The Gordie Howe Bridge (under construction in 2020-2023) will continue this tradition.

The economic collapse of the Great Depression (1929-1939) led the Ontario government to seek savings in the form of municipal government amalgamations. For this reason (and in the face of strident protest from some of the communities, most notably Walkerville), Sandwich, Windsor, Walkerville, and East Windsor were amalgamated in 1935 as a larger City of Windsor. During the 1960s, Windsor looked to expand its land and tax base by annexing the neighbouring towns of Ojibway, Riverside, Tecumseh, St. Clair Beach, and parts of the townships of Sandwich East, Sandwich West, and Sandwich South. Once again, it was a highly contested move. After much debate, Ojibway, Riverside, and parts of the three Sandwich townships were annexed to Windsor in 1966. In 2003 a portion of the Town of Tecumseh directly south of Windsor was annexed, creating the city’s boundaries as they exist in 2020.

Sources: Kulisek, Larry L., “Windsor (Ont),” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Historica Canada, 2012, updated 2015) https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/windsor-ont; City of Windsor, “History of Windsor,” https://www.citywindsor.ca/residents/historyofwindsor/Pages/default.aspx; “Windsor, Ontario” article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor,_Ontario. All accessed 21 July 2020.