Windsor's forgotten streetcar
By Paul Breschuk
Features Editor
August 31, 2010
 It is said that you always remember your first but that's not the case with our country's first electric streetcar.
It took less than a hundred years for one of Windsor’s greatest achievements to fade to an obscure memory. Long since being buried by time, ignorance, and asphalt, was Canada’s first electric streetcar system.
On May 24, 1886, a section of rail on Riverside Drive between Walker Road and Ouellette Avenue was the site of the streetcar’s historic trial run. The success of this new technology put Windsor on the map for having the first electrified streetcar in the country.
The line connecting Walkerville to Windsor officially opened for service on June 9 of that year, making headlines in the following day’s edition of the Detroit Free Press. The feature story, “Greased Lightning, A Trip on the Windsor Electric Railway,” describes the arrival of first car:
“By and by, around the bend in the road, there came bowling along the electric car at a lively rate. It looked like a streetcar gone crazy. There were no horses, no steam, no visible means of propulsion, the car was full.”
While the railway had many different owners during the first year of operation, it eventually found stability as the Sandwich, Windsor & Amherstburg Railway (SW&A) in June 25, 1887. Under the new ownership, which completely overhauled and extended the routes, the SW&A helped Windsor become the first Canadian city with a completely electrified transit system in 1891.
Over the next 50 years the SW&A rail lines would spread across Windsor, putting streetcar trackage in most of Windsor’s main roads. A new line called the Windsor Essex & Lake Shore Rapid Railway (WE&LS) would also be opened in 1907, chartering passengers through the county to Leamington.
Due to the depression, as well as the growing number of automobiles, both lines were abandoned in the mid 1930s. And despite the popular belief that the automotive companies played a role in their demise, as was proven the case in the U.S., this was simply not true for the SW&A and WE&LS.
Bob Lynch, who is currently writing a book on the WE&LS, agrees with this assessment.
According to Lynch, “the automobile and the associated cost to provide all-weather paved roads, along with the depression, created an atmosphere where ridership could not pay for the cost of maintaining the railroad and pay off the debt built up by Ontario Hydro for the streetcar’s rehabilitation.”
Lynch maintains that although the WE&LS was the only street car system in North America to make a profit in 1931, it simply wasn’t enough.
Despite Windsor’s unique and historic relationship to the electric streetcar, its rails were permanently removed and the streetcars were sold to other municipalities. And in place of the streetcars came buses which have been burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon emissions for 70 years and counting.Perhaps the streetcar’s most lasting legacy was its unification of the separate townships that have since been incorporated by Windsor, linking Sandwich Town, Walkerville, Ford City, Riverside, and Tecumseh. It even provided the option of long-distance travel, venturing as far as Leamington.
The route maps of a hundred years ago, showing the arterial spread of rapid public transit across Essex County, imply that we have taken a step in the wrong direction. Undoubtedly, Windsor’s light rail provided a freedom unmatched by our current bus system.
“Just think of what we had in the Essex region,” said Ron Drouillard, a local rail supporter and president of the Windsor Workers’ Action Centre. “We had a regional rail system connecting Amherstburg, Windsor, Essex, Cotton, Kingsville, and Leamington. Having something like that today would be a dream.”
One is left to wonder, then, what Windsor would look like had it preserved this historic infrastructure. In cities like Toronto and San Francisco, streetcars have maintained their usefulness, offering a quick and environmentally friendly mode of transportation. They have also acquired a certain indefinable charm that has never fully translated over to buses, attracting rail fans and tourists worldwide. But for cities like Windsor that have ripped out the rails, there is still hope.
Ron Drouillard shared this hope with the public through several episodes of Scaledown Radio, a CJAM talk show concerned with the sustainable redevelopment of Windsor. And with the help of his father Bernie, an absolute expert on Windsor’s transportation history, Drouillard would like to recapture some of Windsor’s lost glory.
“The very first line of the original streetcar system started in Walkerville, followed Riverside Drive to downtown Windsor and looped in Sandwich town,” said Drouillard. “Now, consider how important and exciting this link would be today. We could link the most thriving neighbourhood, Walkerville, to downtown and through to one of the most historic communities of Sandwich Town. And if the marina was built at the foot of Mill Street, it would link the two most historic areas in Windsor and help to revive Sandwich.”
Drouillard also sees the creation of a “knowledge corridor” along University Avenue, connecting the University of Windsor campus to the downtown campus of St. Clair College.
The University Avenue route would also be historically appropriate as it passes by the original SW&A car barns which still stand at the Wellington Avenue intersection.The City of Detroit, as well as the privately-funded M-1 Rail, have been working independently toward the re-installation of light rail on Woodward Avenue since 2006. Recently, the two groups have announced plans to combine efforts into a project known as Woodward Light Rail. Still in the planning phase, they are now conducting environmental assessments and public input inquiries with the aid of the Federal Transit Administration.
Construction of the first phase is planned to begin in the fall of 2011, laying rails from downtown Detroit to the historic New Center district located five kilometers North. Phase two will see the connecting of the State Fair grounds, providing Woodward with a full nine miles of light rail by 2016.
The final result will link the downtown business and entertainment districts, Cobo Hall, Rosa Parks Transit Center, Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center, the Amtrak train station, and the future Ann Arbor-Detroit Commuter Train.
Supporters of the project are hoping the system will illustrate the benefits of returning rapid rail transit to Detroit. Megan Owens, Executive Director of Transportation Riders United, sees the Woodward line merely as the first step in the rebirth of Detroit’s electric streetcar system.
“Many other metropolitan areas have found that once people have a great experience on the first light rail line, they quickly clamor for more,” said Owens. “It becomes far easier to raise the needed revenue, break through political barriers, and overcome technical obstacles once people fully understand what light rail can do for our community.”
Perhaps Detroit will meet the same success that Kenosha, Wisconsin has enjoyed with its Harbor Park project. After redeveloping large portions of waterfront land made available by a recently closed Chrysler plant, the city serviced the area with a newly installed streetcar loop. On the loop runs five brilliantly restored ex-Toronto streetcars, giving its riders easy access to the lake front, shopping, museums, and the Chicago Metra commuter rail station.
Kenosha, a former automotive manufacturing town, is a perfect example of how streetcars may be used to reconnect and revitalize communities while reducing urban sprawl, especially in a de-industrialized area. In Kenosha, for once, the automobiles have lost their turf to streetcars.
Do we expect the same for Windsor? At the very least, light rail supporters such as Ron and Bernie Drouillard expect a gesture, a nod to a history Windsor should be proud to celebrate. One gets the impression that a single, small loop would suffice. It could even be part of an educational or commemorative display at the waterfront, more for tourism and less for utility. Sadly, in a city that could not be bothered to erect a simple plaque for its electric rail accomplishment, the return of an actual streetcar is doubtful.
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