I grew up in Brighton Beach, moving from the city with my parents in December of 1949. The acre of ground with a shack and no plumbing cost them $2000 with a mortgage. It was part of the Township of Sandwich West then, being amagamated by the City of Windsor only in the fifties. I remember a Shantytown, a real “Hooverville” built on the beach of scrap lumber and tin Coca Cola signs with curtained doorways. You could swim in the Detroit River then (though my mother never let me. Those were the years of the polio scare.)

My father spearheaded a petition to bring municipal water out to the area, contacting (by post! This was long before Internet and long distance was for emergencies.) absentee owners of property all over the United Staes and Canada. They’d purchased lots when the area was “subdivided” by the realtor/developers, Page, Healy and Chappus. Water is about all the City ever sent us. The roads were undeveloped. Street lighting, limited to one fixture at each intersection along Sandwich Street, appeared sometim every late. We never did get bus service though there may have been a brief period, after I married and moved away, when the bus made trial runs as far as Broadway but they decided the usage didn’t justify permanent service. When they moved the “Loop”, it was farther away than before. We walked over a mile to the bus stop for all the years I lived there. Even after we got our first family car in 1953 (a ’39 Plymouth), my Dad worked shifts so my mother and I frequently made the trek in both directions. I eventually biked to work and school.

When I married in 1970, my father tried to sever some of his seven lots to build a house for us. That was when we discovered the City had designated the area for industrial development and we weren’t allowed to build anything at all. My motger sold the house on a acre of property in the early eighties, after my Dad died, for $18,000. The buyer sold it again, during a brief period when the designation was lifted, for $40-some thousand. I lost track after that until the City began purchasing properties for an average $65,000. I arrived to take pictures the day after the house had been demolished.

Now they’ve sold the property for something like $325,000 an acre with no improvements. And it was purchased with my tax money?!

Paul Vasey has a little book called “The Age of the Cities” – he interviewed residents and former residents of Brighton Beach about their lives there. It was published through the Art Gallery in 1997 – I have a copy. Interesting place, though. I wish there were more pictures of it before it started to decline.

Great history. Thanks Clare!

First thank you for the history Clare – that was very informative and nice to see the human aspect of that place.

All I can say is R.I.P. Morton Terminal and Brighton Beach area – as a 4×4 enthusiast I have had many good memories out that way with my friends and all the people I met out there motor-crossing and ATVing and 4x4ing, couples taking walks, walking their dogs… we are no longer welcome out there due to a neo-nazi wanna be cop who is now patrolling the lands now that they are Federally owned. We were “informed” that we were trespassing, conducting “criminal” misconduct and the works and were to never return. He called the police – they came and did just not care… none the less I will never venture that way again… too sad. Done and done.

hi! great site! found my way here from IM.

John Day – just so you know, that’s not a security guard out there, that’s the windsor port authority harbour master. i do sympatize with the loss of the trails though, there’s nowhere else in windsor to do it.