A few years ago, I decided to go for a walk.  It was a cloudy, grey evening and the wind was biting my face, but something was beckoning me to walk through my old neighbourhood and to feel the cracked pavement under my feet.  I was in a sombre mood, so perhaps returning to a place that was the backdrop for so many of my happy times, I may somehow be transcendentally transported back to that happy place, that time in my life that I wished would never end.  It was upon that evening that I fell in love with Windsor again.

I walk past my old high school.  It’s closed now, abandoned for the most part, yet it strangely looks as if students were still in the building, studying and exchanging glances under the watchful eye of the teacher.  I can smell the graphite of a pencil, and feel the chalk dust on my fingers.  I could walk the marble halls blindfolded, and I look towards a huge window that a friend of mine once broke by flicking a penny at it the way people flick beer caps.  I smile to myself without shame, because I am not in the present anymore, in my mind I am younger and full of optimism.  The rigors of adult life seem very far away.

Above me trees arch down towards me, their branches all but stripped of their leaves.  I brush through a sea of orange, red and brown and remember the good times.  Going to W.D. Lowe in the late 1990s was a strange experience.  It was a time when almost weekly a bomb threat would be called in to the school, and the entire population would have to exit the school and stand around for roughly an hour waiting to be vaporized.  Then, inevitably the “all clear” would be given and we would go back in to resume class as if nothing special had happened.  I always thought how ironic this all was; that if there really was a bomb in the school and it exploded, we were standing far too close to the school to be unharmed.  Most of us would be brutally wounded by flying bricks and glass that once sheltered us from the elements.

At that school I was exposed to many different cultures.  It was free of cliques, “cool kids” and jocks.  Everyone just sort of hung around people from their country of origin, except me, who talked to everyone.  I had a group of friends who were all not born here.  They came to this city and this country for many reasons.  Some came to escape death and persecution, some came to start a business and live in a peaceful country.  Looking at this city through their eyes as opposed to our tired eyes was so refreshing and it gave me an appreciation for what we have that is still with me.

Above all, we have peace.  Some parts of our city may be dangerous, but we don’t have a 6pm curfew that is enforced by soldiers shooting you on sight if you are caught outside.  When I was fourteen, I remember my friend’s father recalling to me how when he was my age, he saw a huge group of protesters killed by machine gun fire.  He said it looked like dominos falling all over each other, almost as if it were not real.  In Windsor, we are safe.

I walk through Landspeary Park, scene of many memories and defeats.  I look over to a slow curving slope adjacent to the swimming pool where in the winter the ice shavings from the zamboni would be piled there by the workers at the skating rink.  My friends and I would use it as a toboggan hill, minus the toboggan.  No one really had a toboggan.  Sometimes we had a piece of cardboard, sometimes we just had our jackets, yet there we stayed, all day long sliding down that precarious hill, full of large chunks of ice and half melted snow.  In the summer we would play an endless game of catch.  We got so good at it that we could stand across the entire field from each other and our throws would barely have an arc and would never touch the ground. 

I walk past the bandstand that was never used by bands from what I could remember.  It had these curious treble clefs built into the wrought iron rails that gave away its intended use.  We used to sit there for hours, waiting for something to happen.  It was from this very bandstand that I heard my first swear word.  I think of how shocked I was and I smile to myself and continue on.

I walk past the swing sets and jungle gym and onto the paved pathway towards Ottawa Street.  I must have walked down this path thousands of times, and played on those swings as for long as I could remember.  I look up that the gothic spires of Sacred Heart on my right and remember when a childhood friend told me it was bad luck to swear in the sight of these spires.  I also remember the Rio De Janeiro-esque statue of Jesus that used to stand in front of the church.  It has since been removed, and all that is left is the base that he once stood on.  I continue towards Ottawa Street and home, where I walk past shops and brush by people, wondering if I knew them as a kid in that patch of paradise over my shoulder. 

People, places and buildings come and go, return and dissipate in a constant cycle.  In this city we once had two beautiful hotels.  In this city we once had a large and efficient trolley system.  We had beautiful department stores downtown.  In this very city we once had a predictable way of life, where those old sunny photographs were once reality.  People lived, loved and died.

Think back to the neighbourhood you grew up in.  Would you let it succumb to a wrecker’s ball, or would you come forward and say something?  If someone had a gun to your neighbourhood’s head, would you try and save it? 

I encourage everyone to walk down the streets of your youth.  Go to the park where you used to play.  Walk past your old house and look at the front yard and steps leading up to the porch.  Smell the grass and feel the shade of the trees.  Remember running down the street.  Remember learning how to ride a bike and being free from the shackles of training wheels.  Remember the smell of dinner, the smell of six o’clock, where every house had the aroma of home and warmth.

Fall in love with your home, and fall in love with Windsor, because it is a part of us and a backdrop to the grand play of our lives.  I fight for people and things I love without hesitation because once we love something, we have to preserve it.     

All we have to do is remember, and never forget.