Boblo Island – July 1920

View Comments

• The Albert Kahn dance pavillion is an absolute gem--in the winter it's plainly visible driving along the river west of A-burg. Would love to see that building come back to life and to see more public use of the island to go along with it's redevelopment.

• Is Bob-lo open to the public, or is it a closed community now? It would be very interesting to go there now and see some of these old spots.

• Both buildings still exist. Teh merry-go-round hall became the snack hall in the '70s and '80s.
  I sure miss Bob-lo and all of the fun I had there as a kid.

• It's always been unclear to me if people can take the ferry over to Boblo and walk around. I've heard differing reports, and the boblo.ca site does not hide the fact that they are a "gated community like no other."

  The fellow who runs this boblo website below has some great recent pictures of the old buildings on the island. It's a bit awkward to navigate, but it answered a lot of questions as to what is left over there.

  http://www.boblosteamers.com/start.html

  Those big buildings -- the Kahn pavilion, some of the smaller ones -- were great and had a strange calming effect. Probably due to the liminal environment of Boblo itself, but i can remember the feeling of being around them like it was last week, not 15 years ago.

• Yep, Boblo Island including the pavilion is private property like one big condo corporation. Even the ferry service is privately run with secured access entry from the article I read on it. Don't know where the webpage is anymore. But, I guess if you told them you were interesting in buying a condo, they might let you view the premises.

  What the City of Windsor should do is open up Peche Island by public ferry access like Toronto Island or sell it to some outsiders to put some kind of amusement park or casino on it.

• These buildings, and others, still stand today. None, unfortunately, have bee designated yet.

• Family members have taken the ferry to drive to the restaurant on the island, so you can at least see a narrow slice of the island as long as you are headed there (I intended to see if I could go, with the excuse of checking out the blockhouses if asked, but never had to time to do so).

• David mentioned Peche Island. Wasn't there an attempt in the late '60's to do a tourist type development on the island in the late '60's? I seem to remember that you could do a commercial boat ride to (or around) the island from both Windsor and Detroit.

• David mentioned Peche Island. Wasn't there an attempt to do a toruist type development on the island in the late '60's. I remember one could take a commercial boat raide around the island from both Windsor and Detroit.

• 1962-1969 Ed Harris bought Peche Island and started an island playground with ferry service from Dieppe Park, but went bankrupt. It's demise probably had something to do with Detroit's mass exodus of businesses to the suburbs and avoidance after the riots in 1967. Then, the Province of Ontario bought it and later gave it to the City of Windsor and it's been a neglected municpal park for boaters ever since. It's a 110 acre island with a bunch of canals going through it.

  In 1883, Hiram Walker owned it and it still has the remains of Hiram Walker's 52 room summer mansion that burned to the ground in 1929, but the foundation is still there and so is his stone bridge. It has a lot of history. More about it with a map at http://www.walkervilletimes.com/curse-peche-island.html

  I'd pay a $5-10 fare for city ferry service to the island.