Yawkey Farms

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• Hi Chris.....Yes, the Underwoods lived down on Wentworth off Armanda...went to high school (Centennial) with them. Upon reading your entry, I recalled the name of the owner of the gas station right beside the railway...I went to grade school with his son Fred Lecouer. Yes...Hawchucks...I remember going there with Dennis Brendjar and getting a bottle of coke then walking over to a junk yard right near it. Do u have pics of the old Hawchucks Variety? I used to by CB Radio parts from a guy on Healy I thought....I think his name was Big Bopper. Is that park still on Broadway?

• My father purchased a building on Sandwich Street in 1963 that was built in 1921 (now ROCK BOTTOMS), Marentette Hardware store was across the street, Frank the owner (he seemed old to me because I was only about 16 or so at the time) told me that the hand hewn beam in the basement (and it was old, hardwood, you couldn't drive a nail into it) came from a barn in Yawkey Bush...but I wouldn't know if this picture represents the barn...we used to rent horses from Peter Van Eerd(sp), the Flying Dutchman, and ride in yawkey bush and what amazed me was the sidewalks that ran thru the area, I think they planned housing in there at one time.

• Hey Jim. I used to travel by city bus from my home near the Chrylser plant on Walker Road. to the Flying Dutchman all the time to go horseback riding. I was just a kid but loved that place.I can`t seem to locate where it once was using Google earth.

• Jim The Flying Dutchman was lacated where Matchette Road meets the Expressway,Scott Broadway Park is still there and they will not be able to demolish it as it is an Erca protected area, thank God

• I lived in Brighton Beach a kid. We lived on Scotten Rd. Some of the names of neighbours I can remember are Reaume, Bury, Saunders, Corrigan, Baltzer, Laframboise, Ketcham(?), Bolyantu, Lloyd, Toutant. My dad bought the lot on Scotten Rd for $200 and built a small two-bedroom house with no basement - white clapboard and few amenities.

  Behind us(to the south) was a field (where we played baseball, and "war" and set off fire crackers). The riding stables (can't remember the name of the owner but it was an older fellow, kind of stocky and they had a big stallion named "Trouble". And he was trouble, as I recall!) Just beyond the stables was the Essex Terminal tracks and just beyond that was 18 highway. Across the highway and to the west of Broadway. was Yawkey Bush.

  I kind of think that barn in the photograph was set back in from Hwy 18 just east of Broadway - closer to Broadway than Chappus. I think the Toutant's owned that land, and farmed it (south of Hwy 18, between Broadway and Chappus) I don't remember a barn like that down by the river at all, but may have been there earlier

  The Catholic kids in the neighbourhood crossed the highway to go to St. Thomas Aquinas. The "Protestant" kids went down the street to the corner of Broadway and caught the bus to John O'Cahill. But first we had to ride all the way down to Sandwich St The bus turned around at Hawchuck's store. The last family to be picked up where the Knolls - who lived right across from the store.

  I have lots of memories of playing in the fields, the ditches and the woods We would roam for hours - often packing a lunch to take along with us. Our playground was from Brighton Beach, next to the old power plant, downriver to the Morton Terminal (where the teenagers would jump off the dock and swim between the lakefreighters and the dock, and all the way north through empty fields, and across 18 Highway, all through Yawkey Bush and up to Matchette Rd. When we got a little older, we also found the sand pits that were off Alberta St. (Now Armanda) There were sidewalks and sewers all through those abandoned fields, infrastructure for subdivisions that were never built, but abandoned when the depression hit. It was supposed to be called "Garden City", according to the stories my grandfather used to tell me, and it was expected that they would be "suburbs" for people working in factories in Detroit, but living where real estate was cheaper - across the river in "Garden City." But the depression hit before the houses were built and the sidewalks and sewers were all abandoned. We used to take the covers off the sewers and go down inside the labrynth below. Scary adventures in those days! It's a wonder we weren't killed - we used do ALL kinds of dangerous things - including jumping the trains to ride to LaSalle, light fires in the bush, swim in stagnant ponds, play down by the river - and this was all before I was 11 years old! Then we moved to boring old South Windsor...

• Wow...reading the childhood stories of S.C. Stewart brought back many memories. When you referred to the sand pits off Alberta (now Armanda), I used to play there all the time...if I walked out back from my house on Armanda....there were ponds and a horse training track. You could get to the ponds off Werner and Wentworth. Do you also remember 7 Hills over by Sprucewood? What a great area...I had a mini-bike and would go all over the place...I remember being chased by Security at Windsor Raceway for being on that property. Good times and great memories. Where exactly was that area you were referring too that had sidewalks and abandoned sewers? As far as some of the names you mentioned...I remember Brenda Baltzer, Ervin Keczem, Jeff Lafleur, Butch Labute, Ellen Todd and so on. If I recall, was there not a trucking business at the corner of Broadway and Hwy 18?

• I would love to get any info and pics of marentete hardware.....on sandwich st

• i would love any windsor pics of old west side windsor, brighton beach area,ojibway,the race way...and i have a question prior to the mansions being built on normandy in lasalle behind zehrs,there used to be bike paths through brunet park and back in the bushes were old side walks that you passed as you rode through the trees ,what was here before brunet park?

• So sad to read all these stories of people's fond memories of a time long gone.
  Similar stories would have went on like this for the last 260 years, as the area you're all referring to was the earliest inhabited European settlement west of Montreal in all of Canada.
  They are tearing this area apart for the new border crossing, and nothing can infuriate me more.
  That area was set up so long ago (long before Ojibway was even thought of).

  To be able to dig around that area has been a dream of mine for so long.

• I remember skipping school to go swimming with Kc. We used to camp in Yawkey bush quite often. We would ditch school and go swimming down at the hydro dock in the canal. Then we would go home and grab our tents and sleeping bags and go camp. We rode our dirt bikes all over the place in our hood, and most of the trails that exist there today, including Yawkey, Ojibway, and the seven hills. It was the best place to live and grow up, I really hated to leave there. There were many families there that all knew each other, and we all knew each sibling of each others families by name. I will name a few families for example; Pare , Caza, Laframboise, Reaume, Lafleur, Joncas, Branton, Renaud,Guilt, Underwood, Evon, Labute, Casey, Todd, Moore, Osborne, Larondo, Laeivier, Lamaroo, Dubois, ....... And many , many more