From the Border Cities Star, July 9, 1929
It is to be erected at the corner of Highland Aveune and Tecumseh Road where the present Tecumseh Road Bungalow School stands.
Built in 1929, the house at 2177 Victoria Avenue was originally numbered 1545 Victoria, pre…
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in 1917 two Greek brothers Gus & Harry Lukos purchased a one story building on…
Photo from Google Streetview A long time reader sent me an email the other week…
An unremarkable end to a part of Windsor's history. The large vacant house at 841…
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So who was Harry Guppy? I'm not familiar with that name.
JB, have a look at this for info: http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=15203
In the '50's, guys who wanted to take a shop class at Kennedy would walk over to Guppy and take their class there. Guys more serious about shop and trades went to W. D. Lowe. Guppy ceased to be an elementary school by 1960 and was renamed High School of Commerce, and females attended there to learn secretarial arts. I left Windsor in 1969, so don't know what happened to the former Guppy/Commerce school after that. If you erased the fancy central portion and spired roof of the orginal plan and squeezed the left and right wings together, you'd have a pretty good idea of what Guppy looked like in the '50's.
My grandfather's uncle, John Wear (who was an alderman when Windsor became a city in the 1890s) was married to Harry Guppy's sister, Annie, and worked as a salesman for him during the 1920s. My dad can remember visiting 'aunt Annie' as a boy (1940s) and she would talk about the old days in Windsor. The Guppy house on Victoria Ave. at Pine St. still stands. I believe he made his money in the wholesale grocery business (the Red and White Chain). He was Chairman of the Board of Education.
My late sister was a teacher at Harry Guppy from 1956 - 1959 and she loved it. I'm not so
sure she would feel the same teaching today, however.
What's this I hear about the current Catholic Central being demolished for a brand new high school at another location?
That goes along with the thinking of the seperate board, their the onlyone in the province running a deficet, shrinking enrollment, laying off teaching staff and caretakers, but adding more adminastraters a high salaries. So why not try to get money out of the province for a new building that may or not be needed.
As student enrollment shrinks, the adminastration growes, and libraries close to be replaced by twentyfirst century electronics, that idea quickly disappeard with the new technacle advisor, remember Al from the library board.
Possibly what we need is a new slate of trustees that do not rubberstamp the admiasration.
Harry Guppy and my maternal grandfather, Caleb J. Wall, were partners in a wholesale grocery enterprise called Wall and Guppy, Ltd. back in the 1920's
My dad was a science teacher there.
I graduated from Harry E. Guppy High School of Commerce in June of 1963 with High School Graduation with a Special Secretarial Degree. My name at that time was R. Swan....