A TOAST TO WHISKY BARON
City pursues site for Walker statue
Windsor’s mayor is predicting a July 4, 2021 unveiling of the $400,000 Hiram Walker sculpture, now that city council has approved expropriating the necessary land at Riverside Drive and Devonshire Road.
That date will be the whisky baron’s 205th birthday. The sculpture was approved by city council in honour of Walker’s 200th birthday and completed by local sculptor Mark Williams a couple of years ago. It’s been sitting, wrapped up, in a City of Windsor warehouse ever since.
“It just looks amazing,” Mayor Drew Dilkens said Wednesday. “I am so excited at the opportunity to get this on public display and have the public come out and see and celebrate one of our earliest community builders and champions.”
Ironically, a failure to reach a land purchase deal with the company founded by Walker — Hiram Walker & Sons — forced council to start the expropriation process in March.
But after receiving the expropriation notice, lawyers for the company — which had actually donated $5,000 toward the sculpture project — began talking with the city lawyer, an administration report says.
“Recently, (company lawyers) have advised that upon further review, the city’s offer to obtain the land based on its appraised value of the property of $144,000 plus any applicable taxes, is acceptable to the company.”
On Tuesday, council voted to proceed with the expropriation of the 5,107-square-foot property in any case.
“We don’t anticipate we’ll ever have to get to expropriation, we think we can resolve this through willing buyer, willing seller. But this just makes sure we have a path to move forward,” Dilkens said Wednesday.
He said that based on the general timelines for expropriation, council’s decision makes him feel “very comfortable” that the sculpture will be installed and the parkette open for July 4. At least $145,000 in donations have been pledged for the sculpture.
Another of Williams’ sculptures commissioned by the city, of War of 1812 leaders Chief Tecumseh and Maj- Gen. Sir Isaac Brock, was unveiled in 2018 in the centre of the new Sandwich roundabout.
The new parkette will be located on the southeast corner of the Riverside/devonshire intersection, which will undergo a $1 million reconstruction — which includes the purchase price of the parkette property — with new turning lanes and bike lanes. An early idea to put a roundabout there was dismissed due to safety concerns for pedestrians and cyclists.
The sculpture, said Dilkens, “is really meant to be a gateway or a welcoming to Walkerville, across the street from the original home of Hiram Walker.”
It depicts Hiram Walker as a young man, resolutely walking atop whisky barrels, carrying plans.
“This is the young Hiram Walker who built Walkerville to become an incredible place,” said Dilkens, adding that “in so many ways” the development of Walker’s company town laid the foundation for Windsor’s success. The Ford Motor Company of Canada was established in thriving Walkerville in 1904 largely due to all the services Walker — who died in 1899 — put in place, he said.
The design of the parkette will be part of the Walkerville Distillery Districting Plan that’s being developed by consultants Brook Mcilroy. In May, a list of 10 proposed projects — including the parkette — was revealed. They include a linear park, improved connections to the riverfront trail system, an urban square, temporary street closures, transforming an alley into a destination, all intended to build on Walkerville’s “incredible” history and character.
Walker, an American, began assembling 468 acres for his distillery in the 1850s.
He literally developed Walkerville, a before-its-time planned community with street lights, wellpaved roads, police and fire departments, a water pumping station, pool, church and all sorts of other amenities almost entirely paid for by Walker’s distillery business.
Walker’s influence also had a hand in the creation of: Windsor Regional Hospital, St. Mary’s Anglican Church, the Walkerville Technical Institute (later named W.D. Lowe), King Edward elementary, Walkerville Collegiate, the original Essex Golf Club, Willistead Manor, Windsor Public Library, Walker Airport (now Windsor Airport) and the train lines running through Southwestern Ontario.
When talk of annexation arose in 1935 in the midst of the Depression, Walkerville residents bristled at the idea of uniting with Windsor, Sandwich and East Windsor because theirs was the only community not in the red.
“It’s a really great story,” Dilkens said of Walker’s legacy.
“He was one of our earliest community builders and we wanted to celebrate him.”
I am so excited at the opportunity to ... have the public come out and see and celebrate one of our earliest community builders and champions.