QUICK BOAT TRIP TO CITY OASIS
New service opens up Peche Island
There are massive silver maples and bur oaks that are at least 175 years old. There are rare Kentucky coffee and butternut trees. Wood thrushes and yellow warblers sing. You can hear waves breaking on the beach.
Is this really Windsor? It is. It’s the loveliest, most storied, most unique park in the city: Peche Island, at the head of the Detroit River.
And starting Wednesday, anyone can get there.
Take your time, advised city naturalist Karen Cedar. Walk slowly, listen, breathe. Delight in it. This is a special place.
“It’s magical,” she said Monday during a preview for the media. “When you walk through, you really feel that you’re not in the City of Windsor, that you’re someplace unique and different. Nature is just all around you.” Starting Wednesday, you don’t have to have a boat to get to Peche Island. The city’s new, 23-foot Princecraft pontoon boat, anchored at Lakeview Park Marina, will ferry passengers there.
The city has also built a new dock and lookouts, cleared trails, shored up some of the coast and erected signs about the natural features and history. It’s all part of a new, $1 million investment proposed by Mayor Drew Dilkens and approved by council in the 2018 budget.
“This has got to be the best park we own,” Dilkens said Monday, trekking along a muddy path. “It’s just not brought to its full potential.”
Two years ago, Dilkens was on a boat trip with others when they stopped at Peche Island. “Wow,” he remembered thinking. “It’s amazing.”
So he returned later that year. “I wanted to know, what could we do with it?” he said. There are deer, mink, fox, the endangered eastern fox snake, one of the largest snakes in Ontario, and beavers, thought to be expunged from the Detroit River until several years ago. Peche Island was originally a sandbar. Now, there’s a bur oak that is so magnificent it drew gasps. It’s among the oldest trees Cedar has seen in this area. Southwestern Ontario is the only place in Canada where you can see Kentucky coffee trees. They have giant pods, and the seeds inside look like coffee beans. Even the poison ivy is unusual. All three kinds — ground cover, bushes and vines — grow on the island.
“In the fall, it turns the most beautiful red,” said Cedar. Tiny red fungus dotted a fallen tree trunk. Large, brown mushrooms grew next to another. The most interesting place, Cedar said, is the inland marsh. “It’s like a nursery. All the babies are born there,” she said, citing fish, frogs, waterfowl. “And it’s a filtration system. It cleans everything.”
There isn’t a lot of diversity, Cedar said. But because it’s an island, it’s always changing. Things flow in and out with the river.
“You never know what’s going to happen, what you’re going to see,” she said. Sometimes a muskrat swims by. There was a wood duck, one of the most colourful waterfowl in North America, several days ago. It had 10 babies. “Today we’re seeing all kinds of wonderful mushrooms that weren’t here two days ago,” she said.
And all this is between two large cities, along a busy shipping channel.
Peche Island also has a cracking good history. Whiskey magnate Hiram Walker bought the island in 1883 and built a 40-room mansion with an ice house, carriage house, stable and greenhouse. He planted hundreds of trees and an orchard and dug canals so boats could carry supplies.
Walker’s daughter sold the island in 1907, and different owners with different schemes — a resort, ritzy houses, golf course, marina, amusement park — followed. But nothing ever proceeded.
Was it the curse of Peche Island? According to legend, Walker forced the Laforet family, which had farmed there for 100 years, to sell. When Rosalie Drouillard, the last family member, left, according to The Walkerville Times, she cursed the island.
Walker’s mansion burned down in 1929, but you can still see the foundations of the gardener’s house and greenhouse and the remains of the pump house. The concrete bridge Walker built over one of the canals still stands. Cracked, with chunks missing, it still has an air of elegance. The spindles on it mirror the ones on Walker’s grand former flagship office, now the Canadian Club Brand Centre.
The province bought the island in 1971, and it became a provincial park. The city bought it for $1 million in 1999.
Much of the city’s investment has been to stop erosion. The island was 109 acres in 1965. Now it’s 86 acres. Part of a main path around the perimeter was washed away over the last two years. The city rebuilt it. “Erosion control is critical to protect the island for future generations,” said Dilkens. Less than half the island is accessible because of the marsh. Dilkens hopes future councils will extend the path around the entire perimeter.
“It really is an oasis,” he said. “We want people to have the experience of visiting Peche Island.”
One 80-year-old man told Trese MacNeil, the city’s coordinator of sports services, “I’ve lived here my entire life, and I’ve never been to Peche Island. I’m going to be on the first boat.” Dilkens said “A lot of people are excited about it.”
The boat will ferry passengers Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., until Oct. 3. A round trip cost $5. Call the marina to book ahead.