About the Artwork
When, as a child, I lived at 309 McDougall Street, which was known as the Walker House, I was not aware of its social, political, or economical place in history.
As you know, the welcome mat has not always been fully extended to people of colour, (a phrase my father and people of his generation preferred if he had to be described as other than Canadian).
That limited welcome mat was not totally a bad thing. It made us as a people aware of our own ability to create and generate our own welcome mats. Our community had its own doctors, ministers, shopkeepers, journalists, musicians, barbers and hoteliers.
And so it was that my great Uncle George Smith, my grandfather John Alexander Smith purchased the Walker House before the turn of the twentieth century. They purchased the building from two brothers, Mr. Edward Walker and his older brother, Henry, who founded the rst, probably, but not the only hotel owned by Black men in Windsor.
After the death of his brother, George, John A, managed the Walker House and at his death, in 1940, his eldest son George took the helm. Young George was not the businessman his forebears were and when George enlisted in the Canadian Army at the onset of the war, his brother John Ronald took the responsibility of management intermittently between 1934 and 1939. In 1942, he moved his family to Windsor permanently.
The hotel provided clean, adequate lodging for travelers who otherwise might have had to sleep in a less hospitable environment. A good meal was available in the dining room, and it was, in general, a social meeting place. Men played checkers and cards in the Men’s Beverage room and in the bar.
Ladies met in the Ladies’ lounge and if they were escorted, ladies went into the dining room with the gentleman.
World War II brought many changes in management. Hours of operation were limited; food and alcoholic beverages were rationed.
The general look of the hotel changed. The couches and carpets were removed from the Lady’s beverage room. Ladies, rather liberated women also began to go into the dining room without escorts. But that’s another story….
In 1963, my father, last owner of the hotel, was expropriated by the City of Windsor and the Walker House became a part of Windsor’s history.
January 13, 2001, my family dedicated a tombstone in Drummond Hill cemetery on Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls Ontario to my great, great grandparents. He an escaped slave from Maryland, she, an indentured servant from Campbelltown Scotland.
Imagine the foresight and courage this man had, to travel the Underground railway, it is reported, with a woman, small in stature, who carried a rie, in order to have his ospring born free. It made possible, the existence of the Walker House and the other enterprises initiated by my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my father.
