(Amateur) Book Review #3 - Ghost Road and other forgotten stories of Windsor by Marty Gervais

I never expected, the first day I ever stepped foot in Windsor during the summer of ’09 - at the tail end of The Strike - that I would stay. The old advertisements in the vacant shop windows were sun bleached and dust coated. The garbage bins were overflowing, and the parks tangled and overgrown.

Can I spend two years here at the University, let alone stay?

But stay I did. I have lived all over Southern Ontario, as well as overseas, and yet Windsor – Essex is where I have settled and put down roots. Part of that is because Windsor – Essex has something that I appreciate, a sort of understated, humble magic that can be easily overlooked, and yet is just as present below the surface of things.

Marty Gervais captures this in “Ghost Road and other forgotten stories of Windsor,” an excellent collection of stories and photographs that spans our history from the 18^th Century to 1980 and “Beyond.” No matter how accomplished the person, there is a celebration that their intentions were not necessarily to be a famous Baseball Player or Photographer, but rather people in a community who shares their talents and successes with the people who they love. 

Part of the appeal of Windsor – Essex for me is that the magic of our history takes some digging to find, that it isn’t necessarily thrown in our faces. I know this is true, in part, with everywhere I have lived. On a subjective level, however, I believe that it is more characteristic of Windsor – Essex.

Mr. Gervais has done some of the work for us, and I am sure you will thank him for it when you read this book. The true success of this book is what it does for the reader. Namely, it makes you stop and think as you walk down that old familiar road, to look a little more carefully when you are driving past fields in the county, or even as you are going through the stuff packed away in boxes in your basement or attic, and to really think there is history and magic here in the mundane. There are stories in the bricks and mortar of the towns and streets and houses in which we live. It just takes a little work to find them, but it is definitely worth the effort.

Do you have any stories about Windsor – Essex that you want to share, or ones that Mr. Gervais has made you think of after reading Ghost Road?