Retired President and ETR historian Murray A. Elder has written a multi-part history of the Essex Terminal Railway. Part 1 follows:
by Murray A. Elder
(Issue 3)
We earn our living at the ETR and Morterm by virtue of our ability to offer successful transportation services to shippers. But how much do you know of the history of our industry? From the beginning transportation has effected our community, our company, and our job opportunities.
Picture yourself in the Windsor community in 1801, a series of small groupings of buildings along the south shore of the Detroit river, indian lands until 1797. You were one of a few hundred people probably illiterate, engaged in agriculture having cleared land for a home. Everything you own would have been built, woven, sewn or grown by your own hands, even tools and clothing. Anything you owned if it did not fit the above description would have been bartered as there was almost no currency in circulation. Food would be in short supply during the winter months. Indians were teaching some of the white settlers how to hunt, and fish through the ice in the winter. The seat of Government was Sandwich, established in 1796. This same year the British, by treaty turned Detroit, with a population of 2200, mostly French speaking, over to the newly formed United States. 1700 of these people chose to live under British rule and so moved to the British side of the Detroit River, many floating their buildings across the river. The street pattern in Sandwich today is the same as existed around Fort Detroit. The chances are that you were not born here, you may have come from Detroit, some other part of Lower or Upper Canada, (Que. or Ont) Eastern Canada, Scotland or England. The journey from Montreal took 49 days, just one day longer than Cadillac took in 1701 for a return trip by canoe. You may have received a land grant or, if here before 1790 purchased land from the Indians.(the Hurons living near Huron Line and the Ottawas near Hiram Walkers) The Indian Chief Pontiac had ran short of supplies during a 3 year siege of Detroit (1763-69) against the British, and traded the first of indian lands on the south side of the river, to French settlers for supplies. These farm plots were at the foot of what is now Lincoln Road. The population of all of British North America (Eastern Canada) was just 200,000.
In the year 1830, infant mortality was very high. If you survived, as an adult your average height would have been 5'4" and life expectancy would be 35 years 6 months. The population of B.N.A. had grown to 850,000 people. Canada West (Ontario) had a population of 200,000. and Windsor 100, and the Western District, now Essex, Kent, & Lambton Counties had 5662. You also may have taken part in the naming of Windsor. Transportation was between small isolated communities by boat, foot, stagecoach, horseback, or wagons over very primitive indian trails and roads. Drainage or lack of it was a common problem and wading through water to ones knees not uncommon in the spring. This isolation especially during five months of winter, created a desire for railways, but the small population, vast distances, and a shortage of investment capital posed a problem. The Governments of the day had invested heavily in road and canal systems and did not want to foster railway competition (the stage coach and sailing vessel owners had the ear of Government). A view from the water front often would include as many as one hundred sailing vessels beating their way against the current to Lake St. Clair. However the potential for profit if railways were built provided great encouragement to speculators. As Canada lacked the population and capital resources of Britain and the United States investors were sought elsewhere. Britain was a particularly fertile field for this speculative activity. Shares in newly chartered, proposed Canadian Rail companies multiplied in value in Britain a few days after reaching the market.