3rd entry – harrow 2009

Frank, Norma and I spent Saturday “in the county” as the locals refer to the area. Neither of them had even been to Windsor. We drove down and I took them through the University campus, showing them the house I lived in the year I was there.

U-Windsor 038This is the house that I lived in back in 1969/70. I had finished my year at the novitiate in Narragansett, Rhode Island and returned back to Canada and Windsor for university. I shared one of the third floor dormer rooms with a young man who was not a monk, but was living in the house, because he had gone to the Brothers’ high school in Toronto. His bed was in the right alcove you see and mine was in the alcove facing the river. I hated living in Windsor. I remember thinking that Sault Ste Marie was a better place to live than this miserable city on the Detroit River. And I knew nothing of the farm area that 40 years later I would visit to hook up with old childhood friends.

The house was on campus and it was the Christian Brothers center at the University of Windsor. The best part of living here was the cook. She made the best desserts. But even that couldn’t keep me in Canada and at the end of freshman year I transferred back to the United States and joined the New England/New York branch. This was the group that ran the novitiate and had the kids that I had become friends with. I’ve never regretted leaving the Canadian province of the Christian Brothers and settling in the United States.

The house is now a suite of offices for the Theology Department of the University of Windsor. (I wonder what they have in the ball room? When I lived there it was our chapel.)